Go to any gym, any lunch date, anywhere where women meet and I’d bet you ten dollars that there will be some form of body shaming happening. Whether we are talking about how we need to lose ten pounds or how we refuse to wear shorts because of our varicose veins. Somewhere along the way we were taught to pick and poke and prod at our bodies. We were shown that to say “I am beautiful” is boastful and to pick apart ourselves and tell others what we absolutely “hate” about our bodies was accepted. Instead of standing confidently, we would shrink into the void and hope that our big hips or cellulite or stomach pudge would hide too. Body shaming became the new black and black became the new way to appear skinnier, more invisible.
You’ll never hear a group of women celebrating their bodies. Sentiments like “This body of mine carried three babies” or “These thick thighs? Yeah, they ran a marathon.” Instead we gave ourselves nicknames and shared them with the world so that maybe, just maybe when we said those things about ourselves, others wouldn’t say them about us. Thunder thighs, jiggly arms, double chins… they became the way we would talk about selves instead of using words like: beauty, grace, strength, and poise.
We have a far easier job accepting and appreciating other women’s bodies and yet we stand in front of the mirror squeeze the extra inches, plucking the stray hairs, and analyzing every inch of our God given vessels. Ask any woman and if they’re being honest, they would probably tell you that they check out more women then men, internally putting themselves on a totem pole of beauty. She has been legs than me, look at her waist, I’d give anything to have breasts like that… these little whispers go into our minds and we slow believe those lies we tell ourselves. They become our truths.
Yet here I stand, seeing women for what they are: strong, resilient, beautiful, courageous. I see smile lines from the years of laughter, extra weight where you carried a sweet baby (something so many women are yearning to do) and legs that carry you through each day with ease. I see bellies that have been filled with food day in and day out and hands that have cared for so many other people. I don’t look at you and see that little dimple of cellulite or the freckles you’ve been told you should hate since you were a little girl. When I look at you I see this fearfully, wonderfully, BEAUTIFULLY created human who is blessed to wake up and breathe each day.
While one person alone can’t change the ideals of beauty, I am still setting out to try. It isn’t shameful to love yourself, it isn’t dirty to celebrate your body just as it is, it doesn’t need to be a gift for a man, in fact, I’d rather it wasn’t. It isn’t boasting to say you love something on yourself, it isn’t “cool” to join in on the body shaming we’ve been taught, and it isn’t wrong to love the skin you are in – imperfections and all. Instead I want you to look me in the eye and say “I am worthy of this body and I am blessed to be able to remember for the miracle it is.” Because friend, that is all I am seeing when I see you like this, alive, youthful, and inches of gorgeous all rolled into one.
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Beautiful!