Every Body is Beautiful – Winter 2020

Bodies come in all shapes, sizes, skin types and tones, and with different physical abilities. Every body truly is unique. Yet, our world—especially the media—tends to diminish this body diversity and instill in many of us a narrow definition of beauty, making it hard to develop a positive relationship with our bodies.

We interviewed a group of NOLA girls and women about their bodies. How do they feel about their bodies? What do they love, what did they need to learn to love, what parts are they still struggling with? Do they feel pressure to look a certain way? Lastly, we asked them for ideas and advice on how we can learn to accept and love our bodies.

Here is part two of their perspectives, reflections, stories, and tips! Missed part one?

Check out our Summer/Fall 2020 Issue

“I tend to always think about what I could change, which keeps me from ever truly being 100% in love with my body, but generally, I feel pretty good about my body.”

“Sometimes I have trouble accepting compliments because I don’t always see what other people see.”

“In my early teenage years, I felt extremely uncomfortable as my body started to change. I didn’t like my body at all, and it was so hard to find clothes. When I was around 16 or 17, I began to like how I had developed. I was able to get dressed and feel comfortable. But I also began to put an unhealthy amount of pressure on myself concerning my eating habits. Now, as an adult, my weight is still up and down. This of course affects how I feel about my body. However, I haven’t gone back to completely disliking my body. I still find things I want to change, but I don’t feel as uncomfortable as I did as a teenager. I’ve grown to love the things that I cannot change.”
“Over the years, I’ve learned how to treat my body to yield the results I like. Eating properly and exercising regularly helps a lot. When I’m fitter, I feel more comfortable in my own skin.”

“I felt indirect pressure from my peers to be smaller because most of them were always smaller than I was, so I felt I should be as small as them. However, none of my friends ever made me feel ashamed of my body. In fact, I feel they appreciated my body type more than I did!”

“I had to find the positives in what I believed to be flaws. I realized that there are so many features I have that other people wish they had. When it comes to weight, I learned that I can change it if I put forth the effort. I figured out what clothes, shoes, accessories made me feel good.”

“I love my curves, I love my eyes, and I love my smile.”

Advice:

“Sometimes I stare at myself in the mirror and pose and smile. Tell yourself what you love about yourself. Flaunt those things! Something that I think is very important is to understand that it’s perfectly normal to not like something about yourself, but you should NEVER beat yourself up about it. Don’t let it define you!”

“Generally, I love my body because even though it has gone through rough times—both mentally and physically—it is also helping me to live life to the fullest.”

“Being transgender, sometimes I feel as though I’m not a woman completely because I don’t have body parts that cisgender women have. Sometimes I feel very dysphoric because I don’t have breasts or because I have a bulge in my pants, which can limit a lot of the clothes that I want to wear.”

“I love that my body is unique because I’d rather be unique than ordinary.”

“My journey to loving my body is still happening today. I know that I’ve come a long way, but there are still many days when there is a mind-body disconnect, which means that the person I see in the mirror doesn’t match my gender and how I look in my head. To be completely honest, my dysphoria sometimes makes living hard and can make me depressed. Sometimes I think my shoulders are too broad or that I need boobs to feel like a woman, but I know that deep down I don’t need those things to feel like a woman!”

Advice:

“Look in the mirror every day and find at least one thing that you love about your body. Even if today you love your body and tomorrow you hate it, finding things to love about your body every day might eventually lead to loving your body more because you program your mind to love it and can see yourself for the beautiful woman you are.”

“Of course there are those days when I start to think, What if I looked like this?, but they eventually pass. I feel pretty good about my body in general.”

“There are plenty of people who idolize celebrities and models and wish they looked like them. I definitely had to learn that social media only shows people’s good sides and not their unedited, unfiltered pictures. I’ve realized that I don’t need to look a certain way to be beautiful.”

“I love that I have my body. No matter what, it helps me to move and walk and do everything, and for that I’m grateful.”

Advice:

“I wear cute clothes and dress up. As long as I feel comfortable and happy, that’s all that matters. To any girl who is struggling to love herself: Whenever you talk bad about how you look, ask yourself if you would say that to your friend, sibling, or even your younger self.”

“Over the years, especially as a pre-teen and teenager, there were times when I loved my body and the way I looked; other times, not so much. I wore my hair long and cut it short. I gained weight and lost weight. I wore glasses and other times chose contact lenses. At times I decided to wear make-up, other times not. There were times when I cared about what others thought, but as I got older, I learned that I was not responsible for other people’s perceptions of me. Their opinions were neither my problem nor my business. At the end of the day, my body and my choices were mine.”

“When I look back on my development from a girl to a woman, I would compare the process to the life cycle of a butterfly. My transformation happened over time. There were periods of darkness. There were times of struggle. In each phase of my growth, I was right where I was supposed to be. And before I knew it, my caterpillar days ended, and I gained beautiful wings that were unique to me. My wings came in the form of courage and confidence.”

Advice:

“Give yourself time.”

“I love my hips; they’re made for dancing. My body is a work of art. I love my body. Its shape is unique and fabulous.”

“Family and social media are two of the biggest pressures for me and other young women who struggle with body positivity. Throughout my entire life I have always been reminded of how skinny I am by my family members and made to feel ashamed of my shape. But magazines would show women of my shape in designer clothes and super models were being exalted for their long, skinny frames.”

“I had to learn to love my strawberry legs.”

Advice:

“I exercise daily and nourish my body with clean eating. My advice to other girls would be to remember that their happiness and sense of self-worth come first. Always make sure that whatever you want to change about your body is your choice. Don’t change who you are to please anyone else.”

“My body has been good to me so far. No broken bones, for example, and it has withstood the lack of consideration I gave it in my youth when taking vitamins and using sunblock was, at best, an afterthought.”

“I have muscular legs. When I was in high school, I couldn’t get boots to fit over my calves, and it bothered me. I envied girls with thin, long legs. In society, the messaging back then, even around fitness, was not to get bulky. It deemed visible muscles and strength unfeminine. That has since changed, mostly, even though I still see magazines and fitness gurus use terminology to assure girls and women that X, Y, or Z program will allow them to build lean muscles instead of bulk, reinforcing an archaic idea of what they should look like. Now that I’m in my 40s, I like that my legs are strong. I only wish my arms were equally so.”

“I grew up in a somewhat diverse suburb, but there weren’t many people who were Latinx. Though I would never have admitted it at the time, there was a period when I really wanted to fit in and conform. I wish that I’d loved myself and my body more back then and embraced just being me.”
“I’m pear-shaped; I have a petite upper body but have a butt, and I’m short, which meant finding the perfect jeans was the ultimate challenge. Most stores carried clothes with measurements based on an Anglo frame, so pants were too tight on my rear, too loose in the waist, and way, way too long. It was deflating. At some point, designers figured out that we girls and women aren’t all shaped the same.”

“I love my feet. That probably sounds weird. They aren’t even attractive, but instead squat and
wide at the front and narrow at the heel. I did ballet growing up, and my feet are strong, and I like that. They have gotten me through so much, helping me walk away from dead-end jobs and bad relationships, and they’ve brought me joy through dancing and walking my sweet babies back and forth when they were newborns. They have gotten me through so many milestones in life.”

Advice:

“I don’t weigh myself or count calories. For me, it turns a positive, taking care of my body, into a burden. I don’t like that feeling. My focus is on overall health.”

“I like to distinguish between how I feel and what I think about my body. I tend to feel good about my body, but if I think about my body, then I notice that I tend to find ways to criticize it. So, I try to focus on how I feel in my body.”

“I have a much greater appreciation for all that my body does for me now. And for all of the little things I can do that add up to keep it as healthy as possible.”

“I really try to not compare my body with others. It’s something that I’ve worked on a lot. It hasn’t come easily. It’s definitely a practice, but, wow, what a payoff to feel good!”

“I love my curves. I accept that I have a short body with a curvy figure. I prefer to focus on the curves and my health and fitness level.”

“Growing up, I never thought much about the fact that I’m petite. As I got older, people began to notice and I suddenly started to feel bad about it. Then I realized that it had never been a problem for me before so why would I give those opinions the power to change that all of a sudden?!”
Owner of Lolo’s Youth Yoga, Fitness + Art Studio

Advice:

“Give yourself a break. Be compassionate toward yourself, the way you would be with a friend. The worst thing we do every day is to miss our shot to be good to ourselves. We spend all of this time focusing on the negative. If we made the choice to focus on the positive just 25% more of the time, we would be so much happier. Say these phrases five times throughout the day: ‘I feel good in my body. Our words matter. To others. And to ourselves. Choose them wisely. Your body will thank you.’”

“Sometimes I feel like my body is inadequate by today’s standards. I try not to focus on my looks but rather on how to retain good health.”

“I used to feel immense pressure about my body when I was younger and overweight because everyone around me, including friends and family, would always comment on how chubby I was or on my plans to lose weight.”

“I love the tenderness of my palms and my long legs. I love how I can move fluidly without worrying about the next step I take.”

“I’m still learning that beauty isn’t monolithic. It’s a futile effort to seek validation from other people when their perspectives are subjective. All that matters is that I love myself even with imperfections.”

Advice:

“One tip I’d give to girls and young women who struggle to love their bodies is to remind themselves that their bodies are theirs. They have total control over how to maintain their body because it doesn’t belong to anybody else.”