22 & not a clue

My boyfriend showed this video to me in bed the other night, and after it finished I was in tears and he smiled and said 'you don't see who you really are'. That got me thinking, no I'm not going to start Carrie Bradshaw style asking ridiculous rhetorical questions, but we as women are really quite hard on ourselves. The simple act of describing our face to a stranger does not marry up with how that stranger would necessarily describe us.

Yet we're becoming a society who take 'selfies' and send 'sexts', we are giving away our bodies soo freely these days thanks to the internet. It's this perpetual contradiction that we take photos of ourselves and yet can meet a stranger and struggle to say one positive thing about our physical selves.

I've struggled with my body image all my life. I am still struggling. I have never met a woman who is  100% happy with herself and I don't blame the media, I see it more that we don't promote a healthy outlook on our bodies within society from a young age. Mum better not be reading this, but daughters don't grow up being told to love themselves, instead mothers take the chocolate bars away and furrow their brows. Words like diet and weight creep into everyday language as that little girl creeps towards tenuous teenagedom. There's suddenly this sense of urgency that she'll become a hefty teen, life will be difficult for her, the other kids will pick on her because she's heavier.

Life will always be difficult, instilling a sense of foreboding about body image at the tender age of 11, 12, 13 and beyond isn't going to help. We need to teach our daughters to love themselves. Then teach them to make better choices, involve them in cooking, make them do at least one kind of sports or regular exercise from an early age. Basically, encourage being healthy to be happy over being thin to fit in.

It is my sincere hope that this generation of women, who have grown up with slut marches, fat shaming, thin privelege and rise of the plus size modelling world will go on to raise their daughters to love themselves first and appreciate being healthy second. Loving the skin you're in should be a given.

I am a hypocrite. As a devotee of plus size fashion, its mantras, bloggers and all it stands for I am committing serious hypocrisy. For the past two weeks I have been living on wheatgrass shakes, cuppa soups & poached eggs. Why? Because I am about to jettison off to Thailand where all manner of selfies and beach/bikini related photography will happen. My travel buddy and Best friend accompanying me is beyond snappy happy. Throw in a reunion with uni friends who are model-esque and you have one very insecure and hungry 22 year old.

There is a man on the 59 tram who quite literally takes up most of two seats. He somehow always finds a seat and always has his earphones plugged in & an iPad wedged between his forearm & chest.

I have observed him often in the mornings, mainly because he appears blissfully ignorant of the raised eyebrows, disgusted looks & sharp glances from fellow passengers perched beside him. I'm sure its a life long practiced skill.
I have often thought to myself that if he tried to sit beside me I would say something & ask him to sit elsewhere. I have also thought how it would be better if people sitting next to him just stood instead of being so rude.

So this morning the only seat available was a few square inches beside this man. I perched precariously for most of the journey, cursing him silently & judging him for being the way he is. Surely he should be considerate of others and stand. Or apologise? Or walk?! The longer I sat there the more people got on, scuffing my feet, standing on my toes & sticking their arses in my ears. I was infuriated.

But as I sat there, I glanced over at his iPad & read the screen. He was reading a romantic online fan fiction story. The tale seemed gripping and judging by the pace of reading it was. The heroine appeared passionate yet vulnerable, the villain sleazy and beguiling. There was no sign of the hero, yet.

I am a hypocrite in every sense of the word, not just because I have many plus size friends, am plus size myself and simultaneously loathe & pity this man. But because I chose to be mean minded first, rather than practicing what I so often preach which is compassion. He didn't wear a wedding band, he wasn't particularly attractive facially, but none of that matters. I condemned him for what I saw on the surface alone.

After a few minutes more observing him and the story I started to realise he was just another A searching for a B. We all want to love & be loved in return, regardless of shape, size or form. Who dictates how and what we should love? Why should one body be shamed in the support of another & who says one body shape is superior in aesthetics to another?

It only takes one person to love you & think you are wonderful. Not the whole of society.

I'm ashamed of myself for being so cross at a man who was just going about his business best he can like the rest of us. The truth however is that I can preach about compassion all I like but at the end of the day society will still think for us. Change in views and attitudes work at a snails pace, there will always be prejudices and rudeness wherever we go. What helps change is the recognition of the negative and the search or discovery of the good and the things in common.