MY THOUGHTS ON THE BODY POSITIVITY MOVEMENT

I’ve had a post written up for awhile, sitting in my notes. I was reluctant to post it because I wasn’t sure the reaction I’d get from posting it.

It’s a, uh, thought or dilemma I’ve been having in my head….

The body positivity movement I see all over this platform, I love it. It’s allowing people to feel good about themselves and feel free of ridiculous societal standards on how a body should look.
The people with bigger platforms on this movement are very open about everything, and openly share their love of things like botox, lip injections, eye lash extensions etc. I'm telling you right now this is not something I judge people about or for, whatever. I love that these women are open about it and not trying to hide it.

The dilemma I was having in my mind was, how do we promote body positivity to our children but alter other parts of our physical appearance?

How do we tell our children they are beautiful the way they are, but hide the fact we got lip fillers because we didn't love the lips we had. Is it hypocritical?

Then something happened this week, which was eye opening and answered the dilemma I was having internally. TheBirdsPapaya got hair extensions, and people freaked – the - fuck - out. Apparently she was no longer authentic enough because of her extensions? Um, hi, did people think her beautiful white blonde hair was natural? Doubt it, so how is dying your hair different from throwing in some extensions for length? This prompted her to post a response to all the unnecessary backlash, which was the eye opening post for me.

This isn’t a movement necessarily around just body positivity. No, it’s much bigger than just a physical appearance.

This is a movement on self care and the journey to loving yourself.

Self care could be accepting and flaunting not being a size zero, but it can also be about working out to get abs and flaunting that.

Self care can be getting botox because it makes you feel better about yourself, or it can also be about not getting it because a few wrinkles here and there is your jam.

Self care can be about spending an hour in the bathroom contouring and creating the perfect smokey eye because you love makeup, but it can also be about just throwing your hair in a messy bun with no makeup. This is actually why her response post clicked for me, makeup has been one of the main forms of self care I’ve done for myself in my grief journey. It’s one of the few things currently that make’s me happy and feel good.

Self care is also obviously not all physically oriented, but it's a form of self care that gets the most judged and in this case the whole point of this post!

The road of self care and love is a very personal journey. Like any journey in life, we navigate it in our own way. Why is someone else’s navigation to be judged or wrong because it’s not your way of self care or love?
And, I’m not saying, encourage your child to alter their appearance. I’m saying listen to your child’s thoughts.

Encourage and nurture what they love about themselves. Physical and non-physical.

Discuss the things they don’t love about themselves. Get to the bottom of why they don’t, and participate in something that they find to be a form of self care.

That’s just my two cents, and I really hope you've read this with an open mind and heart. If something has offended you in this post, feel free to comment or DM me in private and I’d love to chat it out.

I’m also glad I never posted the original post I had written out, not that it was negative in anyway, but I’m glad I had this “a-ha” moment so I could share that instead.