Author Biography

Ella Stott is a junior at Utah State University studying English and business. She is the copy editor for the USU’s student newspaper, The Utah Statesman, and a writing fellow. Ella hopes to work in publishing or TV writing and currently specializes in nonfiction. When she isn’t reading, writing, or working, she is watching sitcoms, building Legos, or eating Aggie ice cream.

This essay was composed in April 2023 and uses MLA documentation.

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I stared at myself in the mirror, my pink skirt looking nicer than the blue skirt of the girl to my right. Didn’t she know that ballet was pink, not blue? I smiled to myself, my smile looking more pleasant than the one painted on the girl to my left. Hers was fake, just because the teacher was telling us to smile. Mine was real.

“Bellies in!” the teacher yelled, harshly. At four years old, I’d cry if someone yelled at me in any other context. Here, I understood.

We all took in a deep breath, unaware that the teacher was talking about alignment, not look. Well, my belly was in. And I looked better.

…

Negative body image is becoming increasingly prevalent among younger and younger populations. In one survey, it was found that “40-60% of elementary school girls are concerned about their weight or about becoming ‘too fat’” (National Organization for Women). There are multiple schools of thought for why this might be the case: social media, clothing trends, growing up being told one’s value is based on one’s appearance. In conjunction, these factors have been proven to increase the number of youth who feel self-conscious about their bodies.

…

“Do you play basketball?” doctors asked.

“No.”

“Volleyball?” Neighbors wondered.

“No.”

“Sorry, I just had to ask. You’re really tall,” friends would say.

Really? I couldn’t tell. Oh wait, I have a better retort. At least I can reach the top shelf. Oh wait, here’s one: Do you play mini-golf? You’re really short.

“I know,” I laughed. I couldn’t bring myself to be funny, because it wasn’t funny. I couldn’t bring myself to show that I was upset, because I felt like I shouldn’t be.

By twelve, I was 5’10”, my mom’s height. The height she’d said for years was too tall. She hadn’t meant to hurt me, just herself. I grew past her. She started coming home every week with the next solution. Pants- size women’s tall.

…

Physical appearance is an easy thing for people to notice first– no one needs to talk for people to make their first judgments. If these are the things people are noticing first, it seems as though self-perception and body size or shape must be entangled. How could you separate how you feel about yourself from how you look if people assume things about you just by looking at you?

In ‘More Tales of the Big and Tall,’ Hunter Baker illustrates this well. “Never mind the fact that I haven’t bought clothing outside of a big and tall shop in years. Never mind the way the cashier at the last fast-food restaurant I visited greeted me with the question: ‘And you’ll have a large what?’” (Baker 1).

…

Fittings were my least favorite days in dance. They’d measure us, we’d try on costume after costume, and they’d adjust it on us. The costume would be too small, and I’d squeeze in and break something, feeling embarrassed because it was my fault but also because it meant I was too big.

The director would look at the costume sizes and then hand them out to each girl. She always started with me. “Large,” she’d read. Hand it over.

Blushing, I’d slip it on easily. The other girls would put theirs on, the fabric looking loose in the right spots and tight in the right spots. Mine would make me look like I was in a production of Annie, not Swan Lake.

“They all look good,” the director would say. We would take them off. One girl would stop to complain that she needed the waist taken in. “I do too,” I would say.

We’d get the costumes back for the recital. My friend’s would be adjusted- mine wouldn’t. “It would’ve taken away from the height,” the director would explain, “and we need it to be long enough.”

…

In the study Bodily Deviations and Body Image in Adolescence, a group studied body variance and consequential body image in ninth and tenth graders. They found those who were overweight to be the most self-conscious about their body. They additionally concluded that those who were shorter than average had unfavorable views about their bodies as well. In fact, they found that “being very tall for one’s gender had a positive effect on the body image of boys and girls” (Vilhjalmsson).

Boys and girls?

This might be true for some tall girls, but I’m fearful this study is portraying an incorrect assumption. Do people think tall girls feel more confident than their shorter counterparts? Will people read studies like these and think girls like me have it easy?

I’ve been stuck in the back of every dance routine despite being the only one who knows the choreography. I stick out like a sore thumb in every photo with my friends. To hug people, I have to lean down. I’m not sure how I’m going to find a husband taller than me, which shouldn’t be important but has been ingrained into society as not only the norm but what is acceptable.

I could only take so many people calling me ‘big’ before I began to see my body as less ‘tall’ and more as ‘large.’ ‘Large’ has a bad connotation. It shouldn’t, but it does.

…

“What size shirt do you need?” The manager asked, opening the cabinet. It was my first day, and I was so nervous.

“Small,” I replied without hesitation.

He grabbed it, and then put it back, turning around so I could read the awkwardness on his face. “Are you sure?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I squeaked out. I breathed in. No more stomach. I couldn’t bear thinking about what I must’ve looked like to him.

Sighing so softly, he probably thought I wouldn’t hear, he turned back and grabbed a small size, tossing it to me. “If you need a bigger size, let me know,” he told me.

“Okay.”

I went to the bathroom and put on the shirt. Company shirts always run big, and this was no exception. I walked back out to put my other shirt in a locker.

“Oh,” I heard him whisper.

I hurried out of the room. I didn’t feel vindication; I wasn’t happy I was right. I just didn’t know if I could handle customer after customer looking at me now.

I was surprised my steps didn’t sound like stomps as I marched toward my beanstalk.

…

When we were fourteen, my friend and I tried to choreograph a dance to the song ‘Smaller Than This’ by Sara Kays. The song speaks to negative body image and how many people wish their bodies were smaller than they are. Our original idea was to have one of us be a normal girl, and the other be a representation of negative body image, harassing the girl.

My friend, much shorter than me, said she should be the girl, and I should be the negative body image.

I cried when I told her my whole life had consisted of me wishing I was smaller than I was, and I felt a very personal connection to what we were trying to accomplish.

I was surprised when she started crying too. I had wrongly assumed I was the only one in the room who was insecure about their body. She was so small, so skinny, but she still felt like she couldn’t achieve society’s expectations of her body.

We couldn’t finish the dance.

…

“’Cause I’ll always wish I was smaller than this

And I just can’t quit pulling at my skin

Oh, I’m scared that I’m never gonna like how I look and I wish I knew why

 That I’ll always wish I was smaller than this” (Kays).

…

“Ella, I want you to be lifted in this dance,” our guest choreographer told me. I was seventeen, learning my last dance before I graduated and quit dance. “You’d be perfect for it.”

I stared in the mirror to answer her. “I don’t know about that.”

Had my leotard always looked like it was on a plus-sized mannequin? Had the rolls in my stomach always been so apparent? Since when had a size medium been too small–wasn’t that supposed to be too big?

“We’re strong,” my friend told me, trying to be reassuring. She would never have to be reassured that people were strong enough to lift her.

“I’m scared,” I whispered, my eyes waiting to witness my leotard tearing, its limits being pushed literally and figuratively by my body.

“We can hold you,” my other friend chimed in.

“Just start by giving them your weight,” the choreographer suggested.

Reluctantly, I tore my eyes away from the mirror and to my friends. They held out their arms so I could trust-fall into them. I took a deep breath. Good-bye, belly. I fell.

They wobbled.

Immediately I stood up, tears springing into my eyes. “I don’t think I can do it,” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

No one argued.

…

Body is ‘“the complete physical form of a person or animal; the assemblage of parts, organs, and tissues that constitutes the whole material organism” (Body, Oxford English Dictionary). Body, as a variant of the word boodie, is “an imaginary evil or frightening spirit or creature; a spectre, a phantom; a bogeyman” (Boodie, Oxford English Dictionary).

I am both a whole organism and a frightening creature.

Works Cited

Baker, Hunter. “More Tales of the Big and Tall.” American Spectator, vol. 36, no. 3, June 2003, p. 77. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=10026407&site=ehost-live.

“Body, N., Sense I.1.a.i.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, December 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/6063849191.

“Boodie, N. (1).” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5694372248.

Kays, Sara. Smaller Than This, Steven Martinez, 21 Apr. 2020, www.bing.com/videos/search?q=smaller+than+this+sara+kays+publisher+videos&FORM=VIRE0&mid=62C10BD0F1B2807BAA0462C10BD0F1B2807BAA04&view=detail&ru=%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dsmaller+than+this+sara+kays+publisher.

National Organization for Women. “Get the Facts: National Organization for Women.” Get the Facts, 29 Nov. 2014, now.org/now-foundation/love-your-body/love-your-body-whats-it-all-about/get-the-facts/

Vilhjalmsson, Runar, et al. “Bodily Deviations and Body Image in Adolescence.” Youth & Society, vol. 44, no. 3, Sept. 2012, pp. 366–84. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.dist.lib.usu.edu/10.1177/0044118X11402850.