Note from Di: this guest post is from the fabulous Moe of Large and Lovely at BellaOnline. Please give her a welcoming hand!
We all know women have unique bodies. Sure we all come with the standard boobs and ass but really you would be hard pressed to find two women, who aren’t twins, that are almost exactly alike. Hard pressed. Not even a woman who has had a boob job will have two boobs exactly alike.
I belong to a world wide community that wants to be accepted regardless of size. And when I seriously think about it I strongly believe that all people no matter what their education, skin color, body or fashion sense should be able to move freely in this world without being ridiculed by strangers (in person or elsewhere).
Yet as a blogger I am constantly talking about others either in the general sense or from a celebrity standpoint. Some days I feel incredibly hypocritical because I’ll be wishing acceptance for all then complaining about the lady with the muffin top who served me at the grocery store. Not the lady specifically just her choice of choosing clothing that accentuates the said muffin top when she could look so much better in clothes that fit her properly. See, there I go again. She should be accepted for who she is in whatever she wants to wear (business dress codes are a different matter).
Really, why do I care if her muffin top is showing? Shouldn’t I accept her muffin top as it is? In all it’s marshmellowy glory? Shouldn’t she be able to dress in whatever she chooses without criticism? Shouldn’t we all? In once sense I do but in another I want to reach over and poke her muffin and say, your pants don’t fit.
I know I’m not alone in this. Standards for acceptance are surprisingly limited in the plus size community. I see it in blogs, on twitter, on myspace and facebook too — others, plus size and otherwise who celebrate people and their uniqueness in one hand then yank away the “acceptance for all” in the other.
Having a pear, apple, or whatever fruit shaped body is acceptable at any size. It is! We want them/us to be accepted. But we also want them dressed a specific way.
I think we all need to work more on acceptance within our own community at the same time that we are working on acceptance as a whole (I’m including myself in the “we”). We are a judgemental society. One that is, as we all know, tough on ourselves and tough on others. This week, give yourself and the person next to you on the bus, behind the counter, or across the table a break (even if it’s only a matter of shutting off your internal judge-meter) and I will try to do the same. It will be better for your personal reflection and it will be better for your external presentation.
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