4 Ways To Stop Critiquing Your Body and Start Embracing Your Features
Everyone has insecurities about their body. Although body insecurities are wildly normalized, they are incredibly harmful.
Like others before me, I argue that insecurities are taught and that we hold the power to unlearn these toxic narratives. We cannot always control the external forces that influence or shape our opinions, but we can reframe these influences so that they are not so loud and do not hold so much power over our self-image.
The following aims to introduce mentalities that may help quiet your inner critic so that you can start embracing your body. I’ve synthesized these learnings from various articles, books, and courses.
1. You Were Not Born Insecure, You Were Taught to Be Insecure
Any insecurity you may have today is not innate; you were not born insecure. The compulsory reflex to critique, police, or survey your body is a toxic ritual taught to you.
Think back to your early childhood. During this period of your life, you likely had no shame attached to your body: your body just was. However, you probably became aware of how your body fit into a larger conversation around age seven or eight. Maybe you started absorbing messages from your parents by observing how they surveyed their bodies. Perhaps you became aware of what bodies were deemed desirable through different media representations.
Whatever the repeated external stimulus, these influences started to impact how you viewed yourself. You began to learn that your body was not just your home but also something to be observed, something that held external value.
Once you realize that you’re insecure because someone, or something, taught you to be, you can understand that there is no reason to continue to feed into an ideology that does not benefit you.
It’s important to realize that, just like anything else, you can unlearn your insecurity. You have the power to course-correct your mind to rewire what you view as bad, ugly, or wrong. Once you are aware that your insecurities were imposed upon you by society, then you can work to free yourself of these externally imposed, arbitrary binds.
2. The Body Is Never Wrong
Your body is not wrong, no matter how different it is compared to current beauty norms.
The beauty standard is subjective, meaning there is no objective right body and no inherent wrong way to look. Therefore, no insecurity holds meaning outside of the power you give it.
Women and girls are taught to believe that their bodies are wrong. Evolving western beauty standards teach us that being thin, with clear skin, nice breasts, and a firm ass is not only correct but desirable. From a very young age, we are taught that this beauty ideal is something we should actively work towards… at all costs.
This messaging nearly exclusively addresses the body by focusing on the aesthetics of the female form. By teaching girls and women to build relationships with their bodies through a lens of aesthetics, society has taught us that our bodies are presentations instead of functioning forms of life. We view our bodies as objects to be gazed upon by taking this perspective.
As much as our misogynistic, patriarchal society tries to convince you otherwise, a body that keeps you alive cannot be wrong. Remember that you were designed for function and not form whenever you are critical of your shapes or size. No body is wrong, even if your body works differently than others.
Start valuing your body for what it does for you regardless of how it may appear or how it may work compared to others.
3. Your Thoughts Create Your Reality
The mind is a powerful organ that not only can shape your opinions, attitudes, and perceptions, but also your reality.
The voice inside your head, or your internal monologue, actively constructs your reality. This voice can often be critical, egging on your fears and fostering your insecurities, and, in so doing, bolstering a hostile internal environment based on messages from external forces. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
You may not be able to control outside messages from the media or your family, but you can learn to control how you talk to yourself and work to be less critical towards your own body.
The first step to promoting positive self-talk is to be aware of all the negative commentary inside your head. Remember, these toxic narratives that you tell yourself are learned and do not serve you. This critical self-talk is harmful and creates a pattern of negativity that feeds insecurity and the belief that you need to change to be good enough, pretty enough, or worthy enough.
It’s essential to become aware of this voice so that you can train it to be kind. For example, when you look in the mirror and notice your inner monologue critiquing your appearance, make a conscious effort to redirect those thoughts and strive to replace them with positivity. By practicing a loving internal monologue, you can create positive self-talk that boosts your self-esteem instead of tearing you down.
Buddha said, “A disciplined mind brings happiness.” By training your mind to say kind things to yourself, you can discover happiness from within. If you struggle to find happiness after practice, then aim for acceptance. To be neutral towards oneself is a great victory over negativity.
4. The Only Person Whose Opinion Matters Is You
Girls and women are often taught to strive for beauty as a means of securing value in the eyes of others. Instead of teaching radical self-love, our patriarchal society teaches girls and women to work towards someone else’s definition of perfection in order to receive praise.
Although it is normal to want to feel desired, we should never want to be desired more by others than ourselves. Crushes come and go, friendships come and go, but the only person you are guaranteed for your entire life is you. So make peace with your body, or you will continue to suffer unnecessarily.
There may be people in your life who comment on your weight or suggest you need to change an aspect of your appearance. When this happens, I want you to think, “the only person whose opinion matters is mine.” Resist internalizing the opinions of others that do not serve you.
Prioritizing your own authentic belief about yourself is an essential step in moving away from critiquing your body and comparing it to subjective beauty standards.
The act of resisting insecurity-culture is a radical form of defiance. Through this process, you can create the space needed to formulate your own opinion about your features. In doing so, you will detach yourself as much as possible from society’s expectations. Who knows? You may even come to view your uniqueness as an asset. I certainly hope you do.
After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the only person you need to please is yourself.
Conclusion
When practiced correctly and routinely, these four mentalities can aid in reframing your mind to think critically about your self-doubt and whether it is constructive. Radical self-love is a practice, which means it is something you must continue to return to and engage with in order to reap its benefits. Reading this article alone will not help you. Instead, practice these ideological shifts to build the mental muscles necessary to fight back against the messaging that tells you that you are not good enough as you are.
Recommended resources:
Books
- My Body is Not An Apology
- Embody: Learning to Love Your Unique Body (and Quiet that Critical Voice!)
- The Beauty Myth
- Feminism Is For Everybody
- What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat
- A New Earth
Articles
- The Age of Instagram Face
- Diet Culture is Unhealthy. It’s Also Immoral.
- You don’t have to love or hate your body. Here’s how to adopt ‘body neutrality.’
Talks/Podcasts
