"I DON'T LOOK LIKE THAT"
This one goes out to my fellow college gals...
**DISCLAIMER: Body image is not a gender/age exclusive issue. College-aged female can be substituted with any other gender identity/age group**
"Cute top!" "oh this? I literally just picked up the first thing I saw this morning."
We're all familiar with this sentence. We've either heard it in a conversation or said it ourselves. It's the typical response we give when someone compliments our physical appearance. Subtle and just the right amount of self-deprecating, it's the perfect way to let someone know that we are "surprised" by their remark because we don't think we're all that. It's a common symptom of the underlying issue that affects us all: body image.
We've watched the inspiring buzzfeed videos, our relatives have always told us what beautiful girls we are, we've seen the #body-positivity posts on twitter, blah blah blah... what does that all really mean?
From a young age, I've seen magazine articles devoted to "10 Tips to Follow for a Bikini Body", "How to Look your Sexiest", "Lose 10 Pounds Fast!"- - you get the picture.
We all talk about wanting to lose weight, detox, cleanse, repeat. And then we pin ourselves down when we don't achieve the coveted, "bikini body."
As college females especially we are constantly reminded to look our best. "Here are 15 tips to avoiding the Freshman 15!, 10 Ways to Get Your Spring Break Body, read more now on our mobile app!" - -it's all too familiar and extremely harmful.
Now that I've finished my freshman year, [and at a university known for its exceptionally physically attractive student body] I'm very well acquainted with the turbulent journey to self-love.
College is a time of transition into the "real world" while we're still in a ripe stage of self-discovery and trial-runs. With the pressures we face to figure it all out, college is stressful enough as it is. Body-image is the icing on the cake.
Fearing/obsessing about gaining the dreaded freshman 15, hesitating to go out because we feel bloated in our outfits, comparing ourselves to our skinnier past selves or others around us-- these are just a few of the self-depricating things we're guilty of.
Wanting to look our best isn't something we should be ashamed of; it's a perfectly normal and healthy thing to strive toward. The issue is when we let them (being 'society') convince us to have that desire for all the wrong reasons; when we're just seeking outside approval.
In doing so, we completely neglect our own needs and desires. It becomes unhealthy. It's self-destructive.
This brings me to another factor that's pushed us to compare and contrast ourselves with others in hopes of pleasing them: social media.
I'm an avid supporter of social media's power to further connect the world in a digital era and bring light to issues that would otherwise not be communicated. But it's also added a lot of fuel to the fire of already-existing issues we face.
With a click of a button, touch of the screen, we're exposed to a whole feed of perfect instagram models with perfect bodies, perfect relationship goals, perfect lives.
We coin these things as #GOALS and fail to recognize that everyone is their best selves plus photoshop when it comes to social media. We forget that, like those "candids" we've all hit like on/ posted (guilty), none of it is real.
In truth, we all put our best selves online- our best outfits, our best filters, our best selfies, etc. We don't publicize or post our fears, insecurities, break downs, and the remaining plethora of personal issues for the whole world to see. Our posts don't reflect who we actually are; they reflect who we want/feel we need to be seen as.
And yet, we are so quick to forget all this when we scroll through our feeds. Rather than be inspired and connected, we view social media as a competition- a "who can fake it the best." We ask ourselves: why don't I look like that?
Despite what they tell us, a juice cleanse isn't a quick-fix. Being a size 2 woman doesn't make you any more lovable/worthy as a human being than being a size 12 woman does. Physical attractiveness [by society's standards] isn't a pre-requisite for love or success or worth.
So what really matters? Being our true selves- embracing ourselves and each other for the bad*ss, powerful women that we are.
It's easy to retweet #self-love on twitter without batting an eyelash and not actually feeling the weight of these words. We can be aware of the importance of body positivity and self-confidence without really believing in our self-worth, without cultivating our power as women and as human beings.
We need to start truly believing in these positive messages, not trivialize them because they are trending topics. We need to stop glamorizing self-hatred and low self-esteem. Start by making tangible changes:
"Cute top!" "oh no I literally just picked up the first thing saw this morning." No. You picked out the shirt the night before. Own it. "You're so pretty" "ugh please have you looked in the mirror?!". Don't feel like you can't acknowledge your beauty; own it.
Social media is what we make of it. We have the choice: we decide if we want it to inspire us, connect us, or if we want it to destroy us. And to do that we have to remind ourselves that they do not define us. The number of likes we get, the number of followers, the number on the scale, they do not define us.
Our strength, how we treat others, pursuing our passions, whether we inspire- these are the things that make us beautiful, the things that define us.
We need to work towards destroying a culture of self-hatred, not giving into societal pressures. At the end of the day, one size does not fit all... let's step off the scale and step into our lives.
LET'S BE OUR OWN #GOALS.
**HEADER PHOTO: mine, part of a collage.
**DO NOT OWN GIFS
SCROLL DOWN FOR MORE
