The media has a tendency to present bodies in a hyper sexualized manner. They place a tremendous amount of peer pressure on body image. Girls tend to think they should be a size double zero because models are portrayed as very slender. Girls who are naturally petite tend to think they should be thicker because "real women have curves". So, who is right in this situation? Should girls strive to be flat stomached like a Victoria's Secret model or curvy with a big butt like a Kardashian?
The fact of the matter is that the perfect body type is your body type.
People should feel comfortable within the skin they've been given. Your body is a temple, and you should treat it as such, with respect and admiration. Your body is the earthly vessel in which your soul lives. The importance of your relationship with your body goes so much deeper than we often realize.
One prominent fault of this generation is we don't practice enough self-love; often we don't practice it at all. How many times in a day do you stop what you're doing just to find something you like about yourself in that current moment? Probably not often at all.
Girls, in particular, spend a lot of their day comparing themselves to other girls; whether it's clothes, hair, earrings, etc. If we see something that looks good on another girl, we often buy it for ourselves in an attempt to also look good. But at what point do we sacrifice our individuality? Why not wear something you like or feel comfortable in compared to something you believe other people will like?
The key to self-love is that first step of putting yourself first. You have to take the time to access yourself and your needs in order to be self-aware. Once you are aware, then you can take the necessary steps needed to better yourself.
If we feel good about ourselves and our body, we become able to better help others. Once our own emotional needs are met, we are able to to lend ourselves to the emotional needs of others. Lifting up the spirits of others often positively effects our own spirits as well. This becomes a positive cycle of good energy because the positive energy you give out is returned to you.
One example of this self-love in the media is the undergarment store, Aerie. Often in ads of this nature, girls' bodies are portrayed unrealistically. They are, more often than not, Photoshopped and focused on only one body type rather than a spectrum. However, Aerie presents realistic ads of all body types. Their ads have a raw and beautiful truth to them, not seen often enough in the media. They portray women as fully who they are rather than conforming to try to be something they're not.
At the end of the day, we can only be who we are and live our lives with what we've been given. It's OK to have rolls. It's OK to have back fat. It's OK not to have perfect skin. It's OK to be whatever shape or size you happen to be. There's beauty in authenticity and there's beauty in truth, but above all there is beauty in confidence.
