The "Skinny" Woman of Color

My middle name should have been "why you so skinny". At least, according to my family. I'm a small womyn. More like petite. I wear single digit jean sizes, my shoes are mostly on sale because they're small, and i can compactly fit in small chairs, cars and shared spaces. It's always bothered me how much weight, no pun intended, has been placed on my size. I'm not unhealthy, I'm not even skinny. I inherited my moms bottle shape (thanks, mom), I can out eat my uncle at .25c wing sales any day and am notorious for having 2 lunches. Obviously, your girl can eat. If anything, according to my W.O.C. doctors, I'm at a healthy weight. But, for a group of men and women of color who are accustomed to thickness as a sign for health, I can understand why they think otherwise. The women in my family are shapely. Hips for days and a chest to match. And now, I've joined The Hubs' family, hips and booty galore. Leaving me on an open stage to fend for myself in the "you're so skinny" group effort. It's super easy to feel out of the loop, but, in all actuality, I suffer from similar woes of my thicker W.O.C.: i can't find jeans to fit my small waist without cutting off circulation from my thighs, my breasts are too large for the cutesy small tops or dresses, and one size fits all does not fit at all. So what's the deal?


For a while I became obsessed with trying to boost my weight. I ate tons of rice and beans, ate too large portions of food for one person, even got my thyroid checked on several occasions because I was convinced that I had a medical condition that prevented me from looking like a bikini babe on Caliente or a video DJ on BET. But all those things failed. It frustrated me- why couldn't I look like a woman of color instead of a white girl? 


Then I had a screeching halt moment (eeeeeerrrrrrrrr!):  who said all women of color have to be super curvy and thick? I now had a new obsession. I googled everything I could to find articles on W.O.C. who don't fit the stereotypical images that not only mainstream media paint of us, but that we ourselves also use to determine what is beautiful or not. And I found tons of stuff... NOT. There were a few women posting blog entries, web boards, and of course Jada Pinkett Smith's fabulous nude shots for Essence Magazine, but outside of that, good luck finding anything about W.O.C. who are thin, embracing it, and most importantly, that are accepted. If anything, I found more "skinny bashing" and articles that talked about how skinny W.O.C. aren't really women and are only trying to satisfy the white ideal of beauty. Eh?


OKAY- timeout-yes, we all know that in american society the image of white skinny chics is the supposed standard of beauty and that many women base their ideas of beautiful on that idea. Alright, but what about all the W.O.C. who don't believe that the skinny white girl look is beautiful, but don't think they have to look like Beyonce to be beautiful either? WHAT ABOUT US?

It seems to me that the white standard of beauty made people of color extra sizist. Years of being sold the skinny complex has damaged our ability to see and accept that W.O.C. are also naturally thin and that doesn't make us sell outs, trying to be white or ugly. It annoys the mess out of me when larger W.O.C. outright verbally abuse thin W.O.C. like it's acceptable. If you can tell me how skinny I am can I tell you how fat you are? Hell to the no. Why not? Because then I'm trying to be white. I smell quite the double standard. And it makes sense. White folks have forever controlled the standards of everything, making P.O.C. forever unacceptable, ugly and exotic. So, as a means to control our own, we defined our own standards. Unfortunately, we did it like white folks did and shunned all who didn't meet the criteria.

Although I understand this, it still isn't easy to dodge the intense lashing out people of color do towards those of us who don't fit the ridged standard of beauty that we too have embraced. And to be honest, I fall into that trap too. I'd kill to gain a few more pounds, to look more like what a woman of color "should" look like and to uphold the associated thickness of ethnicity. But, I'm starting to accept that it may not be in the cards.

This is an ongoing battle for me, I'm not even going to lie. Sometimes I feel great, sometimes I feel like maybe I'm a sad excuse for a W.O.C. But mostly I'm frustrated. Being thin doesn't make me any less of a woman of color. I wouldn't be mad if I gain a few pounds, but if I don't I'm also okay with that. Because I'm not doing it on purpose. I see tons of W.O.C. on television shows trying to uphold the mainstream idea of beauty when I think they look absolutely gorgeous. Those are the women who should be talked to rather than the circle of us who eat everything under the sun and can't gain a pound.

And really I totally understand the place that it comes from. I do. But don't be mad at us. We're just doing what we do. Being thin, skinny, petite, whatever you wanna call us, W.O.C. And yes, it's beautiful, too.