!!TRIGGER WARNING!! I don’t know how familiar any of you are with how “essential” it is to be ultra thin in the orthodox jewish world, but it’s disturbing. Orthodox Jewish girls are told when they’re teenagers that they need to be a size 4 at the MOST in order to get a good husband. The rates of anorexia nervosa are proportionately high in orthodox jewish girls because of this pressure. Not only that, but these eligible bachelors ask the girl their dating for not only her mother’s dress size, but for her GRANDMOTHER’S as well. Why? To ensure that the girl won’t “get huge” when she gets older. I attended a religious orthodox jewish school from middle school to high school, but my family was not like that. My parents didn’t enforce the idea of arranged marriages or that I needed to be deathly skinny to score a nice jewish guy, but my classmates were all from very strict ultra-orthodox families. The girls in my class were all under 100 pounds (NO EXCEPTIONS) and they were very small-framed and petite, but the majority would constantly be talking about going on a diet and “getting skinny” and shit like that. I didn’t have friends in my school - ever. I was the Fat One. I listened to their dumb dreams of being a size double-zero and rolled my eyes, but after hearing it constantly, it began to stick in my head. It didn’t happen quickly, but I was definitely anorexic by eighth grade. I never got to be skinny by any means, but I wasn’t fat anymore. Everyone was nicer to me, the girls in my class invited me over to their house, people wanted to hold my hand and sit next to me and talk to me about my life and it pissed me off because I knew why it was all happening. Boys noticed me, and I considered the possibility of having a boyfriend, something I had thought was impossible when I was fat. My teachers noticed I lost a lot of weight, and I quickly realized that the only thing worse than being fat in the jewish world was having a mental illness in the jewish world. I wasn’t allowed to go to school at a certain point because the teachers and principal felt I was contagious. I eventually dropped out of school, became a full-time bulimic because one can only starve themselves for so long, and I gained a ton of weight because after a certain point I stopped throwing up. So I’d just binge all day long, constantly. There was never a break. Well when I slept there was a break. I became extremely depressed, and I was fat again. Boys treated me like absolute shit. Before I lost the weight initially, I was simply ignored. But after I gained the weight (plus more) back, they acted as if I had done something so horrible, deep, and personal to them. I guess the purpose of this story is to show how the emphasis of the importance of being thin just fucks your whole life up. I eventually got my GED and I have a job, but it’s a shitty job, and my life is shitty because I’ve fucked my brain up with lots of drugs, so there’s so chance of me going to college. As for being jewish? I’m no longer a slave to their bullshit religion. Don’t tell me otherwise.

Thin privilege is being an Orthodox Jewish girl and simply being “marriage material.” Cause if you’re not thin then you are pretty much fucked. (And even if you do decide to lose the weight, you’ll be considered “too old” by the time you’re a double-fucking-zero.)