"Real women" don't have to set narrow definitions for "real women"

I hate the trope of "real women have curves."

Perhaps I hate it because my biggest feminist pet peeve is when people try to lay a narrow definition on what constitutes a "real woman." Perhaps it's because it's not fixing a prejudice but the equally toxic practice of turning it around so that somebody else is the target of vilification instead. Perhaps it's just 'cause I'm a skinny chick who says fuck that. But I hate that chestnut "real women have curves."

I don't have a curve on me-- all sleek lines and clean angles. Am I not a real woman? Not a chance.

This trope takes our culture's standard assumption, that thin women are more beautiful and desireable than heavy women, which makes so many women who aren't thin feel inferior and less valuable, and turns it around so that heaviness is the ideal and thinness is undesireable and wrong. Reversing a prejudice and making the formerly "superior" group into the target of disgust and vilification is not making things better; turning the victims into victimizers makes them just as bad. It's basically saying, "You made me feel bad. Now I want to make you feel bad. I want to hurt you the same way I've been hurt."

The "real women have curves" trope was not come up with by women who like their bodies. No woman who actually loves her beautiful feminine curves would ever need to create something to reduce someone else to lesser status. Sure, there are some pretty people who refuse to acknowledge the beauty of others, but those people have other problems and most likely aren't secure in their opinions of themselves.

But no girl who knows she is a voluptuous goddess invented or repeats that. No, this trope is the work of the chunky girl who would KILL to have the lean thighs and flat tummies of her slimmer sisters and resents the hell out of them for it. She says it as a balm against old wounds, as a punishment of those who she blames for those wounds.

But two wrongs don't make a right. I get that some people have suffered a long time for the fact that their culture impressed on them images and standards of beauty that they can never meet. I feel very sorry for those people, and it should change. But that doesn't make it okay to take out that hurt on other people. It can't be that the only change is that a different group must suffer instead. There's something vengeful about it, and God knows how destructive seeking vengeance can be.

And it doesn't do anything to encourage people being generous enough of spirit of acknowledge each other's beauty and value. I know that when I hear it, my hackles raise. While no one's word can render me unbeautiful or unfeminine, there's still this inherent unkindness in declaring that if you look like me you're not a "real woman" that I don't respond well to. And when someone treats me with malice, it makes me feel mean. I want to be mean back to the person who was mean to me. Again, I know two wrongs don't make a right, and I should feel sorry for a person who obviously isn't as happy with their appearence as I am with mine, so I know it isn't an acceptable response. But my instincts tell me to bite back. I want to say nasty things like, "You know what curves I like? The ones on the zero on the size tag in my dress."

Nobody should get to feel good by making someone else feel bad. Nothing destroys the soul so fast as destroying the value or goodness or well-being of someone else. I think this is one such case.