Weight is a serious social issue. Thick girls are a man’s best friend. Petite girls are what dreams are made of. No one is ever satisfied. Have you ever heard a man tell you that you are perfect because of this and that and the shallow human turns around and cheats on you with the exact opposite of what you are? The same person he claimed to despise? That hurts a lot. But we live and we learn. Do we even have plastic surgeons in Lesotho? The kind that Kylie Jenner would consult? I doubt. Because we don’t have such resources, we resort to homemade wallet friendly weight loss remedies that take longer to work. Suddenly you see your pot belly as an abomination to the female population. You starve yourself because you’re crushing on an idiot that you think is cute. The flabby arms you adored are now hidden in long sleeved jerseys because the facebook population is into models now.
society
Feb. 28, 2019
NEO MATHEKA
5 min read
Is beauty really from within?
Slowly you lose weight and start making new friends "your size". Are you even happy with who you see reflecting back at you? It’s winter and Thabo has started on curvy Lineo. What’s next for you? You going to start snorting fatty foods just to boost the weight gain? Look at you on that weight rollercoaster just because how much you love yourself is measured by people you haven’t even met in person. And you, toothpick twigs, out here body shaming other girls because you think being as light as a feather is sexy. Do you tell people how many weight gain injections you’ve used? How many pills you popped and how much you eat just to have an ounce of fat? It doesn’t work like that. Either you’re born with it or you’re not.
There are so many songs about accepting yourself the way you are. But we’d rather listen to "my anaconda don’t want nun unless you got buns hun" and now there’s a poor girl who wishes the ground would swallow her whole because of zero buns. She can’t even go anywhere without thinking that people are judging her. She tried squats, planks, you name it. But because she can’t afford the diet that goes with that, she sees no results. She starts having these thoughts that maybe her friends don’t want to hang out with her anymore. She spends her life in isolation and wonders why she’s not like "all of them." Physical appearance seems to be one of the biggest determining factors of what class of social circle you belong to. When you have money or are from a rich family, everything comes easy to you. Now because you’re neither, you spend what you have on skin lightening products, pimple popping pills and everything you believe will make you beautiful. How do we even measure beauty?
I honestly think the male species has it easy. Those people put little to zero effort on how they look, and we still find ourselves fighting for them. What’s desired about them is always constant, proper package. We don’t wake up one day and decide that less is best, putting pressure on gifted men to reduce. Or maybe they don’t have it better, maybe they appreciate who they are and what they have to offer. A man changes the way he looks because he feels it’s time for change, not because ’Malibuseng has been posting chubby guys so he also wants to get noticed. The only unresolved issue is with skin colour, apart from that, these guys are living the good life. I don’t even know where to begin when talking about the drawing boards that are our faces. How many of you felt you didn’t belong because you just couldn't fleek those brows? You can’t blend lipstick colours even if you were paid? I remember the first time I tried doing my brows, if I didn’t break that pencil then my anger issues aren’t as serious as I thought. It’s always the left one that doesn’t want to act right. When you think you’ve mastered that now comes the eye shadow. I swear being a girl should come with a minimum wage, THIS IS A FULL TIME JOB. I swear these girls are so beautiful with their smokey eyes and matt lipsticks that you just want to look at them all day. You want to know what's also pretty? You with your naturally nude lip colour with just enough vaseline to keep it moist. ...You with your Johnson’s powdered face that’s as smooth as a baby’s bottom. That’s also pretty. Now you shaved half your brow and it won’t grow back, you've watched countless tutorials but still fail to get that angle.
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You’ve resorted to wearing caps to hide that mistake and now you want to kill yourself whenever you're at a place where you have to take it off. Hair, one of the first things people notice about you. When you rock your afro, you’re labelled as a cheapskate. Weaves are how a woman with class is seen. Do people even know how expensive it is to maintain an eye-catching afro? I remember when I was looking for hair for my graduation and my boyfriend asked if my hair is not good enough for the event. I won’t lie, that really got me thinking, we go through all means to cover it when we think we're attending important events but show it off when we go shopping. We’re so blinded into believing that ours is only for homey activities. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against weaves and everything that goes with them, I just feel that we don’t allow ourselves to accept the fact that not everything is meant for us all.
We are so ashamed of how we look that to make ourselves feel better, we go around bashing those who have learned to find comfort in how they look. Every day people are made to feel bad about how they look, your slightly crooked nose, your big head, those spaghetti legs that almost never look good in a dress. We are surrounded by so many body experts that one never knows which is the right way to look. Many of us have doubts whenever they have to leave the house. You suddenly remember those boys who zoom every picture you take looking for something to laugh about; and we wonder why we are such sad and angry people. We are judged by people with bigger insecurities than ours and we cannot see that because they sound so confident when doing that, we almost never see the scars they hide. We have books and songs that are all about expressing who you are, we read and listen but it’s never easy, especially when you have been told all your life how unfinished you look. The world is a harsh place that is not built for soft people. Every day we have to face people who think they have better opinions about how a person is supposed to look, what about ow you are supposed to look? When are you going to start putting your opinions about you first?
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