At the ripe age of eleven, I started truly disliking my
body.
I have never been unhealthily overweight, just a little bit
through puberty with weight fluctuations and getting more wobbly bits.
Why did I start this sad new way of looking at myself so
young? It boils down to seeing other women in my life doing that to themselves.
We see our mothers and our grandmothers trying on clothes and saying 'I look so
ugly' or 'I look so fat'. We begin to look at ourselves and think that who
could possibly love us with a bigger belly, who could love us because we have a
bigger nose. We watch the people we look up to saying things so bad, we begin
to say them to ourselves too.
I had begun looking at social media around this age.
Everywhere I looked there was
'thinspiration' and pictures of perfect looking models in bikinis, with shimmering tans and thin waists. We look at our friends and think we wish we could have Rebecca's perfect smile or Janet's long legs, we compare the 'best' parts of them to us.
'thinspiration' and pictures of perfect looking models in bikinis, with shimmering tans and thin waists. We look at our friends and think we wish we could have Rebecca's perfect smile or Janet's long legs, we compare the 'best' parts of them to us.
It didn't help that at that point I had toxic friendships,
and was truly alone. The girls I was with, ran away from me and bullied me. I
think when we're bullied, or someone doesn't like us our mind races to why. Is
it because I'm not as pretty as this girl? Is it because I'm not as thin as
this girl? Is it because I'm too thin? That's when we begin to bully ourselves.
Staring at the mirror with tear stained eyes, we look to
everything that's 'wrong' about us. We get older, we reach for straighteners
and makeup and hide from the ever daunting camera. We analyse over the very few
pictures of us, and think of the worst things people could say about us. We
look at how many likes our new profile picture got, and feel so inadequate when
we see someone else has 100 and we have 10.
During this, we watch other girls our age, critiquing
themselves. And try to convince them to accept the compliment and tell them
they're beautiful and everything on the outside. We shame and gossip about
other girls, who just like us are critiquing themselves already. Everything in
our lives becomes absorbed in what we look like, and what other people think of
us.
It consumes us.
We don't think about the more important things, like whether
we're intelligent, encouraging, caring or kind. We worry more about whether
people view us as ugly or fat. We hide ourselves in makeup, start doing crazy
routines and eating less. We stop seeing ourselves as what the people who truly
love us see, we see the outside.
How is any of this healthy, when you're in the most scary
time of your life and everything is stressful. Why are we worrying more about
what we look like than who we are inside. Why is society teaching us that that
is what we should be doing. Why is society telling us to be beautiful we must
be a certain amount of things, but not too much of them? Tall, but not too
tall, thin but not too thin, sexy but not too sexy. How is any of this shaping
women into who they should become. This creates the women who later in life just
hate themselves more and more, and nothing is enough.
We need to be teaching our girls that whatever you are,
wherever you come from, what you look like, what people think of you doesn't
shape who you are. You decide who you are, and only you. Eff your beauty
standards.
Be unashamedly you. We should not be scared to wear a
swimsuit, we should not be made to think that fat is the worst thing anyone
could be. We should be able to feel confident in ourselves and be who we are.
You do you, and I'll do me.
Love.
Georgia Maree xx
Love.
Georgia Maree xx
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