You. Yes, you, with the hair and the sparkling eyes. Stop criticizing your appearance and start being thankful. Shaming yourself and criticizing every little wrinkle, bone showing, piece of fat, or zit doesn’t help anything. It just puts the spotlight on what’s wrong instead of what’s beautiful. And let’s face it: there’s a lot more beauty in you than ugly.
That little scar on your shin? It shows that you are strong and overcame something painful.
Those little wrinkles by your eyes? They’re beautiful and illustrate your bubbly personality. They show that you smile and laugh a lot. If you don’t like them, you probably should stop smiling, laughing, and enjoying life and what’s the fun in that?
Calluses on your hands? Show you’re strong and are working to make yourself stronger. They’re painful and you can’t help but think of them when you shake hands with someone but they’re nothing to be ashamed of and hide under gloves.
The bit of fat on your stomach and thighs? It’s natural. It’s not baby fat. It’s not a call to stop eating. It’s normal fat that comes from living a healthy lifestyle. Avocados and almonds are delicious and that’s where it comes from.
It’s completely normal for women to have anywhere from 10 to 20 percent body fat. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to carry out natural bodily functions like menstruation and pregnancy, aka what makes humans really cool. With that being said, it’s not okay to make fun of or make people who fall outside the norm because they don’t fit our idea of what’s “right”. Skinny shaming, fat shaming, muscle shaming all fall into one category: body shaming. And it’s not okay.
We’re all unique, have different genetics that make us special and that means we all carry our weight a little differently. I’ve been made fun of and felt ashamed of how I look more times than I care to count or recall. People have told me that I’m too muscular and athletic looking for a girl, that my legs were too big to be a sorority girl, and that I was too fat to be a competitive figure skater. I won’t lie, it’s really hard to listen to someone telling you you’re not good enough or look in the mirror and not be happy with the face looking back at you. There are days when I am so upset because of the way I look externally that it affects my outward mood. Then I’m not only “ugly” on the outside but the inside as well.
People will make fun of you, laugh at you, call you names but there’s only one thing you can do: move on. You are who you are. As long as you’re working to evolve yourself and have a healthy lifestyle, don’t pay attention to them. Fight back with action, use the hate to fuel your fire, and don’t let them waste your time.
In the end it’s all about proving those people who doubted your ability wrong. Just because your thighs are a little bigger or because your ribs show through your shirt doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. If anything, there’s something wrong with the person who pointed it out. Yes it’s hurtful and stings when you hear criticism about something you can’t change but honestly, there’s nothing you can do about it so stop worrying and change and evolve as you wish.
Your body is one thing that you have almost complete control over so exploit it and make it yours. As Taylor Swift so eloquently put “The haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake.”
