We’re all different, and that’s what makes us beautiful
I don’t think any woman I know grew up thinking they were perfectly beautiful. I have a good friend whom I’ve always thought is very pretty. “Ugh, but I have all these moles, and I’m a lot darker than the average Chinese person. People often tease that my parents picked me up from the rubbish chute,” she’d complain.
I’ve been lean and underweight all my life. I was that skinny girl who was erroneously diagnosed as being malnourished, and had to drink that nasty-tasting fresh milk every Monday in primary school. When I was in secondary school, the boys in my school would call me “bamboo” in Hokkien. And I actually answered to that nickname, even though I hated it.
It was only when I reached adulthood that I learnt my BMI and fat percentage had consistently been in the average range – even though I remain underweight to this day. Still, there are times when I find myself apologising for being “skinny”, because my less-skinny friends would throw me the “You’re skinny, you don’t need to work out” jab if I expressed guilt for not having exercised in a month.
Skinniness doesn’t equate to good health, and being plus-sized is not necessarily unhealthy either. Too fat. Too skinny. Too dark. Too fair. As the four imperfectly beautiful women on page 60 would agree, today’s archaic standards of beauty have to be eradicated.
There are many communities and tribes around the world that have different beauty standards. That’s what they know, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Collectively, it makes the world we live in unique, beautiful and inclusive. The need to only have one standard of beauty stems from a lack of education and exposure.
And that change of perception has to start from individuals. For starters, I ought to stop apologising for my skinniness – just as my friend should embrace her natural skin tone.