The first one was released recently. It was an experiment Glamour magazine did where they asked women to judge strangers based solely on their weight. The women were quick to label overweight subjects as 'lazy' 'slow' and 'sloppy' and they were more likely to call a skinnier woman 'bitchy' 'mean' or 'controlling'. While the fact that we have to judge each other so harshly is terrible, what I got from this study is more of a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' lesson. No matter what you do, or who you are, people are going to make hasty judgments. If you are out killing yourself everyday to fit a certain ideal, or so people will 'like' you, you'll quickly learn that you will always find someone who has negative thoughts and feelings towards you. If you are trying to lose weight you need to do it for you, you have to learn to love yourself and not be mean towards yourself before you can expect others to be kind to you as well. You should never, ever try and lose weight for someone else. It needs to be for you and you only. This survey is proof of why. People are mean either way, if you lose weight to impress others chances are high you will fail because it is impossible to please anyone but yourself!
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| Is this really what we think when we look at each other? |
The second article is something I am very, very guilty of doing. According to Glamour the average woman has 11 negative thoughts about their own bodies daily. Not many people would allow someone to follow them around during the day and say things like 'you're a fat, ugly cow.', 'you're a worthless pig' and all those other tid bits that will pop up in our minds, so why do we allow ourselves to do it? The answer is, of course, that we grow up learning that it's not okay to be comfortable in your own skin. From the time we are young we are learning of all the things/people we should be. What we should look like. How we should think about ourselves. Think about it, even as a child how many female friends (or even male friends) did you ever hear say 'Ya know what? I love myself and everything about my body."? I can honestly say I've never heard anyone say that. In fact I remember playing a game in jr. high where you tell each other what you don't like about each other and specific body parts. I'm pretty certain that at least some of my issues with my butt and thighs came from this game. There was no saying 'you look pretty the way you are' because that is unheard of. No one likes themselves, right?
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| Don't let yourself be consumed by negative thoughts |
Fortunately for us, change starts with a single person. I really don't have many body qualms anymore. I've lost a ton of weight and I KNOW I look good now and I'm tired of feeling like I have to find something wrong with myself. Starting today I am pledging that whenever anyone starts talking about what's 'wrong' with their bodies I will stand up and say "you know what? I LOVE my body. And you should too." No more of these hateful thoughts! And for further change I am pledging to not be judgmental. It's something I have been better about recently anyway but starting now I'm not going to judge people on their weight. If we all stop judging each other so harshly maybe we can stop striving for some perfect, ideal body shape and weight and aim for something much more achievable; our individual health.
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