Making Peace With Your Body

The sad and painful truth is that this impact is purposeful. In pursuit of money and power, our patriarchal culture has sacrificed its girls. By keeping girls and women out of their own confidence, self-love, and power, the patriarchal culture protects itself. Who will rise up to defend the rights and needs of women if they have been trained to feel unworthy? No one. Where will the resistance of oppressive sexism and misogyny come from if the girls and women are oppressing themselves? Nowhere. If the patriarchal culture can make women hate themselves and turn their battles inwards, then the patriarchal system is not in danger of being challenged.

Obviously, the more immediate and obvious winners in this fiasco are the movers and shakers in the beauty industry. It’s simple: They make us feel inadequate, so we spend money on their products to try to be worthy. Financial success gained at the cost of girls’ and women’s mental and emotional wellness—it feels like blood money to me. Once internalized capitalism interplays with internalized sexism, self-esteem is doomed.

5 ways to generate self-love and body-positivity

Here are five steps to get you started:

1. The first step is to recognize that this is not a “you” problem. If you are struggling with body shame, remember that this is the result of an external problem, the roots of which lie in patriarchy and capitalism, not in the size and shape of your body. hen you acknowledge that the problem is external, you can focus your advocacy and activism externally where it belongs. When you stop seeing yourself as the problem, you can connect to your own internal source of power and strength. Instead of being the problem, you become the solution.
2. Practice new thoughts. Your self-shaming thoughts may have become brain habits, and it takes a conscious effort to break a habit. Every time you are exposed to a toxic message about how you should look and how you should feel about your body, practice consciously replacing it with a new, affirming truth. Talk to yourself like you would talk to someone you love (imagine feeling worthy of your own love!), and do it like you are a broken record.
3. Focus on your body’s function over its form. Thank it for getting you through your day. Think of all the ways you use your body and all that it is capable of. Instead of critiquing your appearance in the mirror, look at your body and think of all the places it has taken you, and all the experiences it has allowed you to have.
4. Look through a lens of gratitude instead of judgment, and make a nightly routine of writing down three reasons you are grateful to your body.
5. Become an advocate for change; it’s powerful not only externally, but internally, as well. Advocacy, like bodies, comes in all shapes and sizes. Post affirming messages on mirrors in public bathrooms, ask your local department store to consider using body-affirming mannequins, or get trained to offer body-positive programming in schools. When you work towards cultural change, you actively acknowledge that the change that needs to happen is in the world around you, which frees up your psyche from your own self-criticism. Advocacy also helps deepen your repetition of and practice of the new, affirming messages that you want to internalize.
   

Source; https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/license-shine/202203/making-peace-your-body

Reflection;

The way we think about our body is not our fault. It's the way society has conditioned us to think that a certain ideal body type exists and we should strive for it. Due to this, many industries are profiting off people's insecurities. This article mentions ways that we can learn to love our bodies and beat judgment.

In the comments, please mention why you are grateful for your bodies. What did your body allow you to do? Why are you thankful?

#BodyPositivity #BodyImage #MentalHealth