being the “big girl” everywhere I go

 I think one of the strangest things about growing up in this body was realizing, very early, that I was always going to be the “big girl” somewhere. In school, in group photos, standing next to friends, in family functions, in dressing rooms, in borrowed clothes that never fit the way they were supposed to. It was never always said out loud… but I noticed. I noticed when I took up more space. When I looked broader, taller, heavier, bigger in ways that made me feel like softness belonged more naturally to other girls. And maybe that’s where it started....that quiet feeling of somehow being a girl, but never quite feeling like the kind of girl the world made femininity look like.

Because for so long, femininity looked small. Delicate. Tiny wrists, light frames, effortless clothes, softness that looked a certain way. And I don’t think people realize how deeply that can shape you when you grow up feeling like you are constantly standing next to a version of girlhood that seems more… accepted. More graceful. More “correct.” So you start noticing everything. The way clothes fit differently. The way you look in pictures. The way certain outfits feel like they were made with someone else’s body in mind. And slowly, without meaning to, you begin associating being bigger with being less feminine. Less pretty. Less soft. Less enough.

And that feeling… it stays with you in ways people don’t always understand.

It’s in the hesitation before wearing something fitted. In comparing yourself before anyone else even gets the chance to. In wondering if people see you as pretty, or if they just see you as big first. It’s in the exhausting way your mind can make you feel like you have to shrink before you deserve to feel beautiful.

But I think what hurts the most is how easily we confuse size with femininity… as though softness only belongs to smaller bodies. As though taking up space somehow takes away from being delicate, desirable, or deeply feminine.

And that’s the lie I’m still trying to unlearn.

Because ig  femininity was never about how little space I take up. Maybe it was never about being the smallest girl in the room. Maybe it’s in the way I carry myself, the way I love, the way I create, the way I exist. Maybe softness was never something my body had to earn by shrinking.

I think I’m still healing the part of me that grew up believing bigger meant less. Less pretty. Less feminine. Less worthy of being looked at gently.

Because the truth is… I was never less of a girl just because I was never the smallest one.

I was still soft. Still worthy. Still feminine.

I just grew up in a world that made me forget.