Wednesday 20 July 2016

Accepting your ugly

Most of the body positivity movement centres on on loving your body unconditionally. You should love your body and they ways you are uniquely beautiful.* But the truth of the matter is you can’t be happy with your boy 100% of the time. You can love your body all the time (or try to) but you can’t be happy with it all of the time.

Part of me learning to love my body was learning to accept my ugly. To accept the days where I looked in mirror and thought “Nope.” When I was puffy and bloated, when I broke out and when my hair looked like a black mass about to consume my head. I learned to live with days where I the image of me in my head did not match with reality.

You will not think you look perfect 100% of the time. It’s impossible. You will have days where you look in the mirror and think “Why does my face look like a beach ball?” I had to learn to accept this about my body. I had to learn to sink into my own skin and embrace it every day. Accepting my ugly days was freeing. It let me take the pressure off myself, i no longer had to match the idea of my ideal self in my head. I just had to be me.

I still have days where accepting my body is hard. I have days where I look in the mirror and think “Why do I look gross? You were fine 2 hours ago?”** But I’m cool with it. I move on. I lie down in my bed and chill out watching Property Brother in my PJ’s. Beauty is a social construct, it doesn't define me. There are days when I’m happier with my body than other but I accept it how it is, ugly or not.

*Beauty is a social construct which means you define it, it doesn’t define you. Those who say otherwise are wrong.

**In a friendly way. Mostly right after I wake up.

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