12.

Of all the disturbing things girls say and do that betray the general trend of low self-esteem amongst our sex, the one that annoys me most of all has to be "I'm so fat." It ranks number 1, even above "She's such a slut" (female solidarity anyone?) and stupid statements made deliberately to sound fluffy and cute in front of the opposite sex.

"I'm so fat" doesn't annoy me because I am inherently opposed to healthy BMIs or an interest in maintaining fast metabolism and a healthy heart rate. It annoys me precisely because girls and women who complain about their bodies are least concerned with general well-being and most interested in achieving the frail, about to keel over and faint any second look. More and more often, I find girls who are blessed with naturally fast metabolism and dangerously low fat indices counting calories and trying their level best to resemble twelve year old boys. More disturbingly however, I find otherwise intelligent women pointing at well-built, well-endowed women who dare to pop up in the toothpick-dominated media and reviling them for being "fat".

Somewhere in the past decade or so, it became every woman's greatest desire to resemble nothing more than a coat hanger; a frame for hanging clothes off of without the slightest hint of normal female anatomy. I have several objections to this trend. Firstly, I am going to agree with our grandparents' generation and point my finger at the evil West and say They Did It. They may not be responsible for the degradation of the entire human race, but their values and fashion industries are most definitely responsible for our rejection of what comes most naturally to us-having breasts, developing hips and reaching for the breadsticks at dinnertime. Secondly, it irritates me how the ideal of feminine beauty today is to look like hairless, weakly-developed men. Finally, this seemingly universal quest for the ultimate size-zero, flat-chested appeal not only denies and rejects the enormous range of possible shapes and sizes the human body can come in, it makes girls like me feel like King Kong even while wearing size 2 jeans and maintaining generally good health.

Yes, this has become personal. Stop calling me "fat", because when you call yourself fat, you skinny cow, you are actually calling me fat. I've gone from being someone who never worried about weight or counted calories to someone perpetually worried about why my chest isn't flat and my thighs don't look breakable. The craziness of this hit me only recently-why on earth have I begun to wonder why I don't look like a boy?

The whole phenomenon of naturally curvy girls desperately trying to eliminate their waist-to-hip ratio and naturally slender girls desperately counting calories is beyond saddening. We're not just rejecting fat anymore-we're rejecting what was traditionally seen as the positive attributes of being feminine: warmth; desirability; fertility; motherhood.

I'm sorry to break the code of being a good girlfriend, but unless you are a girl trying to make healthier choices in life, I won't help you go on whatever crazy diet Oprah just endorsed. I will break out the tubs of full-fat ice cream and tell you men love a little extra padding. I will most likely do anything to avoid helping you nurture your insane obsession with being five foot ten and a hundred pounds. Just remember this: I, unlike the fashion industry, prefer real friends to coat hangers, and am therefore a reliable source of advice. You, meanwhile, should give yourself a break, allow yourself to eat breakfast, and stop calling me fat.