How much do you weigh?*

191 pounds

*I challenge all of you to post your weight below and send shame packing!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—I truly believe that one of the problems with the way women perceive themselves in this country is the fact that we have the false sense that everyone else weighs less than we do.

Dave and I have seven nieces and nephews—ranging in age from seven to twenty-one—and recently my mother-in-law and I were having a conversation about the two oldest nieces (her granddaughters), who are just about to be fifteen and twenty-one. Both of them are gorgeous young women—tall, fit, and simply beautiful.

Sometimes I feel like all young girls are beautiful these days. It certainly seems like all of my female students are stunning. When I was young, there were a few really pretty girls in every class, but most of us were pretty dorky, as the picture above clearly shows. (By the way, I'm the one on the right in the way cool red and orange vest, and I believe I weighed 125 pounds that year.)

What I want to know is when did that change? Because whenever I go to the mall, I feel like every single young woman under the age of eighteen looks amazing—they all have long, luscious hair, perfectly applied makeup, adorable little tiny t-shirts, and matching accessories. Every one of them in identical skinny jeans and the same Ugg boots, as if they’re all catalog models fresh from their latest photo shoot.

When I was their age, I am pretty sure that I was more Plain Jane than catalog model. In fact, on more than one occasion, I was mistaken for a little boy.

And this brings me back to my two eldest nieces—they both look just like models too: every hair perfectly in place, each eyebrow expertly plucked, every piece of clothing perfectly coordinated.

(Maybe this is part of the reason it’s so difficult for regular women to feel good about themselves—almost no one looks “regular” anymore.)

So it’s understandable that my mother-in-law would think that her perfect-looking granddaughters are extremely attractive, but what I don’t get is that she also thinks they weigh next to nothing. One of the girls is probably 5’4” and the other one is around 5’8”, but my mother-in-law contends that they both probably weigh less than 100 pounds.

Less than 100 pounds???

That would make their BMIs between 15 and 17, far below the healthy 19-25 range.

There’s no doubt that these girls are thin, but thankfully they are not anorexic. And that’s what they’d have to be to have a BMI that low.

I think the real problem is one of perspective. My mother-in-law sees two thin, attractive young women, and she just assumes they weigh next to nothing.

I told her that I figured they more likely weighed between 120 and 130 pounds, and you should have seen the fit she had. It was as if I had said that aliens were landing on the lawn.

And therein lies the problem. If we see every thin, attractive woman as weighing less than 100 pounds, no wonder we feel bad when the number on our scales is almost double that.

That’s actually part of the reason I decided to post my weight on this blog in the first place. I feel like if more of us talked about what we weigh, then we could dispel the false notion that our weight is so drastically different than everyone around us—even people we see as having smaller waists or more attractive bodies.

And once we realize that real women don’t weigh 100 pounds—unless they hover around the five-foot range—we’d probably feel a lot better about ourselves.

I’ve already admitted my weight—isn’t it time that you did too?