Hello everyone! Welcome to the last post in my body positivity series. It's been a journey. If you've made it this far, I applaud you. So far we've covered the beauty industry, ageism, male self-confidence, a celebrity culture and dealing with insecure peers. We've gone through a range of demographics and the ways in which their body image is effected by their surroundings. We've thought about coping mechanisms, looking at ourselves in a different light and today, I wanted to talk a little more generally. For my final post, I wanted to address the feeling of inferiority. It's an emotion we've all felt in some form or another and one that massively contributes to a negative mentality about ourselves. But how can we combat human nature and our instincts? As humans, it's in our nature to compare ourselves to others. There's always a prettier friend, a smarter sibling, a more athletic colleague. The problem with that mentality is that we're refusing to accept that we are all different and that we all have different strengths and weaknesses. The world wouldn't work otherwise and, I don't know about you, but a society filled with robotic duplicates is a little frightening to me. Imagine a world without diversity, without culture, without all of the things that make us human and define us as a species. A lot of people in the media claim that being body positive means ignoring these emotions that create self-doubt, which would be a really unhealthy mental process. In fact, being body positive is about acknowledging those negative thoughts and going through a mental process that eventually leads you to body acceptance. Body acceptance is a vital step in order to achieve a body positive state. It allows us to acknowledge our natural instincts, recognise how we feel, and then understand why we feel like that. For example, we could feel less intelligent next to a friend who is particularly successful at the moment. We may feel less attractive when we compare ourselves to a colleague that gets more sexual attention. But through body acceptance, we learn to appreciate ourselves despite any outside influence and accepting that we have our own good points to focus on as well. Some people think that being body positive means that you can't want to make any changes to your lifestyle, which is completely false. We can love our bodies, and through that love, decide to want to make some modifications. For example, you're allowed to want a new haircut, change up your makeup or your wardrobe choices, exercise, get a tattoo, have a tattoo removed, and so on. There are no rules in body positivity that disallow changing the way you look so long as you maintain a healthy relationship with yourself. The thing is, feeling inferior is a natural thing. It's normal to have self-doubts, to question yourself and your abilities. However, when you allow those negative thoughts to take over your life, that's when you need to reevaluate your relationship with yourself. Being body positive isn't a 24/7 process, it's just a means to promote a little self-love and get us thinking more positively about ourselves. I'm not here to tell you that you'll never have another negative thought about yourself. I'm not saying that all of our insecurities are cured when we adopt a body positive mentality. I'm just here to help us appreciate ourselves a little more, to encourage us to boost our confidence and treat ourselves a little better. I'm tired of being told how to feel about my body. Maybe we should all care less about what other people think and more about what makes us happy. Walk a mile in my shoes and then judge me for how I look. Until then, let's all embrace a little more body positivity because damn it, we deserve it.
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Hello again! Welcome back to another post during my body positivity week. This one is a little different to my posts so far as I've decided to focus on how to deal with insecure peers. I think by now, we've discovered that everyone gets a little insecure from time to time. We all have things we don't quite feel comfortable with, and that's totally normal. But how do you help others deal with their insecurities, especially when they're becoming more and more negative about themselves? Health issues relating to having a negative body image include anorexia, bulimia and so many other eating disorders, body dysmorphia, resulting in varying degrees of anxiety and depression, as well as over-exercising and injury. When these negative thoughts start to take over people's lives then it can have life-threatening results. So what can we do to help those around us? I think one of the most important things you can do for someone is to remind them of their worth and point out all of their great qualities, physical and mental. We are more than just our appearance. Being a supportive friend/family member/colleague etc is often the best thing we can do for our loved ones in terms of boosting their confidence and helping them appreciate themselves. Of course, there are some things out of our grasp. We can't cure many mental health issues surrounding body image, but there are professionals who can help. Encouraging our loved ones to seek this help is also an important step and one that can ultimately be life saving. It's not always easy, but being patient and understanding is the best thing you can do. Another thing we can do is promote a healthy lifestyle. For example, you could cook healthy meals together, join a gym together or take up another physical activity that suits you more. Making healthy lifestyle changes can boost our body confidence and kickstart a healthier way of looking at ourselves, even by just making small changes. In my next post, I'll looking at things from a different perspective and assessing how we can deal with feeling inferior ourselves. Until next time, beauties! Hello again! Welcome back to another topic in the body positivity series. Today, I'm taking on a big one. The celebrity culture. Throughout a lot of the other topics, we've discussed how the media and a celebrity culture can have a negative impact on our self-esteem. First of all, I have to point out how difficult it must be to constantly be in the public eye, to be body shamed and verbally attacked for perfectly normal features. A lot of celebrities and influencers have recently taken to social media to express their body positivity, including Stacey Solomon who frequently shares unedited pics of her stomach in real-life positions to show that no one is completely flat and that she is proud of her figure post-children. That message is so empowering to me, so I have to admit that celebrity culture doesn't always have a negative impact on our body image. However, a celebrity culture in which photo shopping is normalised and figures are portrayed at their best angles in the best lighting is a little unrealistic. Plus, we have to bare in mind that these people are literally paid to look the way they do. Their jobs are to work out, wear nice things and constantly look their best, which must be exhausting, but it's also an unrealistic portrayal of real-life. An article in the Guardian found that a survey carried out by the YMCA youth charity discovered that 62% of 15-16 year old's felt that social media increased their expectations of how they should look. A celebrity culture is damaging minds from a young age and training them to believe that they are not enough when in fact the image they're aiming to live up to is often unobtainable. 58% of 11-16 year old's were reported as claiming a celebrity culture was the main influence in their desire to achieve 'physical perfection'. We have to start changing the way we feel about our bodies and accepting that they are functioning just perfectly as they are. We're all guilty of selecting the most flattering photos of ourselves to showcase to the world via social media. It's the way our brains have been trained, to only show what we deem to be the best of ourselves. In a sense, we are striving to conform to this celebrity culture by also adopting the mentality that we must edit our photos and snap at what we are told is our 'best angle'. This is only creating more mental health problems and promoting anxiety and depression from such a young age. The likes of Face Tune and Photoshop have a lot to answer for in terms of deteriorating our self-esteem. All in all, I'd say we need to quit comparing ourselves to others, celebrity or not, and start appreciating ourselves for what we are. We don't need an app to edit our features. We don't need to touch up our 'flaws'. We need to be complimenting each other and ourselves. With that in mind, I've decided to do a slightly different post for tomorrow's addition. I'll be focusing on dealing with insecure peers and how we can help others to acknowledge their worth and improve their self confidence. Until next time, beauties! Bonjour mes amis! Today I wanted to talk to you all about ageism, the rise in plastic surgery and the pressures to maintain a youthful look even as we grow older. With a new anti-wrinkle cream on the market every 5 minutes, the normalisation of ageism is growing and growing, and something we should be addressing in relation to body confidence. How many times have you heard the term, 'they look amazing for their age!' How many times have those words actually left your own lips? And how many times has that comment been in relation to a real-life person or a celebrity? More often than not, we're astounded to discover the actual age of celebrities. Thanks to high quality plastic surgery, cosmetics and photo editing, it's now easier than ever to maintain a youthful appearance. The BAAPS (British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons) reported that over 28,000 procedures took place in 2018 alone. Of those procedures, 92% were women, with the most popular alterations being for the breasts and eyelids. However, the biggest increases for women were liposuction, which increased by 12% from the previous year, and face lifts, which rose 9%. Liposuction procedures averaged out at a 9% increase across both gender which, to me, suggests that our body positivity is at an all time low. More and more people are feeling the need to make cosmetic amendments to their features and figures. The rise in liposuction operations implies that people are feeling the pressure to obtain a smaller frame, whilst the increase in face lifts suggest that more and more of us are trying to halt the ageing process. Interestingly enough, Mental Health online stated that one survey found that one in five adults over 55 felt anxious or depressed specifically due to their body image. Being body positive shouldn't stop once we reach a certain age. We should be respecting our bodies and thankful for all of the things it's got us through. The ageing process is inevitable for everyone, and whilst our bodies may function a little differently to a younger version of ourselves, it's something we must come to accept. I actually think that there is a certain grace and beauty in growing old. It's such a shame that the media and social pressures make us feel the need to modify bodies. With that in mind, I've decided to dedicate my next post to the Celebrity Culture and the impact is has on our body image. Until next time, beauties! Hello everyone! Welcome back to the last post in my body positivity series. It's been a journey. If you've made it this far, I applaud you. So far we've covered the beauty industry, ageism, male self-confidence, a celebrity culture and dealing with insecure peers. We've gone through a range of demographics and the ways in which their body image is effected by their surroundings. We've thought about coping mechanisms, looking at ourselves in a different light and today, I wanted to talk a little more generally. For my final post, I wanted to address the feeling of inferiority. It's an emotion we've all felt in some form or another and one that massively contributes to a negative mentality about ourselves. But how can we combat human nature and our instincts? As humans, it's in our nature to compare ourselves to others. There's always a prettier friend, a smarter sibling, a more athletic colleague. The problem with that mentality is that we're refusing to accept that we are all different and that we all have different strengths and weaknesses. The world wouldn't work otherwise and, I don't know about you, but a society filled with robotic duplicates is a little frightening to me. Imagine a world without diversity, without culture, without all of the things that make us human and define us as a species. A lot of people in the media claim that being body positive means ignoring these emotions that create self-doubt, which would be a really unhealthy mental process. In fact, being body positive is about acknowledging those negative thoughts and going through a mental process that eventually leads you to body acceptance. Body acceptance is a vital step in order to achieve a body positive state. It allows us to acknowledge our natural instincts, recognise how we feel, and then understand why we feel like that. For example, we could feel less intelligent next to a friend who is particularly successful at the moment. We may feel less attractive when we compare ourselves to a colleague that gets more sexual attention. But through body acceptance, we learn to appreciate ourselves despite any outside influence and accepting that we have our own good points to focus on as well. Some people think that being body positive means that you can't want to make any changes to your lifestyle, which is completely false. We can love our bodies, and through that love, decide to want to make some modifications. For example, you're allowed to want a new haircut, change up your makeup or your wardrobe choices, exercise, get a tattoo, have a tattoo removed, and so on. There are no rules in body positivity that disallow changing the way you look so long as you maintain a healthy relationship with yourself. The thing is, feeling inferior is a natural thing. It's normal to have self-doubts, to question yourself and your abilities. However, when you allow those negative thoughts to take over your life, that's when you need to reevaluate your relationship with yourself. Being body positive isn't a 24/7 process, it's just a means to promote a little self-love and get us thinking more positively about ourselves. I'm not here to tell you that you'll never have another negative thought about yourself. I'm not saying that all of our insecurities are cured when we adopt a body positive mentality. I'm just here to help us appreciate ourselves a little more, to encourage us to boost our confidence and treat ourselves a little better. I'm tired of being told how to feel about my body. Maybe we should all care less about what other people think and more about what makes us happy. Walk a mile in my shoes and then judge me for how I look. Until then, let's all embrace a little more body positivity because damn it, we deserve it. Hello again! Welcome back to another post during my body positivity week. This one is a little different to my posts so far as I've decided to focus on how to deal with insecure peers. I think by now, we've discovered that everyone gets a little insecure from time to time. We all have things we don't quite feel comfortable with, and that's totally normal. But how do you help others deal with their insecurities, especially when they're becoming more and more negative about themselves? Health issues relating to having a negative body image include anorexia, bulimia and so many other eating disorders, body dysmorphia, resulting in varying degrees of anxiety and depression, as well as over-exercising and injury. When these negative thoughts start to take over people's lives then it can have life-threatening results. So what can we do to help those around us? I think one of the most important things you can do for someone is to remind them of their worth and point out all of their great qualities, physical and mental. We are more than just our appearance. Being a supportive friend/family member/colleague etc is often the best thing we can do for our loved ones in terms of boosting their confidence and helping them appreciate themselves. Of course, there are some things out of our grasp. We can't cure many mental health issues surrounding body image, but there are professionals who can help. Encouraging our loved ones to seek this help is also an important step and one that can ultimately be life saving. Another thing we can do is promote a healthy lifestyle. For example, you could cook healthy meals together, join a gym together or take up another physical activity that suits you more. Making healthy lifestyle changes can boost our body confidence and kickstart a healthier way of looking at ourselves, even by just making small changes. In my next post, I'll looking at things from a different perspective and assessing how we can deal with feeling inferior ourselves. Until next time, beauties! |
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