Let me start this off by saying that I love to see people being happy with their bodies. I want everyone to feel awesome about their bodies and regardless of your size I think you deserve to feel beautiful. What you’re about to read is me detailing this weird double standard I have for myself. I’m not “big” as such (curvy though yas, no thigh gaps here either) and FYI I do not consider “big” or “small” or WHATEVER to mean that you are not beautiful – not in any way, shape or form! But for some reason, even though I look around at people of all shapes and sizes and am just in awe at how beautiful they are and how great they look, my mind just doesn’t consider that my own body deserves that same love, freedom and understanding. I seem to think that the representation in marketing of “ideal” bodies and all this talk of diets and “beach bodies” and the strive for “perfection” should apply to me, but me only.
Sometime after graduating, in the midst of trying to forge a self-employed career for myself and cope with my anxiety, my body changed. Not in a dramatic way and not in a way that anyone else seemed to notice (or if they did, they have all been kind enough to not say anything). I refuse to weigh myself out of a desire to hold onto as many scraps of mental healthiness I can but I could tell that my waist wasn’t as small as before and maybe some other bits had changed a little and at this point I secretly developed this HUGE self consciousness about my stomach. I guess I just had this terrifying feeling that people were going to judge me for my body changing. This little rounded soft thing started causing me so much pain and embarrassment – leaving me feeling as though I just could not bear to expose it and have to see it with my own eyes and be reminded that people might have things to say about it. I know this sounds dramatic, that’s because it is, it is absolute madness. ANYWAY.
I’m not looking for your pity or your reassurance, guys. I can recognize the crazy that’s happening in my head once I step back from it. All it does it just seriously highlight just how deep all this media marketing shit goes – that living my life can be hindered by how much I end up thinking about one innocent part of my body because it’s not the same as the majority of the models I see and because it’s gotten a little bit bigger. So I wanted to take some photos of my stomach exposed and post them on the goddamn internet to try and reclaim some power over my body. I wanted to take and share some photos of me smiling and feeling as good in my body as I currently could in the hopes that it would make me feel strong and that it could help anyone else who’s feeling the way I do feel a little better. Because I know it makes me feel a gazillion times better to read what Jes Baker has to say, to watch Meghan Tonjes talk body confidence and hear Gala Darling talk about self love. Why not add my voice to the mix? The louder the body positive talk gets, the better.
In a weird way sometimes I feel like my body isn’t extreme enough one way or another to be considered a relevant part of the body positivity and love movement. It’s very much just average I guess. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need all this positive stuff. I think the majority of us are affected by what we see in the media and so on, regardless of what our bodies actually look like. I’m just an inbetweener, a body type that isn’t being specifically attacked as far as I’ve seen, but I’m not immune to all the passive messaging out there.
I hope this is in some way helpful!
Have a beautiful day you beautiful lil bean you.
Love love love
xxx
KittiesAnchorsandHappyStuff 