On the 5th of every month, bloggers from around the world are open to write about rights and issues concerning women. First started by Shine and Marie, we’re hoping to bring a variety of women’s issues to the forefront to make people aware of what’s going on. For the month of July, we’ve chosen to write about Body Image. Please join us in telling us your stories, thoughts, and ideas on a monthly basis. To read previous installments, click here.
I have a fat foot (the right one) and a “food baby” lingering at my waist. My calves are huge from a lifetime spent on my tippy-toes, stretching to reach items beyond the grasp of my short 5′1″ frame. And gravity … well, just a week and a half shy of my 25th birthday, it’s proving to be quite a force.
We all endlessly struggle with body image, myself included. And I could use this Femme Writes opportunity to babble on and on about finding physical assurance from the personality within or discussing the ways we should encourage each other rather than joining with our female friends to brutally self-critique. But I tried writing that type of post and, honestly, it wasn’t genuine.
As a 20-something who regularly looks in the mirror and finds fault, I won’t spit lies at you about confidence or learning to love yourself as-is. Instead I’ll steal the quotes of a few others in the hopes that one day, some day, the battle with body image will be no more. ‘Til then I’ll continue my horrible diet of cheeseburgers and milkshakes while consistently complaining that my waistline is too large, yet refusing to get my lazy ass off the couch and maximize my $25/month gym membership. Such is life … ha.
“Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes.”
Sophia Loren
“God made a very obvious choice when he made me voluptuous; why would I go against what he decided for me? My limbs work, so I’m not going to complain about the way my body is shaped.”
Drew Barrymore
“The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.”
Marilyn Monroe
“I don’t want my body to be a distraction from my talent or my brain.”
Shania Twain
“Keep in mind that television, magazines, movies, and even newspapers rarely show images of average-shaped bodies.”
Julia Ross, author.
“It is the mind that makes the body.”
Sojourner Truth
“If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred.”
Walt Whitman
“I don’t need plastic in my body to validate me as a woman.”
Courtney Love
Actual, genuine, 100% perfection is, if you ask me, little more than a photoshop technique.
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Thanks for these quotes…I haven’t been loving my body these days, even though I know I should. More than anything, I want to focus on being healthy.
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Mindy Reply:
July 6th, 2010 at 10:47 am
@Akirah, Likewise, which is why I was having trouble writing my post today. I want to be healthy and not worry about what I look like, but sometimes that’s tough.
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Loving my body just doesn’t come naturally for me. It’s so easy to pick apart what I don’t like about my outward appearance when I look in a mirror and I find it so hard to actually stare at myself and say, “Stephany, you are beautiful.” It feels like a lie.
It’s definitely an area of my life I need to work on, to be more accepting. Frankly, I HATE it when other people constantly degrade themselves by talking bad about things they don’t like about themselves…but it seems perfectly acceptable for me to do it.
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Mindy Reply:
July 6th, 2010 at 10:48 am
@Stephany, I’m not sure it comes naturally to any of us… =/
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Of course there are a couple of “trouble spots” I see when I look at myself in the mirror, but generally, I’m quite content with my appearance. Ever since I started eating better and becoming more aware of what I put in my body, I’ve never felt better, physically.
love your collection of quotes!
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That’s a pretty awesome photoshop ad but goes a long way to describe in a picture how ads, movies, tv, you name it constantly shove down our throats what we should aspire to look like.
No thanks, I like my big nose and stretch marks.
Great post lady and thanks for taking part in this!
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