I am skinny.

I am not beautiful. 
I am 5 ft, 6 1/2 inches. 
My friends look at me, jealous of my slight 100 lbs. 
If only they knew how jealous I am of their glorious curved bodies. 
...
Almost but not quite debilitating. 
Nothing fits me right. 
With one hip higher than the other, and a chest so flat little girls laugh with superiority.
The most devastating moment is when my clothes are greeted not with soft skin and warm flesh but with empty air. 
How can one be beautiful when I don't even have the matter to fill my clothes?

I was cleaning my room this afternoon when I found this. I'd written it a few months ago, put it aside and intended to finish it. It's also missing a chunk in the middle (that is what I get for writing on scraps of paper and leaving them laying around).

I don't remember exactly what possessed me to write it. Perhaps I was tired of my friends saying how they are a healthy weight and there's nothing wrong with being bigger than a model. How most women actually aren't skinny sticks and it's healthy to have some weight.

Perhaps it was my mother telling me that they enacted a new law in Italy that in order to model, you have to be a over a certain BMI, to ensure that their models remain healthy and somewhat realistic. We checked my BMI, out of curiosity. I can't model in Italy, if I were to ever want to.

Perhaps it's the story I've heard several times, how one of my pediatricians when I was little told my parents that I needed to gain weight, and that they should just feel me straight up oil so I would get fat. Or something similar to that.

Perhaps it's the endless scores of people, who, when they meet me, feel the need to remark on how skinny I am. How I need to eat more. Oh, if only I would let them cook for me, and eat all their food, then I would be a healthy full girl in no time.

Perhaps it's the people who've known me for a little longer, who, when the subject comes up, worriedly ask me if I'm anorexic. Or however it is I manage to stay so skinny. They just want me to be healthy, after all.

Because I'm not healthy. I'm not realistic. Almost 5'7" and just slightly over 100 pounds, I get awe and glares and worry.

That hurts skinny girls just as much as those same worries about health and realism hurt fat girls.

I get it.

I'm skinny.

You know what else?

I also have scoliosis. That's what makes one of my hips higher than the other. My spine curves a full 30 degrees to the right. Try wearing clothes normally with that. Try standing up straight. Impossible.

I also wear glasses. I'm almost blind in one of my eyes.

I don't have cheekbones that stick out. It makes it really hard to be photogenic when there's no depth to your face.

I have acne problems. I don't really think I need to explain that more.

My legs are stupid, it's like I'm allergic to everything and they refuse to look normal.

My hair is virtually impossible to become sleek. Not even necessarily straight, but sleek. I can't do that.

I have scars all over my body. Legs, hands, back, arms...

I haven't a chest.

I can't maintain a tan to save my life.

And sometimes I just look in the mirror and I don't feel pretty. I feel horrible and ugly.

"But Carina, you're so skinny, how can you not feel beautiful?"

I will slap you.

But let me answer.

Perhaps because you've just spent a good portion of our conversation going on about how ridiculous skinny girls are and how unrealistic it is because no one in the real world actually is that skinny without doing something damaging to their health.

Perhaps because I hear every day how boys don't want a girl that looks like she could be a model, because "that's not real" or "I want a woman with a body".

If you're going to go on and on about how people with my body type aren't appealing, then top that with all my other flaws, and expect me to feel beautiful all the time, then you are an idiot.

I don't feel beautiful because despite people who do call me beautiful and wonderful, there's an overwhelming call for women of the median. Who aren't too big, but not super skinny either. Who have a chest they can wear inside their shirts and show off when the occasion demands it. Who are well-muscled and strong, but still feminine. The middle of every extreme.

I don't feel beautiful because I'm not real. I can't be real. I can't have gotten the body I have naturally, through no deliberate action of my own.

Am I not real? Is my body not flesh and blood and bone just like yours?

I haven't written that poem because I don't know how to finish it.

I can't.

How can a girl as skinny as I am ever have to gall to write about body image and how being skinny affects her view of herself?

How dare I think that skinny girls have the same body image problems as overweight girls?

How dare I not just take the fact that I am skinny and live with it silently, not showing it off, not being proud of it, because some girls just can't lose weight?

But what if I just can't gain weight? What if that's just as much a struggle for me as losing weight is for others?

Why must my words be bullied into silence because I am the opposite of you?

Why am I not allowed to have the same fears and worries and tears and insecurities you do with your own body?

I am bullied just as much as you. It's all the same, unconscious, insidious, hidden under the guise of good intentions. I know they don't mean it.

So close to perfect, yet if only I could change that one little bit, my body would be perfect, and everything would be perfect. So close. That's what I hear. That's what I think. Sometimes it's what I want.

That scares me.

I love my body. I really do. Flaws and everything. Days like today I wouldn't change anything for the world.

But the days when I would have written that poem... I don't. I feel ugly and pathetic and unwanted. I want to sit on my floor and cry because how could anyone want me, ugly and skinny and awkward with poofy hair and ugly skin.

I want to end this post with something happy. But I don't have anything. Writing this isn't going to get rid of my insecurities about my body. You guys commenting, telling me that my body is fine and you love me won't stop the strangers who judge me. Ignoring the strangers doesn't mean I can shut out the media, the fashion designers, everyone else.

But right now I am neither sad nor joyful in my body.

I am determined.

I am skinny.

Get over it.

Unless you are my doctor, my mother, my future husband, or very very very close friend, you are not allowed to judge my body. And of all those, none of them have the reason to judge my body unless they have a legitimate fear there is something medically wrong with me.

I am beautiful.

I am ugly.

My personal opinion varies with the wind, sometimes. So, you know what?

Don't try to force feed me. That will make me lose a great deal of respect for you. Encourage me to eat, yes, that's fine. Giving me unrealistic amounts to eat won't make me eat any more than I can physically eat at one time. So don't. Let me be a normal human.

That's just it, really. Let me be a normal human being. Let me live my life and be happy with myself and have my insecurities and don't you dare tell me I shouldn't because I have what others don't. If that argument even worked in the first place, no one here would dare complain about anything because you know what? We have running water. Other people don't.

So let me be normal and human and real and flawed and just love me for who I am. Please.