thosepeskydames:

Body positivity: fight your demons

Two things I wish I’d known when I was a teenager, and that are often still hard to remember today.

  1. People are going to have all sorts of opinions about how you look, there is nothing you can do to control this, so it’s pointless trying to.
  2. The only person whose opinion matters about how you look is your own. Don’t rely on other people to give you worth, they won’t always be there.

My diet industry video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ham4JZXf-rw

This Dame:

Tumblr: http://somekindofbecca.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/beccarothwell

Reblogging for those who weren’t awake at 1am (where were you, sleeping?!)

Body positivity: fight your demons

Two things I wish I’d known when I was a teenager, and that are often still hard to remember today.

  1. People are going to have all sorts of opinions about how you look, there is nothing you can do to control this, so it’s pointless trying to.
  2. The only person whose opinion matters about how you look is your own. Don’t rely on other people to give you worth, they won’t always be there.

My diet industry video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ham4JZXf-rw

This Dame:

Tumblr: http://somekindofbecca.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/beccarothwell

the fact that “love your body” rhetoric shifts the responsibility for body acceptance over to the individual, and away from communities, institutions, and power, is also problematic. individuals who do not love their bodies, who find their bodies difficult to love, are seen as being part of the problem. the underlying assumption is that if we all loved our bodies just as they are, our fat-shaming, beauty-policing culture would be different. if we don’t love our bodies, we are, in effect, perpetuating normative (read: impossible) beauty standards. if we don’t love our individual bodies, we are at fault for collectively continuing the oppressive and misogynistic culture. if you don’t love your body, you’re not trying hard enough to love it. in this framework, your body is still the paramount focus, and one way or another, you’re failing. it’s too close to the usual body-shaming, self-policing crap, albeit with a few quasi-feminist twists, for comfort.