by Jennifer Bunn

Created on: August 15, 2008   Last Updated: August 19, 2008

In reading the title "Judging Others by Size", most people would infer that the issue up for discussion is being overweight. I suffer from the opposite problem, the inability to gain weight. I often have people tell me that they would "love to have my problem". If people only understood how devastating being underweight has been to my self-esteem, they would perhaps change their mind.

I have always been thin (I prefer the word thin to "skinny"). I was of normal size until puberty, at which point I grew 8 inches but never gained a pound. At 14 years of age, I was 5'8" and weighed approximately 70 pounds. It was at this point that my parents began to parade me around to different doctors in an attempt to find an explanation for my appearance. One was finally found. There is a medical explanation for the way I look, but the issue is not WHY I look the way that I do, but how it has affected me.

My teenage years were miserable. I was ridiculed and teased until the day I graduated high school. I was lucky to have a few good friends, who accepted me for who I was and not for the way I looked. Kids can be cruel, and they had a heyday with me! I developed a backbone eventually, and a sarcastic exterior, but every taunt remains a part of me, a reminder that I am not "normal" in other's eyes.

It hurts to have people assume that you are something you're not. Everyone who sees me for the first time wonders what is wrong with me. Some correctly assume that there is a reason I look the way I do, but others (incorrectly) assume that I am anorexic or bulimic. I am neither. People even go so far as to ask my children what is wrong with me; even doctors I see for the first time ask me if I have an eating disorder. I no longer take my children swimming as I can't bear the looks on people's faces when they see my in a bathing suit.

I find that people are more inclined to make comments about my being underweight than they would likely be if I was overweight. Most people would never dream of commenting on my weight if I was overweight, but seem to have no qualms about commenting on how I look as a thin person. I find this double standard amusing, but hurtful at the same time. Daily I am reminded by someone that I don't look like everyone else. It HAS made me a stronger person, and also a more sensitive person. I never feel the need to comment on another's appearance. I figure that most people are aware if they are different, and probably don't need me to point it out to them.

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