unpretty

Self Image is a fragile thing and most women I know (myself included) have a fairly poor view of themselves. I think I'm far too self critical, holding myself up to standards I'll never meet but I'm quite sure how to change that. It's hard because as women we are conditioned to believe certain things about ourselves from an early age and we are given specific ideas about what is and isn't attractive in a woman. Something must be going wrong somewhere along the line because I could gather far too many women I know in one space and you'd be hard pushed to find one who doesn't have some sort issues with self esteem.

As a child growing up in the 80's I had a barbie, In fact I think I might have had several and when you really think about the message a toy like barbie is sending to young girls It's actually fairly horrible. Here is this plastic model of a woman that could never exist because her dimensions are completely unrealistic, her boobs too big, her legs too long and her waist much too tiny and you can only imagine what sort of subliminal
message this sends to young girls when all the advertisements are portraying Barbie as beautiful and popular and here are girls at 6, 7,8 already measuring themselves at something unattainable. I can't say we moved on with the times as Barbie just keeps on getting trashier and her competition in the line of Bratz dolls is hardly what you'd call an improvement. Hey girls a pneumatic blonde is no longer the most attractive look, instead why not model yourself on a porn star that's also a hooker. Don't tell me the same thought hasn't crossed your mind when you first saw those dolls.

As you get older it only gets worse, not better. As a teenager with painfully low self esteem I used to pore over teenage magazines which showed many pictures of celebrities airbrushed until all you could see was flawless skin and not an ounce of fat on them and I didn't know these pictures had been modified, I genuinely thought that's what these girls looked like and It sent me the message that this was what beauty looked like and in turn I learned I wasn't beautiful because I didn't match up to those standards. Now I'm not saying you can pin all this on the media but it certainly has it's part to play.  What magazines and Tv did is they primed me with a set idea of what it took to be an attractive girl or woman and so I found myself more than ready to believe people when they confirmed what I already knew (in my mind) to be true.

When I finally hit my twenties I would look back on pictures of my teens and kick myself because I was skinny with clear skin and I could see I hadn't been an ugly teen but I hadn't known it when I had it and in a way it was sort of wasted on me. The problem is that deep down I'm still that girl, the awkward 14 year old who doesn't really believe she's much and I still get awkward and fidgety when someone compliments me, particularly if it's to tell me I'm looking better or that I've lost weight and I don't really take it on board. Now if someone insults me I'll remember that, that I'll keep while compliments go forgotten.

Throughout my twenties I slowly put on weight, not a huge amount mind you but I've always had a slim frame so it didn't sit well but in a way it was like the heavier I got the more it reinforced the self image I had and that would make me feel sad so I'd eat something to feel better and if you're wondering how that worked out for me I'd suggest you check my blog post on weight loss. You can't possibly miss it. It contains a delightful photo of me doing a passable impression of a fat traveler woman. While all this was going on I'd open magazines and see endless photos of women with bodies half the size of mine being paraded as beautiful one week and overweight the next week because they'd eaten a sandwich in between and then anorexic the week after that, because they'd given up eating sandwiches all together. Maybe I'm simplifying things a bit but that's how it seemed to me. The worst kinds of stories were when they picked women a lot skinnier than I was and slagged them off for putting up a bit of weight and I think part of the problem there is there is still far too much focus on this size zero culture which is madness when you think about it, when I was in my teens size zero was a size reserved for children and young girls who had eating disorders and not actual adult women. If you're being told that's the size you have to be to be beautiful and it looks completely unattainable well then how are you supposed to feel? like crap? would you like some cake because It's always worked a treat for me.

So Let's fast forward to the present and here I am a 31 year old woman who's the smallest I've ever been ( if you don't count childhood and I don't believe you should. I was aiming to lose weight, not make it to my birth weight) but in many ways I don't feel it. I know, mostly because I've been told this a lot, that when you lose weight or drop a dress size or two that the mental catch up can be the bit that takes the longest. I am aware that I've lost a great deal of weight but that's not always what I see when I look in the mirror. and I'm wheat intolerant now so I know I can't ever go back to eating like I used to so it's not like I see 'Fat Laura' lurking around the corner with a donut but I still see a lot of room for improvement. I look less to the media these days for inspiration because I know better but it doesn't stop me trawling Fitspo blogs mind-shopping for the body I think I'll be happy with. Realistically I know that feeling attractive isn't going to be about reaching a particular milestone weight wise especially considering the fact that I don't want to go down another dress size, I don't think I could handle my boobs getting any smaller for one, because that's a side effect of getting skinnier I did not sign up for. It's all in my head, these days the only who is making me feel unpretty is me.