Fcuk Beauty Standards
If there’s nothing I hate more it’s someone making you feel like you are not enough.
I spent 30 years thinking that I did not have worth or value as a human because diet culture taught me that I wasn’t valuable because I wasn’t thin.
I can vividly remember hating my body because of it’s size. Spending hours in the mirror, grabbing my fat and wishing that I could make it disappear or cut it off. Twisting so I could see the cellulite on the back of my thighs and thinking that if I just lose a little more weight, maybe it would go away. The absolute worst thing about all of this? I look back at photos of myself from that time and think that I looked great. That is what beauty standards and diet culture will give you: a warped perception of yourself that only years later; looking back, you think, “What was I thinking? I actually looked great!”
I have fully immersed myself into body positivity and the self love movement for the last three years now and boy let me tell you, what a shift my mindset has made because of that! While I still have body image days that aren’t so great I’m not actively hating myself anymore. I don’t look at my belly and wish that I could cut off the fat from it. I put less value into how I look and more value into how I feel and how I make others feel. I know that my body is not the most interesting thing about me and that life will not stop or wait for me to get to my “goal weight” or my “perfect body”. I know that the only way to live a full and interesting life is to do just that - live it! I know that bodies change because things never stay the same - no matter how much you want them too. I have learned that I can do so much more and experience so many more things if I stop letting thoughts of what other people might think of my body hold me back. I just go and do the things now. It doesn’t matter what I look like. How did I feel in that moment? The fact that I have multiple chins when I am laughing so hard that I’m crying no longer outweights the joy that I feel when I am laughing that hard. To focus on that feeling - the joy - and to really let it spread out over me and my body. That 100% beats not going over to a friend’s house because I couldn’t find something to wear.
In the past I wouldn’t have posted this image because of my hangups with my negative body image.
But now? Here are the things that I tell myself now when looking at the image (these are some good things to tell yourself too if you have a hard time looking at photos of yourself):
It’s okay that my stomach hangs
It’s okay that my stomach covers most of my bikini bottom
It’s still okay to wear that bikini
This is what my body looks like wearing this bikini and it is neither a good or bad thing. It just is.
It’s okay to be seen and to put yourself out there.
It’s okay to breath. I don’t have to suck in my stomach for every single photo because it’ll make my stomach appear smaller. Breath. Just… breath. This is what my body looks like when I’m not holding my breath.
It’s okay to live in this moment if you want too.