High school label may influence body image, eating disorders

7th July 2008

High school label may influence body image, eating disorders

posted in Body Image, Diets, Eating Disorders, New Research |

Big Fat Deal already wrote about this last week, but I wanted to cover it here, also. A new study out suggests that the peer groups teenage girls identify with determine how they view themselves and the measures they’ll take to control their weight.

The authors tested 236 girls between the ages of 13 – 18 and found that:

…Girls identifying with athletic peers (‘Jocks’) were less concerned about their own weight and seemed less likely to be trying to control their weight. Girls identifying with non-conformist peers (‘Alternatives’) were more concerned about their weight and appearance and more likely to be actively trying to lose weight. The girls who identified with those who skip school and often get into trouble (‘Burnouts’) believed their peers valued thinness and dieting. Finally, girls who did not belong to any particular peer group were the most likely to use slimming strategies.

At first blush, the findings seem ironic: You’d think athletes would be more critical of their bodies since the sports they’re involved in put so much scrutiny on them. But anytime a person feels like the “other” or different from the mainstream, accepted group, there’s bound to be degrees of self-insecurity. Eating disorders and disordered behaviors, as many of us know, are rarely about weight or food and more about the ways in which we cope with emotional issues in our lives. And weight and more specifically weight-loss is a perfect object for insecure girls to fixate on because it’s so often promoted, validated and rewarded in our current culture.

Myself, I was a non-committed band geek in high school, meaning I was labeled a band geek because I was in marching band, but that I wasn’t an uber band geek who watched drill shows in my spare time and joined the pep band — nor did I ever own a band-related t-shirt. I was more so an academic nerd (captain of the Academic Team, yay!), as well as the quintessential fat girl — when I went through school, fat kid was a status deserving of its own peer group classification.. In retrospect, the latter status clashed with the former in that while I liked school, I hated the social atmosphere there. I think I would have done even better academically if I wasn’t subjected to near-daily harassment from my peers for my weight. How about you? Where did you rank in the school hierarchy? Do you think your high school status influenced your eating disorder or other relationships with food and your body today?

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1 On July 7th, 2008, tara said:

I imagine that the athletic girls have less to worry about in regards to gaining weight because they are athletic. It is quite difficult to gain weight when your activity level is so high. Why worry about something that isn’t really a problem?

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 11:00 am

2 On July 7th, 2008, Liza said:

I was somewhere between an “alternative” and a major geek. I was really into punk and dyed my hair pink and all that, but I was a first flute player and editor of the school’s lit mag. Super cool.

I was a band geek in college, too, which I’m really happy about because there’s no way I’d have met any of my friends without it, and they are really awesome people.

I don’t feel like my h.s. group had an impact on my body image. We didn’t talk about it at all. I think my body image suffered because I was wearing Lane Bryant in a school full of Abercrombie. In college it may have, because marching band was so physical and I had a few uniform issues. Plus was in all female section (woot, piccolo) and would be embarrassed ordering a size L t-shirt when everyone else got S (or sometimes, “can I order an XS or a youth L?”).

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 11:13 am

3 On July 7th, 2008, Stephanie said:

That’s not quite how it worked in my high school, but I may be conflating the actual girl-jocks (who were more likely to play softball and basketball) with the annoying females who ran track and cross-country just because they thought they ought to do something like track so they could lose (more) weight.

Ugh. That represented more than half the team. No wonder we never won. (Except in discus and shotput, but the girl who threw for us was a real jock and got a scholarship to an Ivy League school to throw for them. Yay, using sports skills to get an actual education!)

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 11:28 am

4 On July 7th, 2008, Erika said:

I went from hanging out with the ditchers my frosh year to cheerleading the next three (parent made me try out to try to get me away from ‘bad influences’. I was Homecoming Queen, played in Jazz Band (classical pianist does not do well under improvisation, but it was ‘getting involved’ for my parents), was on Student Council – and was full blown anorexia and then bulimic. I hated HS,and could never understand why anybody liked me. I was a loner, even though I was surrounded by others.

15 years later I’m battling anorexia again. Go figure.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 11:38 am

5 On July 7th, 2008, Tiffany said:

I think who I was surrounded by in High School definitely influenced my body image. I had a specific group of friends but never really had a very specific peer group (i.e. I hung out with the football players and their cheerleader girlfriends, the band geeks, the alternatives, etc.). However, what I most remember about HS is that everyone was smaller than me. When I look at pictures of myself from HS though, I think, “Wow, I looked great!” I probably only weighed 120 pounds and though I wasn’t necessarily active, I stayed slim throughout HS. However, everyone around me was a size 2 while I was a size 8 so I thought I was gigantic. I had nothing else to compare myself to.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 12:43 pm

6 On July 7th, 2008, Eve said:

I was the only fat girl in most of my classes. In my high school, most of the girls who took honors classes were also jocks, though it was opposite for boys. I was a band and drama geek, though I never really had many friends. I also was convinced that no boys would ever want to ask me out so I just tried to put it out of my mind. I remember being really lonely and depressed in high school, though a lot of thin kids feel that way too; I’m not sure how it squared with my fatness. I did have a tendency to buy junk food and eat it all at once – probably it was a mild binging problem.

I don’t remember a lot of harassment for being fat. I got a lot of harassment, but we had dorky thin girls who got crapped on as well. I think it had more to do with the fact that I was a bit odd and couldn’t stand up for myself.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

7 On July 7th, 2008, glt said:

I was kind of an outlier of the nerdy geeky group at times, but mostly I was in the group of total outcasts. I think I would have had a worse time if I had not been more interested in spending every spare minute reading than in socializing with other kids, which after all did not involve time travel, space ships, aliens, or talking animals. I certainly did get tormented every day, for lots of reasons, although people developed a tad of maturity about halfway through high school, and then in college I fit in pretty well with a subset of geeks.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 1:32 pm

8 On July 7th, 2008, tiptoe said:

It’s interesting, because I did many activities in high school but never really felt like I fit in. Most would probably say I was a “jock,” since I did gymnastics, cheerleading, and track. However, at the same time, I also did band too.

I don’t know if my high school status influenced my body image problems. Actually, above all those other labels, I was known as “Miss Goody Two Shoes.” In the end, I think it had more to do with feeling very lonely and low self esteem.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 1:53 pm

9 On July 7th, 2008, Cyn said:

I was labeled “the fattest girl in school” at — seriously! — a size 14. Eventually, another fat chick showed up in the grade below me, and she became pretty much my only friend (I had previously hung around with the nerdiest of the nerds, but even they didn’t really want to claim me as a “friend”).

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

10 On July 7th, 2008, Caralyn said:

I went to an all-girls school and wore uniforms so I don’t think my size had anything to do with how well I did or did not fit in with the other girls. There were plus-sized girls who were popular, on the honour role and were jocks so my body issues didn’t really come from school – they were all thanks to my family. Thanks family!

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

11 On July 7th, 2008, Sal said:

My school was so small that the different groups all overlapped, so people didn’t get categorized much. I wasn’t fat in high school, but I still wanted to be thinner. This was back in the early 1960′s

My senior year I was voted bookworm, man hater, and most likely to succeed, so I guess that was how I was seen by my classmates.

(I didn’t hate guys, I was just inexperienced.)

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 3:31 pm

12 On July 7th, 2008, Charlotte said:

I was a nerdy outsider when I was in high school; I was harassed for being fat and getting good grades. I had a few friends, but I spent a lot of time alone.

13 On July 7th, 2008, Cyn said:

I was the outcast amongst outcasts. I liked punk and indie, but the punk indie kids didn’t like to hang around with me because I was too fat for them. The nerds and geeks thought I was too weird. The jocks just mocked me every single day. And, like that other girl who shares my name, I was the fattest girl in the school at a size 14. I hated myself. A boy rejected me because he liked his girls “less fat and a bit pretty”. He was a nerd who hung around with the jocks, but they used to backstab him and call him a homo because of what he did to me. But they still bullied me. There was a girl who was labelled as The Devil Herself because she was just pure evil. She hated me aswell, and she once wrote offensive things against me and my weight on our blackboard and then blamed it on a group of preppy girls who had nothing to do with it. I got really upset against them, and now I was seen as a crazy moody fat girl who really needed to get laid. And I never did. I didn’t have a boyfriend until starting college.
I only had about five or six friends, who were only with me because nobody liked to hang around with them for other reasons. One of them is my Best Friend Forever, and she is the only one I still hang around with from that era.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

14 On July 7th, 2008, pennylane said:

I was a floater, I think. I got along with most people, though I mostly hung out with the other speech/drama folks who were mostly alternative. And I will say that I did get a lot of body guff from the alterna boys. It’s interesting the way they policed their own images very carefully. You had to rebel in just the right way.

I know that some of the female jocks in our school had eating disorders but I also know that a lot of them were simply so active and so involved in what their bodies could do that they were less obsessed by what their bodies looked like.

While I got a little harassed growing up for my weight it wasn’t so bad in high school and I didn’t develop my ED until college (and full-blown in grad school) where there was almost no harassment.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 3:39 pm

15 On July 7th, 2008, nuckingfutz said:

My high school experience was a bit complicated. I went to 4 different high schools, all by the time I was a junior. I think my earlier experiences – from grade school to freshman year – had a lot more to do with how my body image was shaped than anything that came after that. Because I was everybody’s favorite whipping girl. Even people who didn’t know me knew OF me and knew that all they had to do was make fun of my weight. But once I got out of that situation, and even with all that moving from school to school to school, I learned that it wasn’t so much MY body that was the problem as it was other people’s REACTIONS to my body. Because in every school I went to after my first semester of freshman year, I was treated differently. I wasn’t THE outcast. I might not have been popular, but I had friends, and I wasn’t vilified for the way I looked.

The thing is, though, even though people treated me differently, in my head I couldn’t get away from the bullies I’d grown up with. I hardly ever saw them anymore (I was still living in the same town, just going to a different school), but those things they said to me stayed with me and would replay in my head every. single. day.

Oh, and to put myself in a category? Nerd. Totally. Mathlete in freshman year, debate club and literary magazine junior year, HS paper reporter, literary magazine, earth club, and debate my senior year. Voted “most likely to win an emmy.” (Never quite understood that last one, though.)

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

16 On July 7th, 2008, Dolly said:

I have to disagree with what Tara said. As a girl that is bigger but very active, I always wanted to join sports in high school, particularly the swim team. But, because I was a little bigger I always felt uncomfortable… like people were seeing me as being “too big” for sports. It wasn’t that I wasn’t athletic or not interested in sports, but my size held me back. So, assuming that “athletic” girls have less to worry about because of increased activity levels doesn’t make sense to me. I guess it’s the presumption that being an athlete also means you’re thin. If athletic, -thin- girls don’t have anything to worry about it’s because they know no one can perceive them as being fat or not exercising enough.

As far as where I fit in high school, I was class valedictorian, so I was definitely a nerd. I hung out with all the other AP students, and we got along pretty fine. We really didn’t pay attention to what anybody else thought. Mostly, we were busy studying for exams.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 4:13 pm

17 On July 7th, 2008, Michelle said:

I’m not surprised to read that “jock” girls are less likely to have EDs — most “jock” girls that I’ve known in my life think of their bodies more as men do and are more focused on what their bodies can *do* rather than how they look. I read an excellent book a few years ago that suggested getting young girls involved in sports as a measure to prevent eating disorders because athletic achievements shift the focus away from appearance to performance. It wouldn’t have worked for me (I’m the least athletic able-bodied person I know) but it sounds solid.

In the “alternative” crowd I spent time with in high school, thinness was *very* important because all of the “alternative” crowd was vegetarian or vegan, and it’s not possible to be a fat vegan, right? (/sarcasm) Their ideal was heroic-chic thin, but I can’t blame my high school peers for my ED. That came from my mother, who raised not one but two children with EDs. And one of them is an adult man.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

18 On July 7th, 2008, Rachel said:

I think I got really lucky in high school. I was a band geek (that continued all through college as well) and so were the vast majority of my friends. We were happy though. Geeky or not, I had a blast in high school. I had friends that I would have done anything for and who treated me the exact same way. I was probably heavier than 80% of the girls I hung out with, but weight was never something that was an issue during those four years. For that I am eternally grateful. I think it helped that I was extremely active. Not only was I marching band, but I swam year round and spent my weekends outside getting into all sorts of fun trouble. So I never had any sense that I couldn’t be involved in something because of my size. Well, except for cheerleading. There would have been no way my mom would have let me out of the house in one of those skirts anyway.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 5:47 pm

19 On July 7th, 2008, Rhia said:

In high school I didn’t care about what others thought and my eating patterns reflected that. I had run with the burnout crowd when younger and had rehabed and switched schools. I guess I was pretty much a floater too, I found everyone I attended school with to be of little interest so I never formed any serious bonds, didn’t do anything I didn’t want to which meant I was the school and yearbook photographer and that was it cause that was all I was interested in. I got along with all the groups and hung out with the preppy/jock kids, the burnout kids, and the band/music kids (who were considered geeks in my school) depending on my mood. I did have a boyfriend that I cared about deeply, but knew I wasn’t going to marry him or have a life long commitment with him. When I look back I was more concerned about being sexually experienced than if my body looked right, weird? I couldn’t wait to get out of school. I look back at pictures of myself and I was a fairly average kid (always a bit short) and I found that I would pudge out right before I had a growth spurt then thin out when the growth spurt happened and I continued to do this through my teens, so my weight would fluxuate by a couple clothing sizes and I got along with the same kinds of people whether I was thinned out from a growth spurt or pudged out preparing for one. I remember my mom getting concerned when I’d pudge out and making comments about what I’d eat, but my Mom and I didn’t get along very well so I really didn’t feel that what she said mattered. I would still eat what I wanted when I wanted. She was the only one that ever commented on my weight that I know of while in school.

However, when I stepped into the adult world for some reason being accepted and dating became hugely important hence my dieting and eating disordered (binge and purge) behaviors began.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 5:58 pm

20 On July 7th, 2008, Debra said:

My thoughts are that most girls have body issues even if their body is perfect. Some just hide it better than others. The media is brutal; it’s all about the body. I work with teenage girls and their self-esteem is usually hanging on by a thread. I try to help them understand that their body is just a vehicle to get them around; it doesn’t have to be beautiful, just healthy. Easier said then done. A good tool is to tell them that every time they have a negative thought about their body to ask themselves if they had a daughter would they be saying the same thing to their daughter, probably not.
myfeetarentugly.com

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

21 On July 7th, 2008, littlem said:

Having been, a band geek and a geeky athlete, I will say this: especially if you’re a girl percussionist, you have to be in shape (cardiovascular- and strengthwise) to handle your instrument.

That said, I’ll say, in response to this (I already said it on Mo’s blog, but I think it bears repeating, especially since the assertion appears again here):

“I imagine that the athletic girls have less to worry about in regards to gaining weight because they are athletic. It is quite difficult to gain weight when your activity level is so high so why worry about something that isn’t really a problem?”

If you’re in a “girl-oriented” sport that focuses on either appearance — figure skating, gymnastics, or dance (mostly ballet, and to a certain extent, jazz/modern) — or speed (like swimming or track).

See, for starters, “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes” for a beginning primer on what pressures coaches, families, and the need to win can impose on girls’ body image, and the damages those pressures can wreak.

* * * *

I don’t think this element should be underestimated either:

“However, when I stepped into the adult world for some reason being accepted and dating became hugely important hence my dieting and eating disordered (binge and purge) behaviors began.”

How many women have attempted to “shrink down” because their BF/SO wanted to be the “big man” in comparison? How many men search out the tiniest and thinnest of women for the same type of reason?

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 6:37 pm

22 On July 7th, 2008, thewellofemoness said:

Ok, I am a nerd/alternative person and I think I can explain the result of that study.(I’m in band/knowledgebowl but am also queer and like rock music)

A lot of alternative cliques are VERY obsessed with weight and make it a huge factor of being a part of the clique. There is no standard for which cliques will be the worst about it but for many young “alternative” people my age being thin is a huge deal.Some of it (from my personal experience) stems from a messed up version of the Animal Rights culture where AR cliques will assume that anyone who isn’t as thin as they are must secretly eat meat. I believe in animal rights and am a vegetarian(have been for a while) but am frequently accused of not being one because I’m not thin enough. (I’m not fat either)A lot of alternative clothing also tends to focus on thinness. Think “skinny jeans” or those leggings that people wear.

its bizarre, but true. I never would have thought such good things could be so badly butchered.

posted on July 7th, 2008 at 6:48 pm

23 On July 8th, 2008, lilacsigil said:

My highschool experience seems to be a little different – I was a total D&D playing nerd, and most of my friends were boys. Despite my school being extremely athletic, I was almost never (twice in six years) harrassed by other students about my weight, though the sports teacher was another story! I also played sport and was active, though I was not particularly good at it. The pressure to lose weight (though, looking back, I had a BMI of 23!) was at home, so school was actually a pretty pleasant place to be. There certainly was an “in-crowd” who were obsessed with appearance and dieting, but they seemed to focus entirely on themselves, not on girls who weren’t trying to be in their group.

posted on July 8th, 2008 at 12:04 am

24 On July 8th, 2008, Fat Girl said:

Wow, when you were saying what “group” you were in high school- that was pretty much me, except I did drama/choir instead of band. I also was sort of artsy, and into FFA and 4-H so I vacillated between all these different groups, never feeling quite like I was a full part of one.

posted on July 8th, 2008 at 12:11 am

25 On July 8th, 2008, Mara C said:

for me, its pretty hard to imagine how belonging in any group in high school you would be free from any negative body image or pressure to be thin. although i certainly find it as no surprise that the girls who identified as ‘jocks’ in the study were less concerned about their weight, and less likely to take measures to control their weight. i think its down to the fact that any sort of involvement in athletic activity brings with it the idea that the body is not just for show- its for doing great things with, and they may place more value on what their own bodies can do, instead of just what they look like.
i go to a private girls school in a wealthy suburb in melbourne, australia, and would say that at my school, nobody really talks about their bodies all that much, although the pressure to be thin is certainly there, in that being thin at my school certainly holds with it some sort of exclusivety (if that is a word), as if in being thin you always have the upper ground, no matter what another girl can dish out at you you’re always thinner than her- and ultimately that matters a lot, even though no one actively talks about it.
mostly what you look like matters so much at a girls school, since the more boys you can get the better you are- this usually involves lots of fake tan, foundation and short tunics or dresses ( we wear a school uniform like all schools in australia), and yes, how much you weigh really matters in this.
most of our year level is of an average weight, and in our year of 40 odd girls we only have about 3 or 4 girls who are considered overweight (and only just really), and 2 of these girls are extremely athletic, playing in all the sports teams and watching what they eat.

posted on July 8th, 2008 at 2:58 am

26 On July 8th, 2008, jamboree said:

Drama nerd. Friends with the band nerds, but never in band. I played track and field, but could never run fast enough, so I stuck to shotput and discus. That was fun (grueling laps up and down the bleachers, though). I don’t really remember being made fun of for being fat, to be honest. I wore sleeveless tops and tiny shorts because my (similar sized) friend did, and she was hella confident. I wasn’t interested in the stuff the ‘popular’ kids got up to, and had lots of family problems to keep me occupied!

I liked high school well enough, but I’m very happy to never revisit those years again.

posted on July 8th, 2008 at 8:23 am

27 On July 8th, 2008, Elizabeth said:

I was a drama nerd with a little speech and debate on the side. This may have been just my school but the “jocks” didn’t seem to have a problem with their own personal weight but man did they have a problem with everybody else’s weight. They set the standard for what everybody was supposed to look like. From weight to what clothes and hair style was in. In my school the “jocks” were gods and treated that way by peers and adults. Why would they have a body image problem? They were treated better then anybody in the entire school.

but that could have been just my school……

posted on July 8th, 2008 at 11:43 am

28 On July 8th, 2008, Charlynn said:

I was the loner/outcast in high school. I developed clinical depression at 16, which went undiagnosed because everyone thought it was just “teenager blues.” I mostly wanted to be left alone, and most of the time got my wish. It was a rough three years that felt like a complete waste of time.

In terms of my body at that time, I hated it and was more toward the heavier side of “normal” for my height. I didn’t feel pretty in any way but didn’t do much about it, either. I did my writing and hid the best I could. As a result, I was largely ignored by my classmates, which I didn’t mind one bit.

posted on July 8th, 2008 at 3:26 pm

29 On July 8th, 2008, Sara said:

Sadly, the time in my scholastic life when I got tormented the most about my weight was elementary school. I was bullied (mostly by boys) from third grade on, known as ‘the fat girl’ and ‘saddle bags’. My two best friends were also heavyset and got teased. In junior high I was still a bit chubbier than most of my size 2 peers, coming in around a size 8. People said mean things about me, but usually not to my face. In high school I was generally liked, mostly because the people in my high school were wonderful (Go Boise High School!) and the ‘popular’ people tended to be the intelligent and involved kids (AP, Choir/Band/Orchestra, Key Club). However, now that I am in college I find that attitudes are worse. I am a size 14 and am usually the biggest person in the room. It is difficult to swallow because I am very involved (Gay Straight Alliance, sorority, job, boyfriend, volunteering) in having a good and meaningful life, but I am still constantly looked down on by the throngs of wealthy girls who have nothing better to do with their time than work out multiple hours a day. I constantly have to remind myself that it is okay to accept my body and that thin does not equal healthy.

posted on July 8th, 2008 at 10:15 pm

30 On July 9th, 2008, Jenny said:

In high school, and even in college for a bit, I was soooo goth. I had no idea how to fit in and be myself(which was and is slightly weird and different, but goth is hardly different or weird these days). What surprised me is that for people who complain so much about how much society sucks, all of the other goth girls were focused on being skinny, like the vast majority of society.

posted on July 9th, 2008 at 11:53 am

31 On July 9th, 2008, Juliet said:

For me, it was more junior high into my freshman year that had the biggest impact on my perceptions of myself. I’d been “the fat kid” since second grade. However, for several years of that time, I wasn’t truly fat – and though it bothered me, I don’t think I cared that much. Maybe part of me knew I wasn’t fat or wasn’t that concerned with what the “skinny girls” thought. I don’t know.

I changed schools half way through six grade after moving to a new town. The first half of that year I went to a religious school that was really a cult. So I really had two school changes, which is very hard on any child, but especially in those puberty years.

Sixth grade wasn’t too awful, but seventh grade was a nightmare. I had gained quite a bit of weight, and felt awful about myself. My hair was going through a phase, it was always greasy… I didn’t fit in at all. I wasn’t cute and thin, I wasn’t the cheerleader type. I didn’t have a boyfriend. I was quiet, shy and academically I wasn’t doing well, either. I was more than capable, but my home life was in disarray and my teachers, frankly, sucked ass.

I moved back to the town where I’d been in school in 5th grade just in time for 8th grade. Though I was technically supposed to stay back because of my dismal grades, the school knew me and knew I was capable of better. However, I was put into the “lower sections” of all subjects. Basically, we had an 8-1 and and 8-2 and then there were levels for various subjects, too. I quickly advanced out of the lowest reading group to the highest, but it was small comfort. At least when I was in 5th grade and was the fat kid, I was also a smart kid. Now I was fat and stupid.

I also was gaining weight at an alarming rate. My eating disorder really blossomed during sixth and seventh grades. In part, I think, because I’d lived with my aunt prior to that and she’d had me on a super restrictive diet. Once I could eat again, I had no idea how to stop.

At the start of freshman year, I was 254 pounds. That was early September. By late March of the following year, I was 325 pounds. Which illustrates just how quickly I was gaining weight.

What saved me, though, was not going to school. It resulted in the school psychologist getting involved and me asking to be “classified” so I could go to an alternative school. My high school was so warm and welcoming and though I was painfully shy my first year there (especially in regards to eating in front of people), I was among misfits. There were still “groups,” but I eventually found one for myself. I was still self-conscious, but it was incredibly rare that anyone said anything about my weight and on the only occasion I remember that happening it was a stupid boy who said something snarky. But really, one comment in three years? For a girl who was over 300 pounds, I couldn’t ask for more.

posted on July 9th, 2008 at 8:25 pm

32 On July 10th, 2008, Diane said:

I wasn’t fat during high school, but I always felt I was the “fattest” among my skinny friends. I didn’t like to party that much, but that didn’t mean I was excluded from other moments of socialization. Today I’m glad I spent most of my free time reading in my bedroom, and I’ve been learning how to stop trying to please everybody for them not to notice how boring I am

posted on July 10th, 2008 at 4:12 pm