Being body positive in 2019
Creating a peaceful relationship with ourselves and our bodies can sometimes feel like a never-ending battle that cannot be triumphed. When it comes to developing a less judgemental relationship with oneself, a major challenge we face is learning how to deal with our inner critical voice.
This voice is incredibly good at discouraging us in various unconstructive, cruel ways and takes great pleasure in telling us that we aren’t good enough in one way or another. Some examples can be our performance in our jobs, the relationships we have with our friends and loved ones, how we act and think and, for a large majority of people, how we view ourselves physically.
I personally have tendencies to be extremely critical of my own appearance which has only become worse with age. As a carefree child, I didn’t seem to think twice about what I looked like, but social media has grown substantially since then and it has gradually made it easier for me to judge certain things about myself since having access to Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms. It allows you to compare yourself to people that you believe are more “attractive” than what you are; usually we compare ourselves to people that don’t even have any impact in our lives which makes it even more alarming because we are literally comparing ourselves to strangers. An odd concept. Photos of beautiful women with teeny-tiny waistlines and curves that seem to be in all of the right places fill my Instagram timeline. They always look so happy, so healthy. Their skin is always glowing. Their teeth are pearly white and dead straight. Everything about them looks perfect, aesthetically pleasing. I don’t think I would be the first to admit that I have definitely scrolled through my socials filled with completely envy at these models, wishing that I could have what they seem to be blessed with. You then start to bring the attention onto your own body/face and you feel deflated, almost disappointed. Why isn’t my smile as straight as theirs? Why is my face not that symmetrical? Why wasn’t I gifted with a figure like that?
Behaviour like this can be so damaging to our own self confidence and self worth. It allows obsessive and self destructive thoughts to over-ride your brain and everything in your mind becomes revolved around how other people view your physical appearance. As someone who naturally has quite low self esteem, I can definitely put my hands up to being slightly obsessed with posting posed photos of myself on social media for some kind of gratification; it’s a great feeling being complimented, we get a sense of fulfilment when someone tells us that we look good. However, it becomes a problem when we start believing that our bodies or our pretty faces are the only things we have to offer to people, or perhaps the most important things about ourselves. It is easy these days to slip into this mindset because of the hundreds of female public figures that make their fortunes from simply looking good. Many of these models have their features enhanced by plastic surgery/heavy editing on their selfies/photos which is a massive pressure to the women/men that admire them or even strive to look like them. Unless you can fork out hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions of pounds on all sorts of different surgeries, it’s an impossible task.
I can imagine that some people reading this may be wondering why I, of all people, am writing a blog post about body positivity; in our modern society, my physical characteristics together seem to be glorified and praised for being an overall “ideal body type” because I’m naturally quite slender, I have long, blonde hair and blue eyes, all that shit. On a few occasions, my friends have reminded me of how slim and gorgeous I am and, if I dare mention that I am insecure about the way that I look, they will either laugh at me or even get irritated because I have “nothing to feel under confient about compared to them” and I have even been told that I am just trying to get attention because “I know that I’m attracive”. The fact is, we all have imperfections and we all have things about ourselves that we aren’t particularly fond of. I wish I was curvier. I don’t like my stretch marks. I don’t like looking at my acne scarring. I wish I didn’t have such big black circles under my eyes. I hate my smile. Perfection is a myth. The desire to be perfect burdens many people and ironically dooms them into unhappiness.
The #bodypositivity movement has helped so many young, beautiful women of all shapes, sizes and ethnicities to feel more confident in their own skin and feel more at ease in accepting their “flaws”. It is a beautiful thing and I love that we are finally beginning to realise that beauty standards in society today need to be forgotten about because we are all so unique and utterly gorgeous in our own ways. But I do think that there is more to us than what we look like on the outside - it is so important for us to also focus on being self-assured in our mindsets and loving ourselves for who we are as individuals. A good way of unleashing inner self confidence is to start having a more positive narrative, and we need to begin embracing what we’ve got rather than dwelling on what we haven’t got. Flaunting our bodies and flooding selfies on social media can be a huge confidence boost and we should be proud of showing ourselves off, however I believe that we need to keep in mind that what we look like does not define who we are.
“If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.” - T.Harv Eker
This voice is incredibly good at discouraging us in various unconstructive, cruel ways and takes great pleasure in telling us that we aren’t good enough in one way or another. Some examples can be our performance in our jobs, the relationships we have with our friends and loved ones, how we act and think and, for a large majority of people, how we view ourselves physically.
I personally have tendencies to be extremely critical of my own appearance which has only become worse with age. As a carefree child, I didn’t seem to think twice about what I looked like, but social media has grown substantially since then and it has gradually made it easier for me to judge certain things about myself since having access to Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms. It allows you to compare yourself to people that you believe are more “attractive” than what you are; usually we compare ourselves to people that don’t even have any impact in our lives which makes it even more alarming because we are literally comparing ourselves to strangers. An odd concept. Photos of beautiful women with teeny-tiny waistlines and curves that seem to be in all of the right places fill my Instagram timeline. They always look so happy, so healthy. Their skin is always glowing. Their teeth are pearly white and dead straight. Everything about them looks perfect, aesthetically pleasing. I don’t think I would be the first to admit that I have definitely scrolled through my socials filled with completely envy at these models, wishing that I could have what they seem to be blessed with. You then start to bring the attention onto your own body/face and you feel deflated, almost disappointed. Why isn’t my smile as straight as theirs? Why is my face not that symmetrical? Why wasn’t I gifted with a figure like that?
Behaviour like this can be so damaging to our own self confidence and self worth. It allows obsessive and self destructive thoughts to over-ride your brain and everything in your mind becomes revolved around how other people view your physical appearance. As someone who naturally has quite low self esteem, I can definitely put my hands up to being slightly obsessed with posting posed photos of myself on social media for some kind of gratification; it’s a great feeling being complimented, we get a sense of fulfilment when someone tells us that we look good. However, it becomes a problem when we start believing that our bodies or our pretty faces are the only things we have to offer to people, or perhaps the most important things about ourselves. It is easy these days to slip into this mindset because of the hundreds of female public figures that make their fortunes from simply looking good. Many of these models have their features enhanced by plastic surgery/heavy editing on their selfies/photos which is a massive pressure to the women/men that admire them or even strive to look like them. Unless you can fork out hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions of pounds on all sorts of different surgeries, it’s an impossible task.
I can imagine that some people reading this may be wondering why I, of all people, am writing a blog post about body positivity; in our modern society, my physical characteristics together seem to be glorified and praised for being an overall “ideal body type” because I’m naturally quite slender, I have long, blonde hair and blue eyes, all that shit. On a few occasions, my friends have reminded me of how slim and gorgeous I am and, if I dare mention that I am insecure about the way that I look, they will either laugh at me or even get irritated because I have “nothing to feel under confient about compared to them” and I have even been told that I am just trying to get attention because “I know that I’m attracive”. The fact is, we all have imperfections and we all have things about ourselves that we aren’t particularly fond of. I wish I was curvier. I don’t like my stretch marks. I don’t like looking at my acne scarring. I wish I didn’t have such big black circles under my eyes. I hate my smile. Perfection is a myth. The desire to be perfect burdens many people and ironically dooms them into unhappiness.
The #bodypositivity movement has helped so many young, beautiful women of all shapes, sizes and ethnicities to feel more confident in their own skin and feel more at ease in accepting their “flaws”. It is a beautiful thing and I love that we are finally beginning to realise that beauty standards in society today need to be forgotten about because we are all so unique and utterly gorgeous in our own ways. But I do think that there is more to us than what we look like on the outside - it is so important for us to also focus on being self-assured in our mindsets and loving ourselves for who we are as individuals. A good way of unleashing inner self confidence is to start having a more positive narrative, and we need to begin embracing what we’ve got rather than dwelling on what we haven’t got. Flaunting our bodies and flooding selfies on social media can be a huge confidence boost and we should be proud of showing ourselves off, however I believe that we need to keep in mind that what we look like does not define who we are.
“If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.” - T.Harv Eker
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