body positivity!!

I am a loser in some ways and not in others, everyone else the same, KIP crut it is all good.

But judging negatively is not the same as appreciating something positively amirite? Like, I admire LL's cooking skillz, this is not the same as looking down my nose at someone without those skillz.

I can accept that.

I guess the point of my photos was to illustrate how prior to fat acceptance, I was not the best dresser (because I didn't believe my body really deserved to display awesome clothes? Or also because I was constantly making BIG PLANS to lose weight?), and I LOOKED and felt unhappy.

After FA, I felt better, looked better, and no longer dodged the camera.

I would be totally psyched to go to 7-11 with markers for some hot dogs, is what I am saying. At the same time I can be all "LL makes some awesome food, I aspire to that" kinda thing.

oops xposts

and also its made me a more tolerant, open person

:) xxp

i think clothes can be a reflection of how you feel about yourself in a way that body size doesn't. one of many ways!

I used to hide in huuuuuge droopy thrift store clothes so people wouldn't look at me and around 22 or so I started dressing a little better (more femininely at least) and now I wear whatever I want. I don't think this phenomenon is limited to larger people. It sure feels good to not hide anymore, that's for sure.

Lemme say sure again. Sure.

Sure!

flesh as a sign of a life enthusiastically lived

vs.

flesh as a sign of measurements made (or not made)

Xp yes, the clothes and new attitude make a world of difference. You look great! That is one thing I do have to say in favor of "what not to wear"--they always emphasize that now is the time to look good & to "blame the clothes, not your body" if you feel like you don't look good.

That said, I don't like the emphasis on dos & don'ts and the conformity they force on ppl. Sometimes the point of dressing isn't to flatter your figure.

I don't really like "What not to wear" because they use the same aesthetic for everyone. People are allowed to have their own sense of style! It's all very bland and generic. And yeah, according to the rules of flattering clothes, I should never wear horizontal stripes or anything without a fucking belt at "the smallest part of my waist"

great pics h2, thanks for sharing them. i swear i know the dude in photo 2.

anyway, yeah, attitude is everything (or, well, almost everything). when i'm happy, i'm p much okay w me, no matter who or how i be. when not, then not.

You might know him, He is a well-known man about town in NYC

Notable: http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2013/06/self-love-is-not-an-obligation-so-stop-preaching-it/

The problem, dear people who are fond of motivational sayings, is not that people don’t have the mental will to access some elusive well of self-love. Instead, the real problem is that you, your mother and your cousin, too, spend all day, every day affirming that some people have every reason to love the way they look (i.e. Rihanna) and that other people have no business doing the same (i.e. people who look more like Gabourey Sidibe, whose looks all of you happily dissed when Kanye West rapped, “my bitch make your bitch look like Precious.”)

A $60 billion weight loss industry and a $170 billion cosmetics industry—not to mention the influence of magazines, television shows, films and music—valiantly combine to ensure we all hate every dimple, pimple, roll, stretch mark, wrinkle and pore.

I call it victim-blaming. How dare you, fat, dark-skinned woman with nappy hair, not love yourself the way some thin, white woman with straight hair is apparently able to? It’s no matter that your image, when it’s ever spotted in media or referenced in music, is maligned and deemed pungent on its face. It’s no matter that every encounter with mainstream culture tells you that you’re wrong and different. You are just not trying hard enough to accept yourself, damnit!

Also homo, I love your glasses in the first pic.

love this thread, learning to love my beer wobble

In my mid 20s I was skinny as a rake with no tits and I hid under loose tshirts and baggy pants (lol 90s) and I now regret that massively because I was always cute and just didnt KNOW it back then. TBH I also didnt care, but I always felt very plain, dumpy and invisible.

Now I have boobs and arse but it comes with the acceptance of sagging and age but I think I'm ok with it. My issue is less with weight (tho I'd be happy with my size if I had BOOBS which I just dont) than it is with frumpiness tbh. And now, with age. Watching one's face slowly gravitate downwards is alarming.

This isn't specifically on-topic but I've read this thing 3 times and I keep marveling at it.

The Young-Girl and the Selfie

The Young-Girl is the model citizen of contemporary society not because we worship her, but because by expending her energy on the cultivation of her body, her potential as a revolutionary subject is neutralized. If young girls are the hated bodies of capital (along with immigrant bodies, racialized bodies, LGBT bodies, etc) then they must also be predictable bodies; that is why we spend inordinate amount of money on emphasizing the important of beauty, the importance of fashion, the importance of youthfulness and desirability and individuality. If the best way of making your womanhood legible is to adorn your body in a particular way — whether femme or punk rock or teeny bopper or whatever — then there is an injunction to perform that work. Women who do not do that work, particularly teenage girls who ‘opt out’ as it were, face social repercussions far more meaningful than some 40-year-old dude calling them narcissists. We elevate the work women do on their bodies to the utmost importance, and then punish the outcome of that labour. That is how hegemony works.

A) lol grads skool
B) Whoah

duckface as Most Radical Gesture

I know this is more a thread about body, but can it be about face too? Thats the bit of me I hate most and struggle to love as I age. I pull m skin back Brazil-style and wonder about plastic surgery... then slap myself :)

lol okay Mandee, I've been thinking that guy looked familiar too but since you said he's in NYC I gave it some real thought and...was he on a makeover tv show? This is a long shot, I know.

Trayce, faces are part of bodies IMO. Also aging is definitely part of my struggle to KIP re my body and I have a lot to say but will save it for later when I'm awake.

ah man sometimes i look every day of my age plus a few more years on top but then other times i feel like i'm still not half as haggard as i could be

i am a grizzled hoos. okay w that tbh.

^ or so i'm told

I try to remind myself that things are not going to get any better, so I could spend this time feeling bad about what I used to look like or I could whoop it up (whatever I've still got) while I still have it. Trying to stop aging or "reduce" it will not stop the passage of time. I understand that there is a huge cosmetics industry devoted to anti-aging creams, but something tells me that it's snake oil and the only way out is to enjoy what I can of the good years. Because someday we're all going to look old because we will all be old.

i come across a bunch of people on OKCupid who are apparently younger than me and look older than me

we're going to have to figure out how to still feel good about ourselves when physical beauty is off the table
might as well start now so i'm set with a full tank of self-esteem when i'm 60

i think on the whole people of our generation look more "youthful" than people of my mom and dad's generation. i also think most of us adjust our notions of beauty as we get older - i can't imagine being repulsed by everybody my own age, that would be effed up. and age is really this factor that you only recognize in yrself, by remembering yrself - as far as looks go it's really only a small factor in the mix of what makes somebody attractive

i'm talking about the way we feel about ourselves, not our desirability to others necessarily
being attractive to others isn't really what this thread is about, is it? it's about how we feel about ourselves?

maybe i'm confused

no you're right but i was thinking about how we appraise ourselves and it's tied into the way we appraise others isn't it? i feel like it is for me, or like i'm not thinking "do i like the way i look?" but "will other people like the way i look?"

see, that's where we're different

i think if other people weren't in the equation i wd be 100 percent contented with me on the surface, just the aches and pains i can do without

what you say is interesting to me, and maybe it's a gendered experience? do women learn to appraise themselves differently to men on the whole do you think?

i can't control what other people think, i can only control what i think (and just barely). i focus on feeling comfortable for me; if people like to/can't bear to look at me that's not really my problem. one time one of my students told me, "if my husband saw me wearing your outfit, he would tell me i looked ridiculous" and i was like "would you have any interest in wearing this outfit?" and she said no, and i was like well ok then. no problem.

i have forced myself to appraise myself this way because i would never measure up otherwise. it's a learned skill, imo!

yeah, maybe trying to second guess other people is one of my secret little headfucks

I was all prepared for her to be like "I wish I could wear that kind of outfit too."

Well that's interesting, I just came here to say I think I maintain body positivity to some extent by just making a mental break from allowing myself to care if it's attractive to others. I can love it, because I live in it and it does things for me, and that makes me love its capabilities, but expecting other ppl to love it is too impossible to imagine. In a fatalistic but kind of cheerful way!

It's not the end of the world, if I don't care how I look to others I get to keep wearing the ugliest, most horrible house-clothes and they're so comfortable.

my round the house clothes are all hilariously grotty

tbf i wd live in a dressing gown and shorts if i was allowed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOnZ3YtA1Q0

basically Eazy is my inspiration

someday we're all going to look old because we will all be old. we're going to have to figure out how to still feel good about ourselves when physical beauty is off the table
might as well start now so i'm set with a full tank of self-esteem when i'm 60

You're so right that this is, like, echoing in my head.

xp I have tshirts I used to line-cook in when I was 16. They look like it.

it's sustainable energy at the most personal level

Good article on selfies xp. It can't be overstated how stupid and short sighted it is to complain about "narcissism of the youth" instead of the hegemonic systems that produce these insecure subjects

aging and physical appearance are such a weird thing to address, because while there's the actual physical process of aging that some people view as a negative, there's also the fact that many people feel more comfortable in their own skin as they age and that confidence can change perceptions

I know in the last five or so years I've definitely physically aged, partially due to a lot of stressors I had in my life and a bit of hard living. But I've also become much more comfortable with who I am and my appearance. So last week I was flattered when I got id'ed to buy beer, but then I was also flattered when someone at a bar (where I feel comfortable hanging out and talking to strangers) guessed my age within a year -- one year older, actually!