Lessons in Self-Acceptance--from the Mountains

Have you ever seen the Rocky Mountains?

 Taken while we drove through Jasper National Park

Again, Jasper National Park

My husband and I drove to them this weekend, a little getaway before the final craziness of the school year. It's our third year in a row to do this; we find Jasper so beautiful and peaceful, it just a nice break.

As we drove toward Jasper this year, I was really noticing the mountains in some places, the different strata that got shoved up at an angle so many years ago when the tectonic plate got shoved up above another one.

Part of a line from the movie "Can't Buy Me Love" came to mind: "...and broke the moon." I saw these mountains as part of a broken Earth, and yet its brokenness is why we find these mountains so fascinating and beautiful. This thought connected me to a thought about our own self-acceptance of our bodies. Each one unique and we wouldn't want it any other way. I soon found myself writing this (as of yet title-less piece) while my husband drove:

We look at the mountains

and don't see:

they are the Earth

broken

deformed

wrinkled

imperfect.

We see beyond that to their 

majesty

and beauty

in all their shapes and sizes.

Wondrous things to behold

filling us with awe.

What would happen if

we could look at ourselves

in the same way:

instead of fixating on

our brokennes

"deformities"

wrinkles

imperfections

we could see beyond to 

our majesty

our beauty

in all our shapes and sizes,

and see that we, too, 

are

wondrous things to behold

and be in awe of ourselves?

Dove Evolution Video

"No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted" 

the video below shows at one point.

Absolutely!

And why do we take the fake version as more beautiful than the natural girl? Shouldn't we be free to be who we are?

Here's the video:

Fashion Magazines Make You Feel Fat

Talking to a friend on the weekend, a friend who has had serious body dissatisfaction issues as long as I've known her (yet you'd be hard-pressed to really find any excess anything on her), it hit me that I know a few women with serious body dissatisfaction--serious body image problems, be it physical shape, appearance of the face or a combination thereof--and they all have something in common:

They love reading fashion magazines and do so regularly.

Is it just a coincidence? I asked myself. I decided to do some research. And what I've found online matches my observation: those who read fashion magazines more often are more likely to have a higher level of body dissatisfaction.

Some links I've found:

• http://blamingthemedia.blogspot.ca/2009/09/modelling-models.html " DeGroat (1997) found that reading fashion magazines is significantly related to a woman's body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness"
• http://www.psu.edu/dept/medialab/researchpage/newabstracts/fashion.html "Respondents with high levels of exposure to fashion magazines were less satisfied with their personal physical appearances than were respondents with low levels of fashion magazine exposure."
• http://www.healthguideinfo.com/other-eating-disorders/p110590/  "Adolescent girls who viewed images of thin fashion models subsequently had higher levels of body dissatisfaction than those who did not."
  
• http://www.ukessays.com/essays/psychology/body-dissatisfaction-and-eating-disorder.php "Harrison and Cantor (1997) found that exposure to thinness portraying and promoting media, especially magazines [emphasis mine], wish for thinness, dissatisfaction with the body, and ineffectiveness in females is rising."
• http://www.mendeley.com/research/influence-fashion-magazines-body-image-satisfaction-college-women-exploratory-analysis/ "As hypothesized, women who viewed fashion magazines preferred to weigh less, were less satisfied with their bodies, were more frustrated about their weight, were more preoccupied with the desire to be thin, and were more afraid of getting fat than were their peers who viewed news magazines."
• http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/12/20/do-fashion-magazines-make-you-feel-fat/ "Want to feel better about your body?  Stop reading fashion magazines."
  

This last link has a part that says:

Some simple strategies to improve body image include:

Putting down the magazine. 
Make a choice not to subject yourself to ideals and images that will make you feel worse about yourself.

This is sound advice if you are struggling with body dissatisfaction and have a habit of looking at fashion magazines. Not everybody who reads fashion magazines regularly is going to be negatively affected, but there is a relationship between the two. The more you read, the more likely it is to affect how you view yourself physically. The more you subject your brain to the images of thin, photoshopped models, the more likely you are going to start believing on some level that you would be better if you looked like that (and wore clothes like that!)

If you are constantly dissatisfied with your body, feel like you have to hide this or that (under clothes or even under makeup), and you regularly read fashion magazines, do yourself a favour and stop! Start looking at all the real women around you!

Did You Know...?

Did you know that if you use a special tooth whitening tooth paste, it will make your teeth beautiful enough for your soul mate to come talk to you?

Because, you know, your soul mate is going to care more about your teeth than your soul.

Ah, the messages we get from media!

What Messages Are You Getting?

Janae over at Bring Joy wrote an excellent piece on her struggles with body image and accepting her curves that have come back. And more importantly, her vocal stance on the messages society gives about women's bodies. It's really an excellent read.

Someone in the comments shared an amazing site: BeautyRedefined.net, there is a quote that I can't find now about how women, on average, receive 600 messages a day about beauty and body image. Every single time you see a picture of a woman on a cover of a magazine, or in a magazine ad or on a television commercial or even in a TV show, you're getting at least one message, but likely more: they've photoshopped the wrinkles, so there's the message that wrinkles are bad. They've photoshopped the woman smaller in most cases, so there's the message that skinnier is better. They've picked an actress partially based on her physical appearance and/or they've had her workout to have a certain look. And so on and so forth.

One of the most appalling cases I read on the Beauty Redefined site was the cover photo of Self (the "Total Body Confidence" issue, ironically enough) with Kelly Clarkson. There is a picture right next to it of Kelly from around the same time and it is very clear that Self changed her size drastically. When challenged on it, at one point the editor wrote, "Did we alter her appearance? Only to make her look her personal best..." 

*Jaw dropped to floor.* 

What is the message? That Kelly's natural shape isn't her "best." That an unnatural shape on her makes her look better. That her personal, natural shape wasn't good enough for Self's magazine cover. That's the message. And the overriding message to all other women:

You're not good enough if you don't look like this.

  

How much damage is this kind of message doing? Especially when it's over and over and over, everywhere you look? A teen or woman interested in fashion can't look through a fashion magazine without getting the almost subliminal message that she would be better if she looked like the ridiculously thin women who've had an inch of make up put on AND had all blemishes and imperfections (on their face or in their body shape) photoshopped out. Heck, even just looking at the covers of magazines at the grocery store checkout will give you gads of messages. Whether it's intended or not, the result is a form of brainwashing.

Over and over, girls and women are presented with unhealthy and unreal representations of women, shown in such a way to subtly affect how they see themselves. The problem is those individual, subtle messages are everywhere. And there are a lot of them:

• How your hair should look.
• How long it should be.
• The colour it should be (cuz, you know, your natural colour is NEVER good enough! I saw an ad at the movie theatre last night with a blind woman who had coloured her hair. *Jaw dropped to floor again.* Even blind women are falling for the idea they need to look a certain way??? This is beyond sad.)
• The thickness it should be.
• Frizziness is never good.
• How your eyebrows should be.
• What colour your skin should be. 
• How long and thick your eyelashes should be.
• Blemishes aren't okay. Hide them under makeup and photoshop out all signs of them in pictures.
• Teeth need to be a certain whiteness (there's one ad that drives me crazy--the woman's teeth are already a fake level of white and she thinks they aren't white enough, so whitens them even more with whatever amazing (sic) product they are selling).
• How much you should weigh.
• How big your butt and breasts should be. And what shape your butt should be.
• How small your waist should be.
• How thin and toned your legs and arms should be.
• How tall you should be.
• You should show a lot of skin.
• You should be sexy (which really means you should have random men looking at you and find you sexually appealing, ie they should lust after you).
• How smooth your face should be, or how big your cheeks and lips should be.

I'm sure I could go on. The problem with all of this is that it's all nonsense. Why these particular messages are being put out there, I'm not sure other than, for whatever reason, it sells. If it sells, then they'll keep doing it.

I have a challenge for you: Get some new messages. Get some true messages. Look at the women you come in contact with as you work or visit stores. Look at the women you walk by Are they all 5'10", skinny, physically fit, perfect shape, perfect skin and hair, wearing designer clothes? These are the real messages. These are real women who are valuable and lovable not because of how well they match up with some false, made-up ideal to try to get you to buy things (really, that's what the Self cover was about, wasn't it? fear that fewer people would buy the magazine if Kelly was looking too chunky or something?), but are valuable and lovable simply because they are. Value them, respect them, love them because of who they are, not because of what they look like. And then turn around and do the same for yourself.