By Harley Wolfgang
I was kind of a chubby kid; I used to think I was huge compared to the girls I was in class with. The difference between child me and grown-up me is my awareness of how media influences all women to feel certain things about their bodies. Truth is, I've gone through a lot of phases with my body image. I've gone from abusing my body in hopes it would change to letting myself go and not taking care of it at all. I'd like to think I'm in a better place now, but I know I still have a lot of growing to do. What does all that have to do with fashion or dance?
Fashion and my sense of style helped me out of a really unhealthy mindset. I'd been a part of dance classes most of my life, hanging out several nights a week with a bunch of skinny and athletic girls. And here's me, size large in early high school, my thighs touch and my arms jiggle, and most importantly to me - my belly was pretty pronounced in every single dance costume I ever got. There were one, sometimes two, other girls in that group that weren't a size small or extra small. Those were often the only girls that talked to me in class. You can imagine how hard that kind of environment is for a teenager.
As an adult, I do not blame those girls for acting like that. Middle and high school girls are mean, and I wasn't exempt from being rude and hurtful sometimes.
But it was impossible for me not to compare myself to them constantly; I wished so badly to just dissolve into those clothes and let them fit me perfectly as they did on those other girls. That obviously didn't happen.
Instead, I chose clothes in my day-to-day life that let me dissolve into them, and I hoped they'd help me disappear. I was wearing baggy jeans and oversized hoodies before, which were cute and trendy, but they were not a good look for me back then. But how could I wear all the cute, trendy clothes those other girls wore? I was “far too big” for that. I have a funny feeling now that every single person has felt that way in some way at least once. That doesn’t change the fact that I was in an active eating disorder at the time and was miserable.
Mid-way through high school, I decided to stop sulking and being miserable and chose to start pushing myself away from my comfort zone as a way to get over these body image issues I was dealing with. I made my mom buy me a few crop tops, pencil skirts, dresses, and other items that were trendier at the time. I learned how to do my makeup and hair in a way I liked. And I wore it all to school, every day, for the rest of my time in high school as I found what suited me personally. Did I feel like a freak wearing nicer clothes, heels, and makeup to school where everyone else was in PJs? Yeah, sometimes, but at least I didn’t feel as miserable as I did before, and I was able to start focusing on actually taking care of myself again.
Seems silly, but having the routine of getting up, picking an outfit, and doing my hair and makeup helped me to establish what would eventually become a self-care routine.
I stopped caring about how different I looked in my dance costumes because I could acknowledge that I looked a little different, period, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Dance costumes aren’t built for plus-size kids, and that’s not my fault.
Funny enough, the girls in my dance classes started getting along better around this time. Many of us got along by the time we graduated because we had grown out of feeling the need to bully each other.
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