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There’s something I don’t admit very often (in fact, maybe I’ve never admitted it before). The thing is, there’s one thing in particular that I miss about being skinny. When I say “skinny,” I mean the way I looked when I was underweight, about 25 pounds ago. I know I’m not supposed to say that I miss anything about that time period, because I’m supposed to love my new, improved, healthy shape. And most of the time, for the most part, I do.
However, I’ve also accepted the fact that certain thoughts and habits aren’t ever going to go away completely. One of the big things that can make me feel insecure is being unable to wear most of my old clothes. And this is where the whole “I miss being skinny” mentality can sometimes come back to rear its ugly head. Because, see, when you’re skinny, it’s really easy to find and wear pretty much whatever you want.
When you have jutting hipbones, and a concave stomach, and no ass…pretty much everything fits. There are no bulges or rolls of extra skin to deal with. I tend to think about this when my waistband starts to feel tight, or that time I finally gave away a stack of pants that I could no longer button. I wasn’t planning to ever be small enough to button them again -- nor did I want to -- but for some reason I’d been continuing to hold on to them.
I realize this is an extremely self-centered reason for wanting to look a certain way. It’s not like I look bad in the clothes I’m currently wearing; it just takes more effort because there are styles that look good on me and some that don’t. (Which kinda makes you understand why clothing designers say it’s “easier” to make clothes to fit a stick-woman.)
Here’s what makes me come back to reality on a relatively quick basis: remembering the bad times. How I felt perpetually lethargic and unhappy. Obsessed over everything I ate (or didn’t eat). Missed out on meeting new people, and going to new places, or even hanging out with people I already knew, because it was easier to stay in my safe, insulated world. For example, I preferred going to restaurants that offered calorie-counts on their websites so I could plan in advance what I was going to eat. (Yeah, I was a lot of fun back then...)
Here’s something else: even though it was my choice not to date back then, it’s not like men were beating down my door to get to me. I would hear that guys prefer women who aren’t stick-thin, but I would still think to myself, “Surely that isn’t the case. If I was interested in somebody, they’d like the way I look.” Well, once I stopped looking like a Starving Person, my hypothesis changed to “guys like to have something to hold on to.”
(I majored in sociology in college, so there’s a part of me that thinks this hypothesis would make an interesting social experiment: what would happen if I made another online dating profile, using only my skinny-pics, and the exact same description of myself that I have right now? What would happen to the quality and/or quantity of my responses?)
Sometimes something will come up in conversation to remind me of that time in my life, and on a few occasions I’ve pulled up a particular photo from my Flickr account to illustrate my point. Nobody seems to believe me right away when I tell them I used to weigh 25 pounds less than I do now, but they do when they see some before-and-after pics:
The first was taken in June 2002 at the Hoover Dam; the second (I’m on the right, in the tank top) was taken in August 2008 -- immediately after a strip aerobics class.
I look horrible in the first photo, and that’s exactly why I show it. The reactions are always the same: “Ew!” and “Wow!” and “You look so different!” and “You look so much better now.” People always say that, and I appreciate it. Even though I know it in my head, I need to hear it.
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