BellaOnline Forums Beauty and Self Body Image Self Advocacy

It can be hard to speak up for ourselves when someone makes a comment about our bodies or our diet. How do you handle this? Do you have any tips for lovingly telling people that your body is not available for discussion?

We never need to justify to others our diet or our body size. But I suppose our confidence in our choices will dictate how we respond. The more confident we are, the more lovingly we can convey the notion that we will not engage in discussing those choices. Instead of becoming combative and defensive, we can simply aver that our choices are our own and not open to discussion or judgment.

So the challenge is in realizing our own autonomy, and also that those who could criticize are quite possibly even less confident than we are.

Hi Linda Sue,
I can't agree more. any response to others needs to be done with kindness, even if the comments are not kind.

I also agree we don't have to justify ourselves but sometimes we do need to set boundaries and I that is more of the lines I was thinking of.

Thanks for your comments!

Nadine

Linda,

I've totally found that to be virtually 100% accurate! Criticism when it comes from others, even outbursts, directed and hateful language, body or otherwise, from the depths of wherever it is MY SOUL gets its "stuff," lies somewhere beneath, the person advocating it.

That doesn't just include "body image." Racial comments (both sides) the defensive and the critics, etc., really? Those things say much more about you than the person you may happen to be directing it towards.

Body image? For me, it's the same as race. I see only the person's Soul-being. Color-blind, image-blind, etc. call it what you may, BUT what I've found as well, the less we feel towards or about ourselves...I've noticed something almost universal.

We've the tendency to recoil, feeling safe inside our "cocoons" when it does just the opposite. Reason being, we then become trapped within our own thoughts or worse, repress, inside to whatever makes us "feel" better.

Maybe it's shopping online or curling up in bed w/a few best friends, "Ben & Jerry" well, there's Oreos and milk too, lol

All Self is beautiful! All Creation is beautiful.

It's what YOU believe and whom you share those beliefs with, that togetherness. That's the Village where even more beautiful things reside

When I'm feeling rotten...I just get out and about and nod or smile at someone (husband always at side) and you know? Something happens, literally!

It's like a warmth, a glow and when you get back? It inspires, takes you to a place you remember. A place where anything's possible and we're a part of it all.

Yes, that's right! Attitude toward body image and race are similar, because race refers to the body type, skin color, etc. When we finally come to grips with what we can change and what we cannot, our attitude changes.

Denigrating others because of their race or any other body feature just shows the immaturity of the one doing the denigrating. The first stanza of the serenity prayer offers useful attitude that addresses this issue:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

People who are cruel to others are not happy with themselves. No need to justify their comments.

It is important to love yourself no matter what, and to know that each of us is a special being created for greatness. We all have a unique beauty and loving energy we can share with the world.

My father sends me the serenity prayer, every now and then. He's still among the living and I cherish that.

His words are almost poetic down to how it was he became a Dr.

My husband and he had a one on one while the girls went salvation army - shopping (me and mom).

He told my husband, "One day, I just decided not to go to work...."

Now in today's world, that could equate to many a things - including that of the "excusive" day off.

But what he did?

He took the bus back. From there, he went to the local college and basically said, "This is where I'm at. This is what I have. Can I go to or get into college."

From there...well, that's how he became a Dr. but here's the thing. He NEVER wanted - NOT EVER, to be addressed as Dr. (so-n-so).

To this day, when people here my last name, they tell me they'd never had graduated if it had not been for that man. That's something, to me anyway, that makes a difference.

That inner ability - the wings per-se, to do what it is a person is best at doing

Body image must be slim sexy ehehee