We’re All Square Pegs Trying to Fit Into a Round Hole

On women's fashion, mass-produced clothing, and unrealistic body standards

“You have to eat so that your wrists get bigger,” my grandmother Ruth used to tell me when I was a kid.

I’m not sure if anyone else has tried to thicken their bony wrists through food consumption, but trust me: it’s pretty impossible.

What my grandmother was getting at — along with every other relative that’s muttered similar cliched encouragement — was that she worried I was too skinny. It was something a lot of people seemed concerned about when I was growing up (and sometimes still do). People just had to make a comment and often took the liberty to tell me, while I was eating, that I should have another round. A soccer coach even once asked my dad if I had an eating disorder.

In my mind, that coach — and all the commenters over the years — were basically saying my body didn’t look right. To them, I looked unhealthy, even though I was (and still am) completely fine. It’s just how my body is.

Years later, after I’d learned to accept my body and stopped trying to meet others’ expectations, I would start my own fashion business and deal with the issue of body norms again — specifically, the way the fashion industry promotes them through arbitrary sizing... Continue reading essay over at Medium.