“My weight needs to be lower. My stomach needs to be flatter. My wallet needs to be fatter. My skin needs to be tanner. My teeth need to be whiter. My heart needs to be stronger. My friends need to be uglier. My face needs to be prettier. My hair needs to be longer. My skirt needs to be shorter. My body needs to be hotter. My image needs to be cooler. My breasts need to be bigger. My waist needs to be smaller. My abs need to be tighter. My muscles need to be larger.” - Every human condemned to the perception of society
It’s appalling to think despite all of the things society has accomplished, from creating devices as smart as people to curing diseases that historically would’ve killed us, we still remain greatly apathetic. We can love any animal by name, we can love each other, we can have a passion for a subject, and yet we can’t seem to successfully love ourselves, and by the time we finally do, there have been so many mistakes and regrets made because we’ve grown so old without learning how to love ourselves.
We even have the ability to love God, yet we condemn his creations by body shaming or simply by not appreciating our value.
We want others to love us, even though we don’t know how to love ourselves. Then we finally find someone we desire to love and we do, yet we are become unsure of how precisely being loved appears as because we have spent so much time not loving ourselves.
We are misguided by the media. If we were in a war, the media would be the devil, constantly misrepresenting how actual persons live and fabricating this perfect reality that everyone is flawless.Television shows like Gossip Girl, 90210, and One Tree Hill all portray these perfect characters with unblemished skin, rich, pampered lifestyles, great hair days, great bodies; when in reality, half of the work is photoshopped, the actors and actresses are placed on a diet regimen to maintain the look of the character and they don’t wake up flawless.
Now with technological advancement self deterioration is also at the tips of ones fingers. Just scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat there are so many people that shame someone based off of an inevitable flaw. Or there is some young influential little girl wishing her hair was as profound as Jurnee Smollett's or some little boy desiring for arms as big as Dwayne Johnson. But that’s not reality. In reality, those people either work really hard to get to where they are, or they honestly are just genetically made that way, but just because you are not as solid as Dwayne Johnson or don't have hair like Jurnee Smollett doesnt mean you aren’t beautiful the way God has created you. You are imperfectly perfect, and above all, you are created in his image; therefore, if he wanted everyone to look the same, that’s how he would have created us.
We are all flawed in one way or another. There’s always going to be someone that doesn’t like something about you. But the real question is will you shame your flaw or embrace it as something you have but not something you are. Our flaws are what make us unique, but that doesn’t mean they define who we are.
Here are only a few of many restraints that society places on our self value to diminish any type of self confidence that many stem from it, but what would happen if we actually took this negative perspective and transformed it into something positive. If we reached out to the next person who may have the same or similar negative aspect of themselves, and if we helped them overcome that logic and see the beauty they possess. Wouldn’t you feel more self-assured if someone had expressed how perfect you are?
