tldr: i realized a while ago that "fake it til you make it" can maybe actually work!?
What about body positivity? Do I have it? Not usually. Do I practice it? I try to. Is my instagram feed full of body-neutral/body-pos activists and just people who are generally happy in their bodies? YES, YES, and YES. (Probably a tie between body-pos people and DIY/home reno people...)
Honestly I don't know that "body positivity" is even real. Let me unpack that a little... The reasons that we have for hating the way we look or not being confident in our own bodies all boil down to comparison. We compare to people we see every day: friends and peers, random people in public, tv shows and movies... I think it's then exacerbated by social media and advertising, which is what we pay attention to when we aren't paying attention to the people in front of our faces. Body positivity is the name of the movement but it's body negativity that is the issue.
Most of us were perfectly fine with ourselves, probably never even thought about what we looked like until we were pre-teens and teenagers... then something happened. Can you remember the exact moment your view of yourself shifted or started to exist? I think mine was a specific girl in middle school (yes, middle school - I lived in the states during that time) who I'll call her D. I'll probably tell you who it is if you were a Timber Tot with me in those days. She was a popular girl and she had boobs (and I mean Boobs) before most people, and she had perfect hair and the boys liked her and she was skinny and beautiful and knew how to wear makeup and her clothes were always new and nice and whatever I thought style was in 2006, she had it. *Listen, if you were D's friend back then and this is all wrong please don't correct me or tell me the other side of the story, I'm not interested in how amazing and cool and nice or humble she is now, that'll only make me feel worse ;)
I had a unibrow probably... my hair was so thick and awkwardly cut... and I've always had bigger thighs (family genes amirite)... and I was the shy new kid with no friends (until Corinne, hi!)... and I was Canadian (read; I had an accent[?])... and wouldn't be getting braces for another year so I looked kinda like a horse. Basically the complete opposite of D. I just deleted like three other paragraphs about her, because this isn't about that. But I could go ooonnnnn. There's also another time when my hot boy neighbour told me I had big and ugly knees.
(You should know that I don't plan out these blogs before I write them because it wouldn't be as real.. I literally think as I write, and) I'm realizing it wasn't actually just one moment that changed the way I felt about myself, it was a collection of moments. And then when Instagram hit the market and I started dating more is probably when it got worse. When I moved from Colorado to Kingston in 2011 I had just turned 16, and long story short I lost everything including friends and my first real boyfriend of 2 years, then started at a catholic high school and got bullied by my only friend (my neighbour), so I sunk into the worst depression I hope I ever have to endure.
It was only in 2020 that I woke up one day and realized I genuinely think I'm beautiful. Boys, my mom and her friends and my family tell me all the time, my friends hype up every single selfie, but none of it matters until you think about yourself that way. I will always have periods where I think I'm a hippo and a troll or a crackhead but it doesn't outweigh the positive things I think anymore. The self-confidence/self-love work started in 2019 and I honest to god couldn't tell you how it worked, but basically I faked it and faked it and faked it. Social media-wise, in 2017 I decided I'd do my best to only post pictures of myself that were taken by other people (my parents or my sister or my friends, or group photos) because I hate the process of taking selfies Started posting bikini pics when my boobs looked amazing, and didn't stare at it until I hated it like I usually do. Using selfies where the sun hit my sparkly brown eyes just right. Lots of small steps but I think it was necessary work to lead to my internal work in 2019 actually working.
. . . . . .
So I'm not really sure what you expected out of a body positivity blog but this has been my experience this far (but I'm only 25). In a perfect world, your body and appearance wouldn't mean shit to anyone, or at the very least their opinions would go in your left ear and out your right and not stick in your brain like a malignant tumour (or tumor for my Americans lol).
My advice? Try something small that's slightly out of your comfort zone more often than you do now, and it'll be completely fine. Get someone else to take your photos. Or try enhancing the contrast and hues of your photos instead of facetuning your body, that can do a WHOLE lot to a photo. There's lots of other things you can try too, like a different makeup routine, or trying outfits you wouldn't normally do, try some of those TikTok hair hacks, invest in a shit ton of face masks that are for making glowing skin or whatever.
There isn't a rule or an exact secret to this shit. It's a learning curve and is different for everyone. Just don't take life so damn seriously. Have fun, do whatever makes you happy, and focus on you for a while (whatever that means to you).
xx
S
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