"Skinny" people have feelings too.

The blogosphere is all atwitter (social media pun alert!) about a recent post in which the author discusses why gay men hate their bodies.  Since I am fascinated by the degrees of body acceptance in cultural groups different from my own, I was very excited to read this, especially given the fact that it had stirred up a lot of anger in the blog community.  Though the post was maybe slightly too tongue in cheek at times, for the most part, I understood where the blogger, Orlando Soria, was coming from.  LA is a city of Barbies and Kens.  It's hard to feel good about yourself some days, no matter how skinny you are.

I figured there would be the usual critics shouting "it's what's on the inside that counts!" The typical name calling as people criticized him for being narcissistic or superficial.  What I was not prepared for was people saying he had no right to feel this way since he was thin.

To which I say, are you fucking kidding me?  (pardon my French)

Yes, this is what some "skinny" people really DO
see when they look in the mirror.

NEWSFLASH: being skinny is not the key to self esteem!!!  When I was at my lowest weight I was also on my knees in a rest stop bathroom throwing up the road trip junk food I had inhaled in the car.  Do you think I felt GOOD about this?  No.  Every time I looked in the mirror I wanted to punch the fat slob that was looking back at me.  And it's ok for me to feel that way.  Just like it's ok for a person at ANY weight to feel good about themselves.  Who the hell are we to decide how a person should feel about themselves?

Seriously folks, I know a lot of people think that skinny people have no reason to ever feel bad and I wish that was the way the world worked but it's not that simple.  That was the biggest lesson I learned from my ED, when I had to say to myself, "Congratulations, you're skinny.  And where exactly has that gotten you?  How has it changed your life?"  The answers to those questions were, "nowhere," and "It hasn't."

So before you start completely invalidating a person's feelings because to you they look perfect, maybe just try listening to them and understanding where they're coming from.  Sometimes that's all we need, is someone to listen and recognize our feelings as valid.  THAT will help to build a better self image than any amount of congratulations for fitting into a size 0 ever will.