It's fantastic to be plastic

Despite my rants, I'm a non-confrontational person and my anger dissipates fairly quickly- within five minutes, usually. If it's longer than that I just need to vent and have another five minutes and then I'm fine. Anything beyond that means shit just got real.

So I was on facebook and a friend of a friend (who I've met in real life and am cool with) posted a picture of classic Barbie next to a shorter, thicker one. He captioned it with "they gave barbie a beer belly so the fat girls won't feel so fat."

For serious. I had to re-read it multiple times to make sure he really said something so dick-ish. That's a direct quote. He was just that much of a dick. It struck a chord in me.

Like most little girls, I had thought Barbie was the prettiest and I wanted to look just like her. I had even considered being a blonde because there weren't many brunette dolls, obviously meaning blondes were more valued. I consoled myself with having the same blue eyes.

Puberty screwed me up. My hips exploded overnight and I got a booty soon after. I no longer had the stick-straight figure I took for granted. Barbie didn't have curves. No one explained my hips were a result of my skeletal structure- my pelvic bone would always be the same width and nothing I could do could change that.

I spent years thinking I was fat and feeling like I was ugly since everything I tried didn't make that part thinner. All through middle and high school I was convinced: wide hips = fat.

Seeing him diss the "beer belly Barbie" made something in me snap. I had read about this barbie a few months back and fully supported it. She didn't have a beer gut; she wasn't fat. She was a normal woman. The artist had taken the statistics of the average 19 year old American girl and scaled it down to create a realistic doll.

At first glance she does look chubby and awkwardly short in comparison (with a really big butt). Everything about her looks more exaggerated until you think about the women you see on a regular basis. Ever since I can remember I've heard people talk about how unrealistic Barbie is, but to see how drastic of a difference there still took me a second to process. Do I seriously look like that? The more I thought of it, the more I agreed with the modern version... especially the butt.

I couldn't let go or stop myself. Here's what he got:

"the whole point of this version of barbie was to show the proportion of the average woman so little girls won't compare themselves to an unobtainable standard of beauty and feel like shit about themselves."

I added this link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308658/How-Barbies-body-size-look-real-life-Walking-fours-missing-half-liver-inches-intestine.html


Perhaps I was too harsh with my comment. Actually, no. I was nicer than I wanted to be. Much, much nicer. He's lucky I took moment to calm the fuck down. It didn't work. I read his post and tried to brush it off. I came back an hour later and had to respond. I tried to be as diplomatic as I possibly could- I can get really fucking mean if I give myself permission to go into full-blown bitch mode. Sometimes heartless.



It's been three hours and he is always on facebook.
One of his friends liked my comment.
He has yet to respond.

I fucking win.





For the record, I'm comfortable with my body now. Ironically, I think my hips are one of my best features.