The other day I watched a TV show called 'My Daughter the Teenage Nudist'. It featured young people who liked to be naked (as you may have guessed from the title) including a group that had set up a blog called 'Naked Vegan Cooking'-posting photos and recipes on-line of their clothing optional cooking meetups. During the show, they read out some of the comments from the blog-seemingly focussing on the negative rather than the positive. People were saying that they were "ugly" and that they should only be running a naked-centred blog if they were nice to look at etc etc. (Laughably, this goes against the entire reason for the blog-to promote a normal body image and try to encourage body confidence in their readers). It got me thinking about just how subjective "ugliness" and "beauty" are. These guys were just doing their thing, not just to enjoy it, but to try to promote a healthy body image, to go against Hollywood's contrived image of beauty and to show people what normal really is. And I say all credit to them, I think what they're doing is excellent.
While you won't find me stripping off to post naked photos on here any time soon, I do totally support their views. I am probably a lot of people's idea of "ugly". I'm overweight, I don't have a traditionally beautiful face and my skin is covered with scars from acne I had through my teens. Still, I don't care, because I am happy. The people who I want to consider me beautiful do, and this helps me to feel beautiful within myself. You may find it strange to think that a woman who wears size 18 clothes is happy with the way she looks, but for the most part I am! Of course I still have those down days from time to time, but show me the person who doesn't?
There was a quotation from the show that struck a chord in me- 'The Perfect body is a Happy one', which is something I wholeheartedly agree with. I know a lot of people that spend too much time casting themselves as ugly, or determinedly fighting against the people calling them ugly. To me, I'm sure it doesn't matter. I couldn't care less if some internet troll I have never met doesn't like the way I look. I couldn't care less if someone in the street stares at me-so what? They have no influence over my life, the way I choose to live it and the way I choose to be happy.
Beauty, for me, certainly is not in the eye of the beholder. If you don't feel beautiful, you won't be, simple as that. You shouldn't let people outside of yourself define your opinion of you-just try to be happy in the skin you're in, try to be confident, try to love yourself. Why waste your life hating every little part of you because people tell you you should? Just enjoy yourself, be happy in yourself and the rest will fall into place.
Be Beautiful-coz chances are, you already are.
Jenni x x
Jenni , i was brought up to think ' Beauty is in the eye of the beholder '
ReplyDeleteAnd take it from me, your Cute, with a capital 'C'