Anyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about this topic. Also, I want to make note that the reason I chose this specific picture for this post is because I distinctly remember my mind flooding with negative criticism and judgement for the way my body looked when this was taken. 🙂
Truly, I barely know where to even begin, so let me start by repeating my title. It’s time to normalize ALL bodies.
Who said we had to look a certain way to be found attractive? Who said that one body type was more more beautiful than another? Who convinced us that our VALUE came distinctly from our physical appearance? I’ll tell you who.
Diet industries. Diet Industries reinforced by the media.
One frustrating idea that the public have been taught is that, the larger the body, the worse the health is. Get this: every single size body can be healthy or unhealthy. It is not solely based on size or weight or BMI or any of that b.s., and it PAINS me that we are taught otherwise. Diet culture harms people of all sizes, perpetuates disordered eating, and makes full recovery to those harshly affected nearly impossible. We have to start not only speaking out against these societal norms, but act out against them. Here are a few reasons why this is so important:
- Diet culture perpetuates an idea that human value is based on physical appearance
- It turns joyful movement into something seen as punishment or a way to manipulate body size
- encourages following ridiculous rules on how, what, or when to eat, which can lead to obsession.
- It makes us believe that changing our physical appearance will make us happier.
I just want to take a moment to talk on 4.
I will admit, I am a major victim to this one. Everyone has their moments of looking in the mirror thinking “if I just looked ___ then I would feel ___” I personally would do this with things like weight loss. I once read this post that said “Losing weight to improve body image is like bringing the car to a car wash when the ‘check engine’ light turns on. At first it’ll feel good to do something for out car, we might get compliments that it looks nice, we’ll enjoy the fresh new scent, but it’s not going to fix whatever is going on inside.” I will say, I learned this the hard way. And it isn’t something that we can easily convince ourselves of either… I mean, we’ve spent our lives being told otherwise so I don’t expect this idea to be a simple click.
In the end, this is YOUR life and no one else’s. Know that beauty goes so far beyond your skin and the only reason you may sometimes think otherwise is from diet culture. Remember, diet industries don’t care about ruining mental health. They gain money and power from it.
This post is just a tiny speck of the detail I will go into with this topic.
Know that you are Always worthy of love and that you are absolutely stunning. PERIOD.
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