submitted by shameisthename:

This is me wearing my short shorts at Roskilde Festival (one of the biggest annual music festivals in Europe). Through the years I have experienced all sorts of comments from drunk and sober people on the campsite, and I would like to share what happened this year.

Both of these incidents happened in the early morning, when I was walking to the toilet, which I guess means that the people I met, had been drinking all night and were in late drunken states. That’s no excuse though.

The first morning I passed a little group of people, one girl and two boys. The girl started giggling uncontrollably and the boys were really curious about the reason. The looked around and saw me, and here’s what they said to each other: “It’s her. Look at her.” “Yeah, damn she’s ugly”.

Of course this upset me a bit, and when I got back, I told my fiancé who comforted me. But then again a couple of days later, I walked past a different group of people, who then yelled after me – this is the best translation I can come up with – “big, big, fatty thighs!” Once again I was quite offended. There was no chance this was meant in a positive way, and as most of you probably know, sometimes it is hard enough to deal with your own feelings regarding your naked thighs, even without people yelling stuff after you.

All of this made me think though. I wasn’t really ashamed anymore, and I knew I didn’t really believe them. I know I’m not ugly and my thighs aren’t even that big. They could have been ten times bigger, and still they should shut the fuck up about them, but I realized that the ideal body in the eyes of these teens is almost unattainable. Which is ten times worse for them, then for me, since the actually try to attain it.  

I’m almost normal weighted and my face is pretty normal. I personally think I’m kinda cute actually. But I’m neither blonde nor skinny, which seems to be what people want, here in Denmark anyways.  I stopped being sad about my own appearance after these encounters, but I’m really, really sad for the young people, who have no chance of fitting into these norms they themselves make.

Furthermore, another thing made me sad, a lot sadder than being yelled at actually. This was the fact that my skinny blonde friend refused to believe that this actually happened to me. She told me I must be imagining things because she “had never tried people yelling bad things after her”.  I can’t believe my own friend could really be so ignorant about the fat shamming going on around her, even though she, of course, would never experience it, being underweight and pretty herself. Fortunately both my fiancé and my other skinny, blonde friend believed me and helped me remember that I AM beautiful, never lonely, and the people who needed pitying, was really the young people who still had such a narrow concept of beauty and who still needed to put others down to feel good themselves.

I hope my intentions with this story were clear, even though my English might be a bit off.  Pretty much, I guess I just wanted to say, that even though we have bad experiences on our way to feeling good about ourselves, these help us find our way and the friends who will help us on the journey in this ignorant world.

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Thank you for submitting dear, wonderful perspective - and your English is superb!

- Haley Cue