BEAUTY

Navigating Your Body Image in a World of Fake Lips, Bodies + Waist Trainers

In an endless sea of cosmetic surgery, filters, and photoshop, you are enough.

We’ve all been there. You are innocently scrolling through social media and then you are blasted with image after image, of what appears to be the perfect lives and bodies of some of the most popular influencers and celebrities. Shoot, sometimes it’s even images of your friends with their new nose job, breasts, or lipo.

That one photo that you see posted sometimes takes a team of people to put together. In addition to surgery, waist slimmers, diets, makeup and augmentation, people are using professional lighting, filters and many other tricks to make themselves look a certain way on social media. Sometimes it’s a full-time job. You aren’t always seeing their “just woke up” face, so you can’t compare yourself to these images and think, this is what you should look like 24/7 or at all.

Have you ever had a friend who altered how they looked and then they scrutinized you? Well, it happens. If someone isn’t happy with themselves, they may project that on to you. Like the friend who monitors what you eat or encourages you to lose weight. Meanwhile, they go the easy route with a procedure to look a certain way. This type of peer pressure can be daunting but it’s easy to resist falling into this negative body image arena. When we say love yourself, we mean it. It should be an unbreakable shell that no one can penetrate.

A celebrity was quoted as saying that someone made fun of her thin lips as a teenager and it instantly made her feel bad and get lip injections.

She allegedly went on to get other procedures that she proudly displays on social media. But where does that leave the rest of the teens and women who may constantly look at her feed? When you look at someone who has augmented their appearance and then you look in the mirror, you may feel less than if your breasts aren’t falling in the same place. Your arms and legs may not be the same sculpted shape and it may have you feeling unlovable.

These images can do damage to our minds over the long term if we don’t arm ourselves with the protection of self-love. Changing any aspect of your face and body is the right of the individual, but it’s also our right to know deep within ourselves that we can’t live for the approval of others.

Did you know that many clothing manufacturers are making clothing for teens and women that have had surgery? The clothes don’t even fit properly unless you have a body that looks like a coke bottle.

Even though people can do as they wish with their bodies, we can and will, still celebrate how we naturally look. The curl of your hair, the freckles on your face, lips thin or full, waist slim or thick, we are all beautiful. You can’t live in a bubble thinking that you won’t be able to get a date or be found attractive, just because you don’t look like a blow-up doll. There are other real people out in this world who want a relationship with someone who is real and natural. To each their own.

Here are some helpful tips to make sure you do not get overwhelmed and inundated with images that you see on social media.

  • Follow friends and influencers that project a positive body image.
  • Don’t feel as though you have to copy the lives of people you see online.
  • Create your own look and journey.
  • Take a break from social media accounts that don’t make you feel good.
  • Once you take a break, see if you need that account in your life at all.
  • Focus on yourself.
  • Find what makes you beautiful and embrace it.
  • Practice self-love every day by reminding yourself that you are enough.