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.