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This Is What It Was Like To Grow Up Skinny

Tom Stevenson

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There are a lot of articles on Medium that detail what it is like to be overweight.

Shannon Ashley posts a number of insightful stories on this subject and so do a lot of other writers. I think it’s great that a lot of writers are willing to talk about their struggles with their weight.

It’s often a sensitive subject and one we shouldn’t be afraid of opening up about. This is why I wanted to talk about the issues I had with my weight growing up. Only, those issues weren’t to do with me being overweight, they were related to me being underweight.

This is a subject that doesn’t get as much coverage as being overweight. I guess there are a number of reasons for this. A lot of people would prefer to be skinny than fat. Being overweight is more stigmatised than being underweight.

For some people, being skinny is an ideal, a goal they want to reach. For me, it was a sentence I couldn’t escape. No matter what I did, what I achieved, I would always be known as the skinny kid. This was emphasised by my nickname at school, ‘Bones.’

This is a nickname I still have today among my remaining friends from high school. As long as I remain in my hometown, I will always be called by this name.

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