What does Body Positivity mean to you?
To me, it means having an understanding of my relationship with my body and challenging the ideas of what society tells me I should look like. I have always been “big-boned”, tall and struggled with the idea that my body wasn’t okay because other people made me feel that way. I would stare at other girls growing up and pick out parts of their bodies that I wish had... The truth is that everyone feels insecure sometimes.
Maybe your partner makes a hurtful comment about your weight and you internalize that, maybe your friends talk about hating their bodies non-stop, maybe you live in a city that doesn’t openly present body diversity in stores, magazines, etc. Learning to hate your body is EVERYWHERE - and we need to change that.
When you’re a little kid, you are full of life. You want to be seen, you want to show off your fun outfits and most of all, you want to show the world what your body can do! “Look how high I can swing!”, “Let’s see how fast we can run there and back!”. When in your life did this change?
We have reduced conversations about our body to being about aesthetics. Somehow wearing the right size of clothing = the idea that we will finally feel good about ourselves. I will tell you from experience that I have worked to get to the number on the scale that I thought would make me happy but it didn’t. It’s never enough and pretty soon your entire existence becomes consumed by that number on a scale. So how do we change this?
I have an amazing friend named Cristin Raven. She is kind, resilient, brave, intelligent, beautiful down to her core and she changed the way that I speak to people about their bodies, after sharing that she wanted to be more mindful of how she responds to others. She shared that she wanted to change her dialogue with people by stating that they looked “happy” or “healthy” instead of saying “you look good” or “have you lost weight?”. She wanted to celebrate people for what their bodies could do and how that made people feel, instead of celebrating a number on a scale. I have now embodied this idea, and I encourage you to do the same.
You are SO much more than your aesthetics. You are: your kind heart, your hard work, your good friendship, your humour, your resiliency and so much more.
We can create a community of appreciation by teaching ourselves and others to look beyond aesthetics when thinking about loving our bodies. It starts small, but there are daily mantras you can practice to help change your mindset to have a healthier relationship with your physical self:
Name three things your body does for you
Name three things you love about your body
Name three things you want to thank your body for
You are enough - more than enough, the rawest version of yourself. Let's embrace our bodies how they are, and celebrate our own and others beauty.