Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomsecrets2021-07-12 06:02 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2021-07-12 06:02 pm
[ SECRET POST #5302 ]
⌈ Secret Post #5302 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 28 secrets from Secret Submission Post #759.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
Re: Melancholy thoughts thread.
(Anonymous) 2021-07-13 03:39 am (UTC)(link)Re:SA
(Anonymous) 2021-07-13 05:13 am (UTC)(link)TL;DR: Misogyny sucks, stop slut shaming girls and women for merely existing
TW/CW: Child abuse, body shaming, slut shaming, sexual harassment, sexual assault, emotional abuse, verbal abuse
I was DMing a friend and we talked about the hierarchy in our sibling dynamic. The Model Child, Black Sheep, The Other One. And for me, my sister (the eldest) was the Model Child, my brother was the Black Sheep, and I am the 2nd daughter so I was The Other One.
It brought back memories of being compared to my sister, and it was especially harsh growing up in a patriarchal Asian community. Beauty standards in Asian communities are SEVERE and even babies are not spared criticism.
My sister is 3 years older than me, so the comparisons were always there. My parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, every one told me my sister was the pretty one. She had fairer skin than me, she was a size 0, thin and petite, hair that doesn't frizz. Apparently I was dark skinned, fat with a belly, fat and wide, with big feet (how dare I wear size 6 1/2 while my mom and sister find size 5 shoes a LITTLE loose), gross wavy hair with frizzy baby hairs I don't know how to manage flying everywhere.
A few years ago, I was moving and packing up and came across pictures of myself in 8th grade (of course, when I was feeling extremely ugly and fat) and I thought that I looked like such a cute, pretty girl. I resented that I was likely no more than a size 10(? I was so afraid of my true size at that time I think I purposely went out of my way to find clothing that wouldn't fit or was a generic size, no numbers) yet by that point in time my mom and sister were telling me on a daily basis that I was fat and that my skin was too dark. And that my hair was an unmanageable mess.
Yet, the pictures I looked at....like, I didn't look any different in size or anything in terms of beauty standards from my friends. Like, I certainly didn't look as fat as I recall feeling at that age. My skintone looked fine (besides, like, who cares how dark I am?). My hair was OK? It was long with a middle parting? Like, I looked like a legit normal child in middle school.
And then I recalled how my body began to grow way differently from my sister. See...both my mom and sister are petite. My sister likely was at most a B Cup in bra size. My mom....MAYBE a C. Me? By the time I was in 5th grade my sister's hand-me-down training bras were too small. By 7th grade a boy in my class made a gross boobie gesture at me, making me extremely aware that other people knew that I had big boobs (again, I was fucking terrified of tag sizes...pretty sure at that point I was nearing/at a D cup). Also, all my friends thought that boy was so cute because he could break dance and knew Tae Kwan Do but I was afraid he was going to grope me any time I was near him. I was too ashamed of my body to tell anyone about it, even my friends.
T__T Seriously, fuck the world for making girls feel so ashamed of their bodies, fucking hell.
My sister had a flat stomach and not much in terms of wide hips or butt. Guess who got a huge butt and sorta wide hips? Me. Even with a flat stomach at that time, my mom and sister told me I had rolls of fat. Looking back, it was because I starting to develop wider hips. And then I got thicker thighs too (5th grade was a tough time, I began noticing I had thick thighs in 5th grade).
It just made my mind spiral into being pissed off that we bring girls into this world and immediately pit them against each other. Set them up to think that these unrealistic beauty standards are normal or that they mean anything.
And then we make them feel ashamed of their own bodies, which are perfectly normal and perfectly beautiful as they are!
Like, seriously, looking back with a critical adult mind, I'm pretty sure my mom was afraid of my body and how the world would react to it. It wasn't so much that I was "fat and ugly" but more so that I had big boobs and wide hips. I remember hating any form of shopping with my mom or sister, bra shopping: Mom and sister would find uncomfortable bras with no support for me and made my boobs feel saggy. The bras couldn't be cute designs, they had to be black or white, and most times, a crappy sports bra that made my boobs shapeless. Underwear shopping, afraid of my true size, I'd always buy underwear that was one or two sizes too small or too big because I'd just guess the size and buy, and if it didn't fit at home, I didn't want to ask my mom to take me for an exchange because she'd bitch and moan to me about it and I'd get another lecture about how it's because I'm fat that I'm inconveniencing her. Clothes shopping were horrifically awful. My mom would browse around and complain she couldn't find anything that would fit me (at the time I interpreted it as "You're too fucking fat" but now, I pretty sure my mom meant "the clothing will be form fitting and we can't have that") and I'd be so riddled with shame and guilt for existing as a fat ugly person that I'd try to find clothing that didn't stick out too much but most of all were comfortable and wouldn't reveal skin, because no one wants to see a fat girl showing off skin. Girls shouldn't reveal their skin, but fat girls especially shouldn't try to show off or wear anything that screams "I'm confident in this body".
All of that bullshit because everyone was afraid that my body would tell the world that I'm a slut and I was a fucking kid!!! Oh my fucking God, like, fuck my mom and sister for body shaming me for what I couldn't stop my body from doing, even if I had worked out and eaten less/healthier at that age, there was no way I could have stopped my boobs or butt or thighs from growing.
As an adult, I do feel sad in a vapid way, like, I wish I had the body I had when I was that age now. I would appreciate that body a lot more now. But at the same time, I can tell myself that I'm beautiful. The only person I need to impress is myself so I need to love my body even if I get insecure and think that I want a different body shape. Fuck everyone who ever made me feel ashamed of my body.
Bonus: I was sexually assaulted when I was in pre-school on a school bus in front of my classmates (3 of whom were cousins of mine) and no one did anything. My parents knew about it, every one knew about it since my cousins were there. No one did anything. My family moved away and I went to a different school a few weeks later (it was incidental; my parents had already begun the moving process before the bus incident). My assault is one of those things where....I guess I sort of forgot as time went on? I don't recall my family ever talking about it after we moved to the new house. Maybe some cousins would bring it up from time to time (but honestly, I can't recall). But in my early 20s, that memory happened to have come up and at first I thought it was one of those "LOL scary childhood memories that are cringe to remember" memories, but I started crying and realized that it was an event that I can't talk about lightly. Took a few years to recognize it as sexual assault. And I think that event played heavily into me subconsciously spending so many years ashamed of my body, and to have my mom and sister always telling me I had a lot of physical faults intensified my insecurities.
Re: SA
(Anonymous) 2021-07-13 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)Re: SA
(Anonymous) 2021-07-13 06:02 pm (UTC)(link)