How to Overcome Your Struggle with Body Image
Words by Arielle Caraway // Image by Sarah Hartley
Do you ever look at images and think “she’s too skinny” or “why is she acting like she’s fat?” We often criticize each other or criticize ourselves, but who’s benefiting? In my journey of considering how my body image affects my self-image, I recently came across the term ‘body neutrality’. All of us have struggled with body image at one point or another. As the thoughts come up, I’d like you to consider who benefits from your struggle with body image and what tools can you use from the body neutrality movement to get past it. I’m not a specialist, so please make sure to discuss anything with your doctor or therapist before moving forward.
Who benefits from us focusing on and struggling with our body image and how can we start to pull ourselves out of this cycle if it doesn’t benefit us? Growing up, I remember being told I was too skinny, didn’t have enough butt for a black girl, and shouldn't be trying to eat healthy food and workout because I don’t have any weight to lose. I heard good things as well, but let’s be honest, the bad things stick around longer. Ironically, after my pregnancy, I heard that I wasn't losing weight fast enough, I should keep the weight, and that my husband probably loved my new butt. There’s never a true win situation it seems like. And as you struggle to fit all of these opinions on what your body should look like, it just causes further confusion and doubt on who you need to be. This brings up the question of who benefits from you struggling with your body image or self-doubt. The people who feel good because you feel bad, the beauty industry if they can get you to buy things you don’t need, people who need to put the burden of their bad actions on someone else, i.e. need you to dress a certain way so that they can keep themselves in check, and people who don’t want you to feel self-confident enough to fight for yourself. The only way I see us benefiting from this is in the strength and focus we can gain from overcoming it.
At this point, I think we’ve all seen something on body positivity, but I’m personally finding that I gravitate more towards body neutrality. Body positivity states that we should love our body, but body neutrality states that whether you love or hate your body at the moment, what’s more important is that you remember it’s only one not so important piece of who you are. That means you can still have self-worth and be self-confident no matter what you feel about your body. I’ve struggled with body image and self-confidence issues since my teen years, but the Kindred Patreon podcast with Rachel Tenny, a body image therapist, was the first time I heard someone talk about body neutrality. She did a great job of providing some background and ideas on where to learn more. Since then, I bought the book Beyond Beautiful and have continued to look into how body neutrality would suggest we work to feel confident in the skin we’re in.
My favorite tool so far is a question that Rachel posed during the podcast: If you weren’t worried about how your body looked, would you still be doing this? If yes, then keep doing it. If not, don’t do it. I love this because it’s super easy to do and makes you consider the reason behind your actions. For me, it brought to mind working out. I would definitely continue working out because I’ve always known that my body functions better when I’m active or working out regularly. I stay the most consistent with my workout routine when my body tells me it’s struggling. Working out just because it's what I'm supposed to do or because I want to look a certain way has never gotten me to stick to it.
The next two tools I liked were from the Beyond Beautiful book. They were specific to when you think a particular photograph of you is bad. The first was to get angry. The book specifically said to "remind yourself of the reason for your strong reaction. You believe that looking bad is a big deal because that’s what you’ve been taught all of your life by big corporations and misguided value systems - and that’s messed up.” I couldn’t agree more. It makes me so angry to realize that I may be letting someone else dictate how I feel about myself and that's not ok.
The other tool was to redirect your attention back to the positive memory the photo captured. Just recently, we took a great family photo while on a mini road trip to see the changing of the leaves. It was so beautiful in the mountains and it felt great to get out of the house and share that moment with the guys. The picture is even my background photo on my phone right now. Unfortunately, I sometimes nitpick at how we look in the photo, especially about how I look, and I have to remind myself that while it may not be a 100% perfect photo, we all looked great, and more importantly, it was a great day. I’m always sad when I miss the chance to take a family photo while we're out enjoying ourselves. There’s no reason to focus on that one flaw when it won’t matter in a month, let alone in 20 years, and wasn’t even the reason I wanted to take the picture in the first place.
I hope you'll consider whether the pain that you may be putting yourself through, mentally, physically, or spiritually, is worth it. We all have something valuable to offer the world and it's most likely not related to our physical appearance. How much more could we enjoy ourselves and shine our light if we stopped allowing everyone else to determine how we feel about ourselves?
About the Author:
Arielle Caraway is an accountant, photographer, and writer. She is a firm believer in seeing the beauty in life in everything you do. She hopes to encourage readers to live a life of intention by offering insight into her own journey. In her free time, you can find her putting a dent in her running list of must-reads, watching the latest Netflix movie, photographing beautiful things, or hanging out with her husband and son.
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