My rant about body image

[bente2]

Let me get in on this with a disclaimer first,

if any of these statements don't sit with you, that's cool. I'm sorry you disagree, but you're entitled to your opinion and so am I.

if I at any point contradict myself, please don't view it as hypocritical unless reading the context doesn't help.

this is a mytake about female bodies only since I don't feel like I have enough of a clear perception about males and hear less about males being selfconscious.

ok, on with the mytake!

I, as have many people, have struggled with body image and self confidence. First I wanted to be more curvy, then I wanted to be skinnier, and I basically went back and forth between those extremes. The "ideal" has been skinny and curvy for quite a while now.

Truth is, unless it's in your genetics, or you have the time and are willing to put the effort in maintaining an extremely healthy lifestyle and working out a lot, you won't be both.

There are four basic body types. See how I wrote basic in italics there. Basic means a base which can differ from body to body, but is a general idea.

The four basics are:

Banana, meaning little to no curves.

Apple, meaning bigger breasts and little to no butt.

Pear, meaning little to no breasts and a bigger bum.

Hourglass, meaning curvy.

Size doesn't play much of a role in these, even though one body type might be more prone to skinnyness than the other.

The common misconception, as I stated a little earlier, is that these are the only body types. They might be the basics, butt that doesn't mean there's no exceptions. Just as the banana shape doesn't mean you can't be bigger, or that the apple shape suggests you can't be skinny. The general basics are there because they are seen as proportionate.

I believe as long as you're healthy, meaning you exercise and follow a healthy diet,-not just living on everything green and never snacking, living in the gym-, you have a nice body. If you are not overweight, you have a nice body. Basically, if you put in little effort to keep healthy, you have a nice ass body. (Also, being overweight is subjective. For example, BMI is a lie, because people don't include race or lifestyle in it.)

Since there's been so many beauty ideals, women all over the world have been conditioned to think a certain way.

"I wish I had a body like that"

is probably a common phrase among most women nowadays, even though we are changing the perception of body image. Most women can't see their own beauty, either because they haven't been told they are beautiful or because they aren't maintaining a good lifestyle.

The sad thing is that it's also a common phrase among most younger girls. We're raised in this society that only 'accepts' the ideal, look at barbie. I'm glad we're trying to change that, but then there's still loads of other underlying problems, such as gender conformity.