Personally I believe that if a woman wants to hate her body, or pick things out that she doesn’t like about it, then that’s OK. I know a lot of people will disagree, and I already understand why, because we should be encouraging women to love everything about themselves, blah blah blah.
But how about we turn the tables for a moment. Society is too pressuring. It’s making me personally feel that I’m in no way allowed to dislike my body. That if I look in the mirror and see a spot that I think looks ugly that all the women-lovers in the world will jump on me. That if I want to lose some weight everybody will label me an ‘attention-seeker’.
I don’t love everything about myself, or my appearance. That would make me unbearable to be around, because the likelihood is I’d be extremely vain. It has to be human nature to dislike certain things about ourselves, otherwise we would never strive to improve. I read an inspiring article that said ‘it is human nature to try and cover our flaws, but it is important for us to recognise our imperfections and see how we can improve ourselves’.
This brought to my mind, society is essentially telling a woman that she has to be quiet about what she hates about her body, because that will make everybody feel better. This isn’t true. A woman will not speak about her imperfections to others, but instead hide them until she is alone at home, and hate on herself privately anyway, probably driving herself to anxiety.
Nobody is perfect, and society should stop trying to force that motto into all women.
I’m not saying that it’s OK for women to feel very depressed about their body, or themselves, and I fully believe there are ways to solve that. But a mere ‘oh I feel fat today’ isn’t wrong. There is nothing wrong with that statement, and if people want to say it let them go ahead, because people aren’t always attention-seeking, talking is simply some people’s method of therapy.
I also believe that it is alright if a woman wants to change her body. I wouldn’t ever do this myself, but it’s about what personally makes you happy. If my friend wanted to get a nose job I wouldn’t shout at them or get angry at them for hating themselves (unlike society) instead I would support them and be waiting at the end with a big hug and words of encouragement.
The problem used to be that society criticised women’s bodies too much, whether it be weight, or complexion, but now the problem is that society has gone polar-opposite. We are choked to the point where if we hate ourselves we are labelled as ‘body bullies’ and named as attention-seekers.
I doubt we’ll ever find the happy medium.
Through A Fresh Pair Of Eyes 