Body Image

I wanted to do a week around body image because I feel it’s pretty impossible to ignore it with social media being such a big part of today’s society. It’s also something that most people struggle with or have struggled with at some point in their lives and I think there are ways of looking at things a little differently that I would love to share.

We are constantly bombarded with airbrushed images of bodies or pictures of people who have a team of people to make them look picture perfect or have had plastic surgery, which leads to us having unrealistic body images to compare ourselves too. And part of being human is a bizarre need to compare ourselves. But the truth is that even the people behind those images that you are seeing as ‘perfect’ are not happy with their own image either. There is always going to be someone skinnier, curvier, more (whatever it is that you see as beauty) and so the constant cycle of unhealthy comparison continues. It can be hard to be satisfied with your own body image when looking through a superficial lens, comparing yourself and seeing beauty as an external thing but it’s become so normalised to look at beauty in this way.

I started noticing that even when people did change their external appearance to become what they perceived to be more beautiful, they were often left still feeling the same about themselves. So how can we change this way of looking at ourselves? I believe it doesn’t come from searching outside of yourself, on social media or through a mirror, I believe it comes from looking inside. Taking the importance away from how you feel about your external beauty and concentrating on your internal beauty.

How do you perceive yourself internally? How are you talking to yourself inside? Becoming aware of this can be the start of real change to our body image. Taking the power away from worrying about how other people perceive us and realising that we can change the way we see ourselves and that in turn will have a huge impact on how the external world sees us.

For example, picture someone showing up in front of you really confident and self assured, it doesn’t matter what they look like, you receive them as confident and happy with how they look and so will treat them as if they are beautiful just as they are (which of course they are). Now picture someone showing up really self conscious, without meaning too you will notice that they feel they want to hide something, maybe even get conscious yourself and you will receive them in a different way. So much of our body image and the way we are treated by others is a total reflection of how we feel and are treating ourselves first.

What I have learnt recently is that our external world always mirrors our internal world. Change the internal world and the external world changes too. I know this is much easier said than done but it really does work. Even small steps in the direction of understanding how we feel about our own body image internally and making changes to be kinder and more compassionate to ourselves, can make a huge change to our own body image and how we view others. What if the very thing that makes you beautiful is the very thing that you are afraid of about your image? The most unique parts of you. If you can learn to appreciate and love those parts of you then other people can love them too. Beauty is in individuality not looking like someone else.