I recently had a conversation with a friend about a video link she had sent me. In the video, a young woman was talking about her video blog on makeup and beauty and how she had received numerous judgemental and insulting comments – not about her beauty tips and tricks, but about her physical appearance.
Sadly, that’s not an unusual thing to happen these day. There are so many trolls out there who, for their own reasons, feel it is OK to point out what they believe to be someone else’s flaws.
As to the reasons why they do this? Well, let’s save that for another day.
Anyway, back to the video.
This woman went on to point out that she loved herself just as she was and she wasn’t going to hide away because someone else found her appearance somehow offensive. This woman was going to keep being who she was, loving who she was, loving how she looked, and she was going to keep doing what she loved doing and nobody was going to stop her.
She is a pretty switched on and a genuinely inspirational woman.
My friend and I both agreed that the young woman in the blog had an admirable attitude and should not have been subjected to attempts to ‘fat shame’ her.
Where our opinions differed was on the subject of self-love and the ability to love oneself and to see oneself as beautiful when one isn’t considered “perfect”.
I thought this would be a great topic to tackle as I know this is something we all struggle with at times. I think we can confuse our desire to make changes to our lives – our health, our appearance, our relationships, our careers – with recognising our unique beauty and our worthiness of love and acceptance whilst we are on the journey of change.
For me, loving yourself is about being and accepting yourself, as you are, including the bits people might normally label as ‘good’ and things they might label as ‘bad’. It’s about being perfectly OK with the whole package. It is the true acceptance of who you are, as you are, in this present moment, without any judgement.
It’s our judgement about a characteristic that sets limits around how worthy or unworthy we think someone, including ourselves, is of love.
Here’s the thing. Your worthiness of love isn’t something you have to earn. You don’t have to reach a certain standard of behaviour, or academic achievement, or meet a certain standard of physical appearance or spiritual level before you can be worthy of love. Your mere existence makes your worthy of love.
Let’s be clear. God made you as you. He created you knowing exactly how your physical appearance would be throughout your life. He created you knowing what your personality was going to be like. He created you knowing your life circumstances and how you would respond to those. He created you because He loved you, loves you, and will always love you.
If you are worthy of being created by God and being loved by God, who are you to think yourself as less worthy? Do you think God made a mistake?
Do you think God loves you less because you are skinny/fat/tall/short/fit/unfit/smart/not so smart/kind/mean/giving/selfish/have unblemished skin/are covered in warts/believe in Him or don’t believe in Him? No. God loves you no matter who you are, how you act or what your physical appearance is like. He loves and accepts you because you are you. He made you unique and it’s your uniqueness that makes you truly beautiful. He loves your uniqueness.
You aren’t meant to look like anyone else. You aren’t meant to be like anyone else.
Just because you are on a journey of change – whether it be to get fit, lose/gain weight, change careers, improve your relationships – whatever that change may be, don’t wait until you achieve your goals before you can look at yourself and your life with complete acceptance and love. You are beautiful and perfect as you are at any given point in time. You are beautiful and perfect as you are at any stage of your change journey. You are beautiful and perfect at the beginning, during and at the end.
So, next time you look in the mirror, don’t place any judgement on what you see. Know that you have been created this way on purpose. As beautiful. As you are. Right now.
Be yourself. Accept yourself. Love your unique beauty – warts and all.
