Healthy Body Image for Women & Girls
Body image affects every woman and every girl, regardless of whether they want it to or not. Society plies us with image after image, movie after movie, advert after advert, all filled to bursting with perfect bodies. ‘Imperfection’, as they would have us call it, is always given a negative spin, and there’s literally nothing we can do to avoid the misogynistic perception of the female body if we live in a Westernized world.
Despite our inability to escape this bombardment, there is definitely a lot that can be done by us to ensure our lives are happier and psychologically, if not physically, healthier. The first thing we need to do is remember that we’re human beings, with thoughts, feelings, purpose and value in this life aside from aesthetics. We are not our breasts and bum. We are not defined by a waistline. When we begin to believe this, we’ll begin to change our lives.
It may be true that, because society places so much value on appearances, we’re at a disadvantage if we don’t ‘fit in’. But it’s also true that when push comes to shove, brains win over boobs and when all is said and done we’re judged on our achievements in life – not the body we were lucky enough to have when we were young.
The sad truth is that all good things come to an end. Living to an old age comes loaded with devastating obstacles, with care homes all over the world housing the aging bodies of people that were just like us once upon a time. Do you think they look back on their life and reminisce about how great their life was because of their perfectly round butt, or do you think they sit there thinking about the relationships they formed with people? The places they went? The wonderful experiences they had? I can tell you for sure that if they could have one thing back again it wouldn’t be their perfectly proportioned body. It would be their loved ones.
Value is misplaced by the media – and life is too short to spend it worrying about how we look. We should instead be playing, laughing, dancing, enjoying life, forming great relationships (platonic and romantic alike) and we should be remembering that these are the things that really matter.
As women we need to look deeper into ourselves and realize that there is an awful lot more to us as people than our outer shells. Of course it’s good to be healthy, as often healthiness leads to happiness, but obsessing over body image rather than focusing on love, health, happiness and establishing a successful life full of freedom for us to enjoy every day is ludicrous. What real importance do our bodies make to our lives? All it really affects is our own minds, and once we dominate our thinking processes and transcend shallow stereotypes and media propaganda we’ll all be much happier and on the path to true gratification in life, both spiritually and physically.