"Modesty Is For People Who Suck" is a line that I came up with a couple years ago. I find it funny that I’m the one spreading it around work, and it’s a bit of a joke to me- but in other ways, it isn’t. I decided to write about its underlying components of confidence versus conceit today, through an examination of the portrayal of womens’ sexuality by the media.
I don’t think I’d be causing anyone to double-take if I informed you that a lot of fashion outlets tend to base their ideal of beauty around a slender figure. Runway models have been stereotyped as under-eaters, bulimics or anorexics for years- often with a fair amount of truth behind it. If you look at any female-targeted weight loss plan, many of the “after” pictures have women that have gone down to a size 2, if not a size 0.
The fact that there even IS a “size zero” is ridiculous in my mind. Zero implies a lack of value; a complete absence of whatever it is you’re measuring. Even the most emaciated waistline still has some size to it, and therefore, it cannot be zero. Claiming the size of a dress as such is baffling to me- claiming that you’d aspire to be that size, or the implication that you should be that size, is even stranger. Your waistline should be non-existent? Give me a break.
Anyway, I’m getting off topic. My point is this: Confidence has a lot to do with how someone looks. That’s not going to change any time soon. But, it also has a lot to do with how you perceive yourself to look. Change your perception, and even if you don’t shed a single pound, you can believe that you look better. This, in turn, can make you carry yourself better (after all, if you think you’re hot shit, why wouldn’t you? You’re hot shit, after all)- and when you carry yourself like you’re worth a million dollars, other people are more likely to treat you better. At the very least they’re typically less likely to mess with you, because someone who is self-confident is less likely to put up with heinous bullshit.
Enter the small but growing plus-sized movement. This is a movement you might have seen here and there; Glamour had a cover a while back with a bunch of “plus” sized models without Photoshopping, or you might have stumbled onto the Curve Appeal Tumblr, or any other venue that extols the bigger girls. These are good things, in my opinion, because they instill confidence in a group of people whose confidence is more likely to be somewhat eroded from the constant assault on their forms that the media hits them with.
It instills confidence- but not conceit.
There’s a big difference. Confidence is knowing who you are. Confidence is knowing your path and walking it, demanding equality when it is due, and doing your thing with swagger even when the haters go and hate. Conceit, on the other hand, makes you believe that you are better than everyone else, and it makes you believe that you deserve special treatment.
The “plus size is awesome” movement doesn’t go around telling girls that they’re better than skinny girls- which is what a lot of fashion outlets have been telling their readers, albeit in reverse; that skinny is better than big. The plus-size movement has been telling girls that they are at their best when they look like they ought to, not when they try to mash their bodies into a shape eight sizes too small. Is there a difference between being a big, curvy girl and being legitimately unhealthy in your size? Of course, and people need to be real with themselves; if you’re lazy and eat like shit, or if you have a glandular problem (or whatever else), you need to take extra care of yourself. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.
We’re talking about confidence, which could be summed up by the line, “A little swagger is a good thing”. A buddy of mine used to say that. “Modesty is for people who suck” represents conceit, though I say it jokingly (usually). So keep your swagger, people, be you male or female, size 0 (ugh) or size 10.
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