Feeling "unwomanly"

I've been struggling a lot with body image lately. Well, really for my whole life but it kinda fluctuates and has been rearing its head more in the past month or so. I always feel bad talking about my self-esteem issues regarding my body because intellectually I know I have a figure that many women covet, but I suppose it's a symptom of the sickness of our culture that no matter what our body looks like, pretty much every woman I've ever met has some issues with it.

I'm 5'11" and 130 lbs, fairly thin, wide hips and very small breasts. I was teased all throughout childhood and adolescence about my stick-like figure. "Real women have curves" crap doesn't help either. I've never had trouble finding relationships or people to sleep with. My current partner tells me I'm sexy. Strangers tell me I'm pretty. Women tell me all the time they "wish they had my body." So why do I hate what I see in the mirror so much?? I just feel like my body never "grew up." Apart from my hips (which, due to my height, do not look as wide as they actually are) everything about my body says "little girl" to me. I feel like I'm still that 14 year old girl crying in her room because everyone laughed at her flat chest and sticking socks in her bra.

The craziest part is that I'm bisexual, and the women I'm most attracted to all have figures somewhat like mine! I think tall ladies with small breasts and big hips are sexy as hell, so why doesn't that apply to me? External validation clearly doesn't work. I've had issues with disordered eating in the past and I feel like those old behaviors are flaring up again. The old instinct is to starve myself, but then I am afraid of losing the tiny bit of "curves" I do have so I end up fasting all day and binging at night. Luckily this issue doesn't affect sex for me-that's probably the only area in my life I'm actually confident in, sadly. But I feel like I am driving my partner crazy with constant compliment-deflecting and complaints. Truth be told I am driving myself crazy!

I feel like this shouldn't even be important to me because there is so much more to me than my body... but it is. Any other flat-chested ladies struggle with this too? Or any general tips on accepting your body? I just want to stop obsessing over something I can't change (apart from surgery, which I'd never get anyway) and annoying people who love me. Thanks.

I can relate to this. I am 29 in a few days, very petite and no boobs and feel the way you do. I also get told that I should feel grateful I am so slim and tiny but like you, I feel really self conscious of my lack of chest and feel like I have the body of a 12 year old.
I have no proper advice as I am in the same situation but I wanted to reach out and tell you that you are not alone with feeling how you do. I look forward to catching up with this thread to see if anyone has some advice to give.

I am NOT particularly petite or slim. I am 171 cm (sorry, only know the metric system, so have no idea what that equals in American) and weigh more than 80 kg (don't know what that equals in pounds). My weight especially bothers me. I don't look fat, at least not with my clothes on, I have never been called it by anyone either and I can see that I might seem just curvy with clothes on. My main problems are my thighs, which are huge and so cellulite-infested that you could feed a third-world country if each cellulite magically produced a cookie.

This is definitely a cultural phenomenon. All I see on posters, in magazines, in TV shows, movies etc., are thin, slim women. Actually, the first time I got really self-conscious about this was when watching CSI. There was a female murder victim, at around my height - but she weighed like 60 kg. And after that, I've noticed they all do, in all crime shows. Their weight are either in the 50s or the (early) 60s. Never heard of a woman weighing around 70 or more unless they make a point of her being "big" somehow (like a serial killer preferring "plus-size" victims etc.). It seems silly, extremely silly, I am aware of it. But to this day - I am 23 - it still bothers me. It makes my weight seem even more abnormal and unthinkable, it makes me feel like a whale. Which bothers me because most of the time, in my daily life, I don't think about it all that much. But whenever weight is brought up in popular culture, the women always weigh virtually nothing and they are all embarassed about it thinking they weigh too much.

So, huge thighs. My breasts are pretty big too, but I know that if I lose weight they would get smaller (contrary to the porn-induced myth, this is how it truly works, ladies). My stomach used to be quite flat but now I have some serious love handles and problems finding jeans fit. Still, I don't think people would look at me and think "fat", because all of these things are hidden under clothes and with the right ones you can make yourself look taller, slimmer, underline some areas and hide others, etc. But it sometimes seriously inhibits me from getting naked, even though all the men I have been intimate with have found me incredibly sexy, which doesn't fit with how I see myself at all.