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.
2 Comments
Laura’s Logic
12/3/2022 02:23:17 pm
You are the cutest, sweetest person ever. Love you lots 💜 xxx
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