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.

Whoever said sexism is dead needs a slap in the face. I narrowly avoided a fine on the tram this morning because of these babies, how easily distracted the inspector was is entirely beside the point. What is, is the fact that there is no getting away from these bad boys. Figuratively or literally.

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.

I am under no allusions anymore that I am impervious or invincible to getting older. This reality was brought abruptly to my attention this morning, whilst peering into the mirror sans glasses I caught sight of a faint whisp of brown under my chin.