Transform Your Life Through Feminism
The premise is that women are their own worst enemies, focusing on their worst physical qualities. A sketch artist draws them based on their descriptions, then redraws them based on the description of others. When they see the side-by-side comparison, they realize that they’re more beautiful than they thought. That may sound inspiring, but it doesn’t work for a number of reasons. Here are five.
You’ve been taught, over and over again, that people’s opinions of you matter. You’ve been taught that if someone thinks you’re too fat, or too loud, or too smart, or too dumb, or too whatever, or not enough whatever, that they get to have a say in how you feel about yourself. So I’d like to introduce you to the deep spiritual practice of Not Giving A Shit.
Just like anti-perspirant marketers had to convince people that underarm sweat and smell is disgusting and kept you from getting dates and jobs, diet marketers had to convince people that fat is disgusting and kept you from dates and jobs. They turned a normal thing – bodily diversity – into a pathology. They keyed in to people’s deepest fears of social ostracism and made scads of money in the process.
Being happy in a relationship is nearly impossible if you feel unlovable. You’ll either ignore your needs and act from a place of keeping your partner happy rather than yourself or push your partner away in order to confirm your belief that you’re unlovable. But we all have flaws and being lovable doesn’t mean being perfect. So here are a few steps to help you believe that you are, indeed, lovable.
We’re told everyday that fat is unhealthy and dieting is healthy. Often people who say “fat is bad” do so from a place of alleged concern. But this is called concern trolling – worrying about someone health and weight in a way that says they can’t be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies. It also reinforces ideas about fat that are untrue. So I’d like to present you with some facts here to debunk these myths.
When we lose this comparison battle, we feel bad, jealous, envious, and less than whole. When we win the comparison battle, we feel a bit of satisfaction mixed with an underlying fear that we may have won this battle, but what if things change and we lose out next time? In essence, comparing yourself to others is always a losing game. So here’s how to stop comparing and start enjoying what you’ve got.
Myths and stereotypes about weight are so normalized. So it’s no wonder if you (person who is worried about a loved one) are invested in the idea that fat is bad or want them to be spared the pain of being fat in our society. And it’s no wonder that you (person who has gained weight or is fat) may have some mixed feelings about the “help” that people want to give. Here’s some ways to have this conversation.
