‘Body positivity' is a concept I struggled to cope with and still do to this day but I can say very confidently that I'm getting better and I'm writing this down for someone who is possibly experiencing the same thing as me and needs a reminder or some sort of motivation.
I never thought of my body as something that would be perceived as unattractive or not good enough in the eyes of others as well as mine. Nor did i ever think it'd someday be something that I'd grow to be most insecure about. To me one of the worst ways in which I've put myself down is by being negative about my body. It has brought about times when I wouldn't want to step out of my home to even go to school on some days or attend social events because of how judgemental I'd get about myself or because of how much I dreaded having to hear discreet and subtle remarks about how I look or about how I've gained weight and about how I'd look better if I lost weight in certain areas.
Reading quotes and stories about body positivity and body-embracing did motivate me a lot and made me feel better but just like the saying “It's easier said than done”, actually putting these steps into practice was much harder than I thought it would be, which is why I found saying affirmative and positive stuff to myself more effective than just listening to or reading motivational and inspiring stories and failing to implement them practically. Something that I learnt during all of this was that the comments and remarks NEVER stop. Even if you do lose the very weight that people criticise you for, several others will find another, different flaw in you and so the cycle never ends. I keep thinking about how society and social media have shaped our minds into believing that particular body types just don't match society’s expectations, and that particular body types aren't considered attractive or good enough, and to think about how massively it has affected us knowingly or unknowingly to the point where even the smallest changes in our body brings us so much discomfort and worry and a fear of judgement. For example, if we gain a little face weight we immediately start looking up exercises or ways to get rid of the ‘weight’ in question. Some people may justify this reaction by saying they personally don't like how they look because of certain changes in their body and that is understandable until you realize that if no one ever told you that a certain feature doesn't look good on you, you'd never know, right? If we truly thought of ourselves as absolutely beautiful and perfect and if there never was a ‘good body’ and ‘not so good body’ idea we wouldn't be bothered by a little weight gain/loss in places, right?
What motivated me to practice self-love was when I came to think about how we tend to behave when we're genuinely in love with someone , right from our parents, to our significant others, to our friends and even to our pets. Notice how we never pay attention to the flaws of our loved ones .Even if we are aware of their flaws, we still love them the same and accept them as they are and their flaws almost never tend to come in the way of our love for them and yet these same people are never going to be with you forever but we still make sure they know just how much we adore and love them and that is because humans in general have the capacity to distribute that amount of love and respect for another person. Now, think about the fact that if we can adore a whole other person to such levels, we can give 10 or even a 100 times more of that to ourselves cause we've known ourselves from the very start and will continue to do so till the very end, right? Ironically though, loving ourselves isn't as easy as loving another person but it still isn't impossible. Each of us have our very own ways to coming to good and accepting terms with ourselves and I think the first step is to understand ourselves better. Often, we tend to sleep over our insecurities and we try to build a ‘tough’ exterior towards people's opinions about us as a coping mechanism and that is something that I've very often done and I've come to realize that doing that does nothing more than making you feel worse about knowing you had to fake most of that ‘self love’ and that ‘tough’ exterior.
Talking, learning and understanding yourself and learning to embrace your body as it is can make a huge difference to how YOU start to see yourself and trust me, once you learn to accept yourself as you are, even the most obvious and hurtful comments from the person who's opinion matters the most will seem like nothing because at the end of the day you are the one that matters in all of this, and your confidence is what will take you places. At least 25% of the people you are associated with right now won't even be a part of your life in the next 5 years or so and we all know that's true, and if it is why must we knowingly let their opinions and comments about us matter?
Body positivity is something that is being normalized lately but needs to be spoken about more often. The very fact that it took me over 3 years to finally open up about this shows just how much society makes one feel about their very own self. Each and every body type is beautiful in its very own way. Literally no body type is unattractive or not good enough and if you think it is then here's your much needed reminder that it isn't.
I'd even like to add that working out or exercising or doing anything to make you feel better about your body is extremely fine as long as you're doing it to feel better about yourself and not because a few people told you you'll look better that way. Remember to always have your ideal self as a goal for when you want to grow in any way. The moment you start doing something to please someone else in spite of you being perfectly fine with it is when you need to remember who comes first and that's YOU and your opinion about yourself alone.
To whoever's reading this right now, here's your *virtual hug* and even though I may not know you personally, I do know and I want you to know too that I genuinely think your body is beautiful and perfect just the way it is and that you're very very beautiful/handsome and that you're an amazing person both inside and out and that you deserve all of the love and happiness in the world.
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