Learning to embrace my curves.
Now some of you might be sitting there saying ‘wait a second, you curvy, be quiet!’ but, as someone who grew up with a body like a pencil who had to wear boys jeans due to my lack of hips, when I suddenly got a butt and some boobs it took some getting used to.
I’ve always been petite, I grew up dancing, training 5 times a week. I was this little twig of a thing until I turned 20 and stopped dancing. My body slowly developed into a more pear shape and I hated it! I had been ‘skinny’ for so long that it was hard getting used to my changing body, plus as I was so late developing I had no-one to go through it with, to talk about how rubbish it felt when clothes didn’t fit anymore. Obviously I was still small compared to what the world calls ‘curvy’ but I had all these curves appearing and I didn’t know how to dress myself, how to feel comfortable in my body but I couldn’t say anything about it because people told me to be quiet ‘I was lucky to have the figure I had’ and ‘I should stop complaining’. Now, I’m not saying I ever went to extremes to stave off my curves, luckily I was able to reason with myself that this happens to everyone at some point in their life and that I was just going to have to get used to it, adapt and embrace.
Now I’m 25 and I love my body. I train hard at the gym not to get smaller but to become stronger, you may have noticed that I no longer post my workouts on Twitter. This came after feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt when I didn’t workout, I was worried about what my Twitter followers would think – we all know no-one on Twitter gives a s**** about whether I worked out or not but sometimes the mind can be mean. I know how to dress for my curves and how to embrace them. When you’re body starts changing there is nothing you can do about it – well, there are many things but they aren’t healthy and are only short term solutions. I won’t lie, it helps having a boyfriend who tells me everyday that he loves my body but even if I was single and didn’t have that added boost I would still feel comfortable with my body shape. I feel like a woman not a little girl.
So if like me you’re body is changing and you’re finding it hard to adjust to, take a deep breath, smile and embrace it – being healthy is the most important thing. As a society we have to stop looking at sizing on labels and feeling guilty by the number we see, I can be a size 6 in some stores and a size 10. It’s the same with the scales, I can proudly say I have not weighed myself for over 2 years and I have no desire to know. Being happy in yourself is more important than a number.
In the words of Ru Paul ‘If you can’t love yourself how in the hell are you gonna be able love someone else’
What Kate Did Next 