In pursuit of body confidence

There is a thin line between negative self-image and self-care involving diet, exercise, fashion and beauty. The pressure is high to look Instagram worthy making our self-acceptance sabotaged in pursuit of the “desired appearance”.

If ten minutes makeup every day makes us confident, then why not! Although I doubt it may be feeding our insecurities to some extent, exaggerating the need to hide harmless minor “imperfections”. Does questioning such thing mean we are restricting ourselves to be who we are? Don’t we need to stop expecting women to be in a certain way whether it is with makeup or without? I do not always like to wear makeup but when I do I look worse because my makeup skills are not something I am proud of. Does it make me a low maintenance, unattractive woman who cannot make an effort to present herself beautifully or am I way too confident? I tend to deal with such thoughts with positive self-talk but today I am just going to keep thinking aloud.

Keeping fit involves regular exercise and healthy diet. Many of us either overdo or refuse to have a healthy lifestyle with an eating disorder of some sort and either a horrendous amount of exercise or by being a couch potato. I am worried someday I might find myself on either end of the scale, so I keep track of them in my habit tracker of bullet journal. Not all of us can rely completely on intuition no matter how much we want to.

Moving on, I love skincare but I would hate myself to be in a vicious cycle of buying expensive beauty products and hoarding them relentlessly. So I decided to give myself a nudge to stay within the limit with allowing myself one product per category (no more than three), optimal use of the products by including them in my habit tracker and allowing a specific budget per month for self-care.

Fashion, on the other hand, is something I am hesitant to discuss. I do not shop the latest fashionable luxurious clothes and accessories or have the hourglass figure to complement anything I wear. I would love to have more choice to wear whatever I like without any anybody’s opinion on my body shape. I have an apple shape so I look like a pregnant woman even when I am within a healthy weight range (a little less than overweight). No matter how much we hate it, we do not live in an ideal world where we can stop judging to feed each other’s insecurities and cause frustrations or annoyance.

To be honest with you, I do not think we can stop judging each other. In fact, judging is absolutely fine in moderation to understand the impressions we make with our appearances but sometimes there are more than meets the eye. Maybe your superficial flatmate does not wear a bra all the time because she has less self-consciousness than you, not for an innate need to show off her tits. Maybe your neighbour did not ask to be groped by posting a bikini selfie on Instagram. Maybe the “not so religious women” started wearing hijab suddenly not because she is forced by her husband or in-laws, but to hide her alopecia (baldness). Maybe your colleague does not need your opinion on how to dress to impress because she is not a top politician or someone from the royal family, urgently needing you to be her personal stylist. Maybe we need to judge each other with compassion and open mind, not with any preconceived ideas. Maybe we can just love our body parts for the functions they perform and appreciate the fact that we have many other abilities and skills than just expressing ourselves with our physical appearances.

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