The word “skinny” has haunted me my entire life. It’s a word loaded with societal pressure, adolescent insecurity and body-acceptance conflicts. I am not skinny; I am also not not skinny. I spent years in a muddled mindset in which I was convinced that the only way to be beautiful was to be dangerously skinny. I wasted years of my life fighting my athletic body and wishing for the celebrity bodies that I saw in magazines and on TV.
Then I discovered France. What France offered to me was a new interpretation of “skinny.” France doesn’t think it extreme black and white the way we tend to in America. Rather, they understand the variances of a spectrum. They get the beauty that is found in ALL body types, not just in the skinny type.
French skinny, sexy minds from 1925, photo AFP
So, what is a skinny, sexy mind? It is someone with the mental strength and self-acceptance to arrive at the understanding that their body and specific body type is absolutely PERFECT for them. A skinny, sexy mind is a mindset that is not afraid to embrace their curves, their imperfections and their quirks, because that know that these characteristics are the true things that make them sexy. To quote an Operation Beauty Beautiful Note, “to wish you were someone else is to waste the person you are.” Not wasting the person you are is the sexiest thing anybody can do.