As long as I can remember, I've always been the biggest girl in the room. It's always made me feel like I've stood out and not in a good way. I played all the sports I could, watched what I ate, and did everything I could to make myself smaller, take up less room, and stand out less. I've come a long way from the girl I used to be. It took me leaving my small town and going to a very accepting boarding school to finally understand that I wasn't the problem. It was society and the environment I had grown up with. Everyone had been body shamed through their life. My guy friends were paranoid that their abs weren't defined enough and my beautiful petite friends were jealous of how busty I was. Realizing that everyone felt uncomfortable in the skin they were in helped me realize that I was okay, but the damage to my self-image had already been done. My journey to love the skin I'm in began in high school and has been a daily effort ever since, but I've learned a lot since then that has made my journey easier.
1. Finding a good role model and support system is a must.
My journey began in high school because I found an amazing role model. It wasn’t some movie star or a celebrity. It turned out to be my best friend. She loved herself for who she was, knew she was beautiful, and saw beauty in all those around her. She wanted everyone to see beauty in themselves and she put in the effort to do so. She was also my biggest fan in my self-love journey. She loved my good days where I knew I was fabulous and she toughed it through my bad days where all I could see was imperfections. Eventually her self-confidence rubbed off on me and made it a lot easier to love who I was, but it took time. Even at this stage in my journey, having friends around me who help me love myself on my worst days are part of what makes or breaks my success.
2. You have to block out toxic influences
I already mentioned that the environment I was in and society itself is what shaped my self-image. When I was away at boarding school it was a lot easier to love who I was and build a more positive body-image, but when I came home it became much harder. Some of my family had more negative view about the way they looked and didn't understand how I could love myself regardless of my size. In one day, their comments on my weight could destroy the progress I had made during the months I had been away. Don't get me wrong I love my family, but they didn't always help me love myself. I learned after many heart breaking setbacks that if you don't block out the toxic influences that caused your self-image issues you will go nowhere. That may mean looking at less magazines or asking less opinions from those around you, but once that's done you are left with much more room to grow.
3. You define your own beauty, no one else.
As my best friend and role model JaQuise Caldwell once said, “You are the judge and jury for your happiness. If you look in the mirror and are truly unhappy, change it. Change it for yourself, not because society deems you should and not because that voice in the back of your head says to.” After looking in way to many magazines and watching many body positive YouTube videos, I realized that what I found beautiful wasn't what society says is beautiful and that is okay. I love that I'm curvy. I love that I'm busty and I love my wide hips. I think my curves make me more feminine, but that's my version of beauty. When you define what beauty is for yourself, you begin to make your own rules and it changes the game completely. The voice inside your head becomes more positive about the way you already look and less envious of those around you. It made me breathe a little easier and focus on myself instead of those around me.
4. Appreciating what you already love leads to larger steps.
When I began this article I asked a lot of my close friends about advice they would have for people starting a self-love journey and my friend Alana told me “I say a different part of my body that I like each day. Even if it's just something like I have cute toes.” It sounds silly, but I know for a fact that everyone has something about themselves that they love. Personally, I think I have beautiful eyes and cute lips. At the beginning of my journey, it was hard to embrace all of my body, especially the things that I hated like my thighs and my stomach. Just like Alana, I began with the small things that I already mentioned. I finally decided that all the things I loved were part of a much larger picture and if I could love the components, I could love it all. Every bit of my journey has been made up of small victories started by smaller steps like loving the way my eyes look.
5. Appreciating what your body can do improves your self image.
Growing up I had never though about my body as a gift, but more as a vessel that made me self-conscious due to all its flaws. When I started loving myself, I began to try to work towards a healthy lifestyle strictly for a better life instead of self-image reasons. As I improved my fitness, I began to appreciate my body for what it could do. A body allows you to run, move things, show affection to those you love, play with pets, etc. The list goes on forever. No matter how many flaws I saw in my body, I couldn’t help but love everything it allowed me to do. That different view on my body made all the difference. Everything I did to improve my fitness was done out of self-love.
6. You will have good days and bad days.
My self-love journey has had many victories, but just as many defeats. There are still days that I end up crying because I feel like I stand out way to much or I want to participate in an event with my sorority sisters, but think I'll look like a fool when I get up on stage. You can't expect every day to be perfect and knowing that no matter how far you are in your journey that you will have days where you feel like you have gotten nowhere, is also part of loving the skin yourself. You have to love the defeats as well as the victories because it still means you have room to grow.
7. You can be a role model for others and never know it.
The largest victory that I have ever had in my journey, was knowing that even though I may be far from perfect, people notice. I have had friends say that they wish they were as confident about themselves as I am or that when they feel down they think “What would Ashley say to make me feel more confident.” I'm not perfect, but knowing that I am at the point where I have become a role model for other people has made me feel like I have changed myself and have inspired the people around me. The high school me would have never been able to do that. That is enough to let me know that my journey has been more than worth it, and work harder to love myself and even those around me a little more.
I still do what I can to learn new ways to love myself and improve as a woman but no matter change, I have learned that I guide my own life. I decide what is right for me and society cannot change it no matter how out I stand out. I have grown to embrace what makes me different and beautiful. Everyone no matter what shape or size has something they are working on and all kinds of people have struggled with body shaming. Everyone has it in them to love themselves, it is just a matter of when.
