Last week, a 17-year-old champion swimmer in Anchorage was disqualified at a swim meet because of how her team swimsuit fit her body. After successfully beating her opponent in a race, Breckyn Willis of Dimond High School was stripped of her victory because her suit was deemed to have violated code: Her buttocks were exposed.

Although her win was later reinstated, the story gained national attention for the discriminatory treatment the teenager received because of her body type. The suit was the very same as the swimsuits her teammates were wearing. However, Ms. Willis was singled out because of the way it fit her body specifically. As a young woman endowed with curves, the suit simply hung differently on her frame. Instead of being evaluated and praised for her athletic merit after the win, her body was unfairly judged as transforming an ordinary swimsuit into something obscene.

While this story elicited justifiable outrage, many of us curvier women received it with empathy and a complete lack of surprise. When you have a curvier body type, you quickly become accustomed to being judged and oversexualized based solely on your appearance and the way things fit. It doesn’t matter if you are 10 years old and blooming early, 40 years old and wearing something that appears “inappropriate for your age,” or 17 years old and filling out your swimsuit in a way that’s being seen as a threat to modesty — you will carry the burden of anxiety when it comes to your body and the way it is perceived by others. The added responsibility of trying to moderate those perceptions becomes your cross to bear.

My own puberty struck early, bringing with it the crippling awareness of the way those emergent curves shaped the way I was perceived. Although our society holds a standard that romanticizes the hourglass figure, the truth is less romantic than it is salacious. You learn quickly that you will receive attention that you don’t want, haven’t invited and are little equipped to handle emotionally. Assumptions will be made about your character — and when you’re young, the truth has very little merit when it comes to schoolyard gossip. The worst part is that the other kids are not the only ones who make these judgments. Adults will also burden you with their gaze and all of the unspoken judgment it contains. I began to hate my body from an early age, and would desperately wish away those pieces of me that were “too much.”