When talking about this subject with a group of lady friends, I realized that the weight of our conversation was still not sufficient to actually see how much damage we do to ourselves.

Before you get completely lost, let me sketch you a situation:

Browsing my social media, a friend uploads a picture of herself while running a marathon.

Attached comment: “I finished the marathon, sorry for the ugly sweaty running face.”

Later on, a hiking picture of a friend, with the attached comment: “This area was beautiful, I want everyone to see it! P.S. Don’t mind my face, I have no make up on.”

And that’s when sadness sunk and dug all the way into my body.

I started to question, “Is this really how we view ourselves?!”

Most likely the (painful) answer to that question is, “Yes.”

A lot of us have carried the weight of external criticism and have listened to the angry voices of the media/parents/school people for so long that we have adopted the belief of not being good enough. Having to look a certain way in order to count, in order to be seen and valued.

De-power an amazing experience (like a beautiful moment, a marathon, giving birth, any beautiful moment at all), by excusing ourselves for not looking or being a certain way.

When did this happen? And when did this take over?

Would we ever speak to our little cousin this way? Our daughter? Our sister? Our brother or nephew?

Would we express these exact words if a little human would walk up to us in excitement about a new life adventure?

Would we tell this little human “Yeah, it’s all cute that you climbed a tree, but let’s do something about that face of yours. You look ridiculous.”

(With grace) I hope we won’t.

We have allowed voices and people, to tell us how we should feel and to what agreements we need to live up to, before being validated.

Of course, I am guilty of this too. Probably on a bigger scale than I dare to admit.

I too, write on different kind of internet platforms about self image, the struggle of food and how “society’s” opinion has blown so much out of proportion, that we seem to lose the track and fact, that we are society.

Beyonce and JLo never sat down any standard. Nor have they put down other women, for not looking like them, we do this. Society. We as humans.

We need to learn and teach our children, that the magazine is false.

Which brings me to the question: Why are we even buying the magazine? No one ever felt or started to feel good after seeing the magazines and glorifying other people’s images. I feel we need to stop glorifying humans for their exterior, for, by doing that, we set an example of what is right and wrong.

If you look at history and culture, what defines “beauty”? There are so many changes and even more differences.

Let’s all quit, right now, with bashing on thin women, stop bashing on thick women. Stop bashing women at all.

In Utopia these adjectives shouldn’t exist for anything other than measuring a brick wall or material.

Humans are not material. Therefore they should not be measured.

Maybe we need to stop following the chick with the hot ass on Instagram and follow the person that smiles and travels the world. Or the one that takes care of their children and shows their pride. The one that tries to take care of herself, for the matter of health and because that makes her feel good, instead of for the sake of looking a certain way so she can be adored physically by others.

 

Relephant: 

“You Are Beautiful.” Natural Naked Body Images. {Nudity}

~

Author: Bara Cerna

Editor: Travis May

Photo: Flickr/Dollen