In which I rant about 'Real Women'



Things I hate:

Broccoli
Cold winter mornings when I just want to stay in bed
Lies
The sound of my alarm clock
And this real women have curves bullshit.

Oh dear. I’m perhaps about to do a rant. I’m sorry – I’m tired, I did not sleep well last night, I’m a little bit grumpy and I am pissed off.

I saw a thing today on social media, not unlike things I’ve seen all over the place and all of the time that usually make me grit my teeth keep on scrolling, some kind of alleged body positivity, talking about having curves ‘like women should.’

Erm fuck off (language, bad language. This post might have it. Soz) Those are the comments that piss me off.

I mean, I’m not curvy I’m just…not. Apart from my bum, that’s perhaps not quite in proportion with the rest of my 5ft 4” self. Am I less of a woman because I’m slight, because I’m not curvy, because my boobs are small, because I have that thigh gap that seems to be the worst thing a girl can possibly have? You want to know a thing, I like my thigh gap. Stop telling me it makes me a shitty person. Stop telling me I’m not a real woman.

The definition of the word real is this:

actually existing as a thing or occurring in fact; not imagined or supposed.

So when you say that real women have curves and take into account that I do not, that I have small boobs and a thigh gap are you somehow saying that I am imaginary?

I’m not by the way, imaginary I mean – I know this because I was pushing a  twin pram at the weekend and when I banged my shin on the bottom carry cot it hurt like a bitch. I’m surprised I didn’t bruise. But that ‘oh shitting hell’ of pain, it shows that I’m just as real as any other woman. Surprisingly.

All women are beautiful (except, it seems, us smaller ones) and people need to remember that. I am by no means what you would call skinny, I’m small but I’m not skinny. What I am, is not curvy and that’s ok. Embrace your curves; be proud of who you are, you should be, but please don’t feel better about yourself or make yourself more of a woman by somehow I am implying I am less than one. I didn’t choose my body shape any more than you chose yours. You don’t have curves like women should. You have curves. That’s how that sentence should end. Anything else is pitting woman against woman and is a competition that I am pretty damn sure none of us agreed to.

You are not your bra size, your hips, your cankles or collar bones, you’re not the marathons you run or the food that you eat, you are not your curves and you are not your size 8 jeans. You are not defined by the way you look, and however you look, you are no less real because of it. What you are is the way you laugh and the way you cry; the things that make you smile and the reasons you find to drag yourself out of bed in a morning; you are the photographs you take and the way you sing in the shower and the secrets you keep and the promises you make; you are your thoughts and you are your ambitions and you are your dreams. You are so much more than what you see in the mirror.

To suggest anything else is insulting and it sends out a terrible message and to say we should look a certain way – curvy - is just as terrible actually, as calling somebody fat. I don’t have a great body image and I don’t have a great relationship with food and it’s hard for me sometimes to look in the mirror and feel ok with what I see. Don’t make that harder for me by suggesting that the shape and size I am is somehow inferior to yours, that I am less, that I am not real and I am undesirable – that no real man would want me. That’s shitty and also brings me to another thing that I’d also like to put into Room 101 (such  a great show): Real men like curves.


Shut up. Real men (there’s that word again) like whatever attracts them personally: a flat stomach, an arse they can grab hold of, big boobs, small boobs, blonde hair, brown eyes, a dirty laugh, a shy giggle, a party animal, a bookworm.

Don’t imply I am less of a woman because I’m only a size 8 and don’t imply my boyfriend is somehow less of a man because he likes me that way. It’s nonsense.

I would never say to you that you’re too big to be desired, or that real men like thin chicks. I wouldn’t say it because I don’t think it’s true and I wouldn’t say it because I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings. I have feelings too. (I also wouldn’t say it because OH HELLO MISOGONY, WHY SHOULD I EXSIST ONLY TO BE ATTRACTIVE TO A MAN. I am who I am for me, not for the amount of attention I get from a man but hey, another soap box;another day.)

Basically, taste your words before you spit them out, say you’re curvy and you love it, and leave out that ‘like real women should be’ nonsense, and remember being body positive means being all body positive, it doesn’t mean belittling the body shape that’s not the same as yours – what that is, is body shaming and it’s never okay.