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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So many people are so quick to judge others, I guess that’s the way society is now. But it’s crazy to think how much happier and confident people would be, if others were respectful and kind to others. Thanks for sharing!
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Thank you
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[…] and focused. Let’s make changes for the right reasons, not to be super skinny because we lack body confidence or to develop an eating disorder of some sort. Let’s do it for the sake of being healthy in […]
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I don’t think everyone is always judging or scrutinizing. Yes, there are some, but I hope people won’t be so busy worrying about them and self-scrutinizing to be blind to the others.
People may throw tomatoes at me (figuratively), but I have found that women are usually much more apt to scrutinize other woman than men with other men. And I find women are not as apt to scrutinize men nearly as much as they do women, and vice versa. I can say that very few of my female friends or boyfriends were prone to scrutinizing me. If they did, they were usually history. I’ve always tried to be very kind to myself.
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Thank you for your comment. I agree with you “ women are more apt to scrutinise other women.”Avoiding such people sounds great to me. 🤔
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[…] If you are a high functioning superhuman, you probably do all these and a lot more on autopilot. I CAN NOT. I struggle to do 100% of all those I mentioned here but that’s OK because I expect bullet journal to make me more self-aware and improve my efficacy gradually. This is not meant to shatter my self-acceptance. […]
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I think that this is my biggest struggle, accepting my body. It can always be thinner, leaner, more firm. But I am trying!
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Hope you overcome the struggle 🤗
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As a teen, I have always envied my classmates who had hour glass figures and nice smooth skin. Now, decades later, I am 20 pounds heavier than I was in high school. I guess I can be proud of that. Beauty comes from within, and my husband always tells me, “Women are more critical of other women. Men do not want skinny girls. They want women with meat on their bones.” 🙂
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I agree, 😍beauty comes from within!
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I love this, I am always trying to get into routines but I find it so difficult sometimes to stick with them. So many people are quick to judge but I do not blame them as there are so many influences on our society that has lead people to think in these ways
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I wish we people were not so quick to judge others
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Its crazy how society is right now. I think everyone one out there suffers with some sort of body confidence issues and it is so sad indeed.
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I agree it is crazy😿
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Maybe we all just need to chill out and be accepting of both ourselves and others. Live and let live as the old adage goes.
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I wish 🙋♀️ we all could do that
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100% agree and love this post. It’s becoming so hard for women and there’s so much pressure too look a certain way and be Instagram worthy and Instagram can have a positive and negative affect on women. I always like to take a break from the internet so I don’t feed into anything like this.
Love Patrice x
http://www.pixieox.com
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Thank you. I agree with you. It is a good idea to take a break sometimes.
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What a powerful message! We live in materialistic world today where everyone is ready to give their opinion based on the external appearances of that person! People have forgotten that all these things are shallow!
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thank you…i hope people become more aware of what their opinion is based on.
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I think its always about balance. We don’t want to have no discrimination or judgement about life. We all judge to one degree or another. We just need to find a spot where we agree about the end goals of those judgements. If the end goal is an honest way of lifting up a person to be better and the person knows it is done in that way, the judgement is not necessarily bad. Eat healthy, take care of your children, etc. All of those are good things. But no one should be shamed into anything either. It’s a fine line we walk.
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thank you…that is what I wanted to say in this post. I am judgmental myself but I do not want to be shallow.
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I wish we just all happily accepted everyone for themselves. little children do and it’s so lovely to watch them accept other children in
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but we do not live in an ideal world…
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We judge people from the first second we see them. First with our eyes, based on appearance, secondly by adding labels or placing into a certain box and finally, we judge with our hearts. And then we realise what a non-sense is judging someone. We have better things to do.
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We do indeed
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Ug. I have this problem so much. I really struggle with it. I’m not overweight at all, but the toning is what I’m not confident about at all. 😦
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I know the feeling😨
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