Podcasts

YR via RSS

For Educators
Teach Youth Radio
Curriculum

Youth Programs
CORE
Outreach

Curvy Girls

"I may be curvy, but my weight is not an issue."

Listen to this Commentary!

By Nora Harrington

Calling all curvy girls! How do you style yourself? How do you love yourself? Send us your stories of fashion, fearlessness, and fabulousness.

Seventeen Magazine is launching a new curvy girl section. But I know I’d never read it.

I’m 5’2 ,” 155 pounds. You might think I should be sent to Jenny Craig, but if you saw me, you’d say I was thick, or maybe curvy.

I shop at the same stores as everyone else. And wear jeans, t-shirts, tank tops, sneakers… and my signature jewelry — a silver necklace with a jade dragon pendant, and big silver hoop earrings. Sure, I might not be a size zero, but I’m comfortable with myself.

Just because I’m not the prototypical magazine model doesn’t mean I’m not normal. But drawing a line between “normal” girls and “curvy” girls can only make the differences between teenagers more pronounced.

I have a wide range of emotions and experience, the same things every other person goes through, whether they are skinny or fat, or somewhere in the middle. I’ve had broken hearts, I’ve cried myself to sleep. I’ve had some days when I’ve felt like I might just go somewhere pitch black, and never have to see, to hear, or to feel. And there are some days when I just have everything go my way.

In my world, I may be curvy, but my weight is not an issue. And my problems, my emotional struggles, are completely unrelated to anything physical. We’re all more than the “niche market” magazines, like Seventeen, want us to be. And it takes more than our “own” section to fully encompass all the factors that make anyone beautiful. Especially us “curvy” girls.

With a perspective, I’m Nora Harrington.