EMBRACE YOUR BODY
The world tells us that to be beautiful, you have to be rail-thin or muscle-bound, have flawless skin and sport big lips and perfect hair. It’s all more than a little unhealthy, both physically and mentally. Thanks, but no.
I’ve always found real beauty had nothing to do with how someone looks on the outside but you know, most of America disagrees with me. Take a look at the magazine racks in your local grocery store. How many people you see around you resemble those covers? Does that make those people less beautiful?
What about you? How does it feel to compare yourself to any one of those perfect (aka “photoshopped”) bodies? Probably not that great. So who’s at fault? You? Our culture? The magazine? The graphic editors? The fashion designers? The models or actors on the covers? Does it matter? What really matters is that we let go of this perfect, yet impossible, standard.
Every time you look in the mirror, find something that makes you happy. If you see things that you feel “need improvement,” only make those changes for yourself because it would make YOU happy.
When you feel negatively about some part of yourself, that’s just you comparing said part to what you’ve been told is beautiful. We see our perfectly healthy waistline and think: “I should be skinnier because everyone else is looking at me and thinking I’m fat.” No, I promise they’re not. They’re thinking: “I should be skinnier because everyone else is looking at me and thinking I’m fat.”
So what makes someone beautiful? I can’t answer such a subjective question, but I would argue that being compassionate, appropriately healthy, and being comfortable in your own skin is a good place to start. Sure, there are technically some objective standards of beauty based on research such as facial symmetry, or how well a woman’s hips seemed prepared for childbirth. However, you can be “technically beautiful” and still be an asshole, and that’s not exactly attractive in my book.
If your body is in an unhealthy place, I encourage you to take steps but if you’re healthy, maybe let yourself off the hook a little. You’ve been through enough.
