I recall, as if it were yesterday, growing up in the Caribbean (Haiti) where (ninety percent of) the women are not super-model-skinny portrayed in Hollywood. Most of the women I know were and still are quite confortable with their size and the men did not seem to mind this fact either. While in general we- Caribbean women- do not live for that type of approval to validate our bodies, we are sometimes faced with the acerbic comments of other women; in other words, comments coming from our own kind. This is not new, nor, I am afraid, will cease anytime soon either. However, I will continue to speak out, comment and blog about such nuisance amongst women, for this is a destructive way of approaching one's fragile state.
For instance, when I was eithteen years old, I weighed 99lbs/44kg for a 5'3''/1m60 young woman coming out of high school with a determination to move forward- wherever life would take me. Now, while life has taken me from Idaho to Indiana (USA) and from a Master's degree from Purdue University (USA) to a Ph.D degree-in-the-making from Strasbourg University (France), my height has remained the same, but my weight has changed.
Ten years later, I went from a size xxsmall to small or from 99lbs/44kg to 120lbs/55kg, yet this past weekend I have received a (negative) comment from my own mother (with a smile) who has found that I have gained quite some weight since. Astonished I was then...
Well, to such I simply and kindly bid my mother good night and farewell!
I recall, as if it were yesterday, growing up in the Caribbean (Haiti) where (ninety percent of) the women are not super-model-skinny portrayed in Hollywood. Most of the women I know were and still are quite confortable with their size and the men did not seem to mind this fact either. While in general we- Caribbean women- do not live for that type of approval to validate our bodies, we are sometimes faced with the acerbic comments of other women; in other words, comments coming from our own kind. This is not new, nor, I am afraid, will cease anytime soon either. However, I will continue to speak out, comment and blog about such nuisance amongst women, for this is a destructive way of approaching one's fragile state.
For instance, when I was eithteen years old, I weighed 99lbs/44kg for a 5'3''/1m60 young woman coming out of high school with a determination to move forward- wherever life would take me. Now, while life has taken me from Idaho to Indiana (USA) and from a Master's degree from Purdue University (USA) to a Ph.D degree-in-the-making from Strasbourg University (France), my height has remained the same, but my weight has changed.
Ten years later, I went from a size xxsmall to small or from 99lbs/44kg to 120lbs/55kg, yet this past weekend I have received a (negative) comment from my own mother (with a smile) who has found that I have gained quite some weight since. Astonished I was then...
Well, to such I simply and kindly bid my mother good night and farewell!
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