You have to try very hard if you want to escape the ideal of beauty. Just open a magazine, scroll through your social media or watch television for an evening. Everywhere we see ‘the perfect woman’. We are not completely insensitive to it. The view of our own body can be significantly influenced by this. But are we really as susceptible to those images as we make ourselves believe?
A girl is playing by the pool. She frolic around in a cool, turquoise bathing suit with yellow hearts. Somewhat clumsily, she jumps into the water from the edge of the pool, after which she tries to hoist herself back onto the edge as best she can. First on her stomach and then swinging her legs in the air, until she stands again. She is proud. It doesn’t matter if someone looks and thinks something about her body. Or how she rolls along in all childish clumsiness. She pulled herself out of that water nicely.
Ten years later, she is lying on a bath towel in the sun with a women’s magazine. She reads how to give herself a bikini body with the prescribed workouts and about the wonderful effects of Chinese tea for a thin body. After a dip in the pool, she is suddenly horribly aware that people can see her body – and think something of it. She carefully climbs out of the bath via the steps and hopes no one is watching. Do you recognize yourself in that girl?
Happy with my body
We know that the ideal images we see on social media and in films have an impact on us. Partly because of this, some women develop a negative body image. “But we shouldn’t make the problem bigger than it is,” warns Liesbeth Woertman, emeritus professor of psychology and author of the book Psychology of Appearance. “Dutch women, in all their sobriety, are reasonably satisfied with their body image.” The Eva women also give their body an average of 6.7 in the Happy with my body survey. That is not exactly high, but it is sufficient. Woertman: “We dangle somewhere at the bottom of the world ranking when it comes to the number of cosmetic procedures. And there are plenty of young women who are concerned with the climate, with society and the world. And they think: who do I want to be, what do I find important?”
Order the Eva Summer Book!
Order the Eva Summer Book!
Enjoy reading at your holiday destination or just in the garden? From personal stories to fun tips: You can read it in the Eva summer book 🤩
Protective filter
Encouragingly, we all, every individual, are capable of developing a positive body image. We can learn how to filter the ideal images. This has emerged from research by psychologist Jessica Alleva, who is an assistant professor at the University of Maastricht. Alleva took a look inside the minds of women with a positive body image. How do they protect their body image from the impact of social media and maintain their self-confidence? The main strategy of women with a positive body image is to focus on what their body does for them, not on the physical features. A participant in Alleva’s study said: “I have cellulite on my legs and I feel bad about it when I look at this photo of a model in a bikini. But I immediately remind myself that I am standing here now thanks to the strength of my legs. And that is more important to me than being beautiful.”
The women also actively focus on their body acceptance and appreciation, consciously focusing on “other, more important things,” such as their relationships. They also actively criticize the beauty ideal and the images on social media. Finally, they are particularly interested in the values and personality of the women in the ideal images. Through this way of thinking, the women create a kind of protective filter for their own body image, which they can apply every day.
When you look at a child, you see what we as adults should also be doing: having fun in and with our bodies.
Pregnancy and aging
Something also happens during pregnancy and as you get older that causes women to deal with their bodies differently. Pregnant women gain weight, get stretch marks and after giving birth their body needs to recover. At that moment the body does not meet the ideal image. Nevertheless, the Eva survey and also research by Woertman shows that women often found their bodies most beautiful during and after their pregnancy. It seems as if they too are developing a kind of protective filter to deal with their changing bodies.
As women get older, they find themselves a little less beautiful, because they get more wrinkles and ailments. But at the same time, the importance they attach to appearance is also diminishing. As a result, their body image suffers little. In her research, Alleva says she has high hopes that every individual can work on developing a protective filter for her body image. The psychologist believes that the promotion of a positive body image must ultimately be structural and must lie at the social level.
Credits: Linda Roelofs.
Deep-rooted beliefs
That is exactly what physical activists have been fighting for years: that structural change on a social level. That happened before Facebook, Instagram and TikTok existed. It started in America. In 1969, a young engineer in New York named Bill Fabrey was very angry about the way people around him treated his fat wife Joyce. Some years earlier he had read an article about the unfair treatment of fat people. He made copies of them and distributed them to everyone he knew. Eventually, with a group of supporters, he founded the world’s longest-running fat rights organization, which fights for the acceptance of fat people, now known as the Naafa.
At that time, the term body positivity was not yet used, but fat activists could be seen in talk shows. Their ideas about loving your body amazed some listeners and inspired others. If someone like them could learn to love their body, maybe everyone could.
Bodypositivity
Body positivity is broader than just the representation of fat people. The people who now call themselves body positive are fighting for more black, disabled, curvy and older women in the media. Because of this movement, it is now ingrained in our DNA that we no longer have to prepare our bodies for the summer. After all, every body is a bikini body! Instead, we can admire women who show off their stretch marks via social media, celebrate cellulite and are also happy with their fat rolls. You are allowed to love your body, celebrate your body, regardless of your size. Yippee! But… is always being happy with your body realistic?
Our own research shows that only 7% of Eva women always feel love for their body. Which means that 93% sometimes, rarely or never experience love for their body. Still, the movement has an impact. Research shows that people who see a lot of body positive images, feel better about their own body. They get a better, more nuanced view of what beauty can be. “There also seems to be increasing influence from different groups, which means that the ideal of beauty is broadening. We see women with frizzy hair, fuller women, black women, older women. In this way, more women fit into that picture, and that leads to more satisfaction with our own bodies,” Woertman also sees.
To improve your body image, you need to identify what triggers you to become negative about your body
Body neutrality
For some people, loving their bodies, as the body positivity movement insists on, is still a bridge too far. Other women are just beaten down by all the focus on our appearance and want as little to do with it as possible. The body neutrality movement was created by such people. A movement that looks more neutrally at the body. “I think body neutrality is an unfortunate term,” says Liesbeth Woertman when asked what she thinks of the movement. “Because there is no such thing as looking at your body neutrally. You observe and always have an opinion. You can strive for it. You can teach yourself to look at yourself and others in a different way. For example, by looking around in the gym or supermarket and discovering: who radiates warmth, kindness or connection? And not in the competitive way of ‘Who is prettier than me?’”
A second tip is to learn to get your self-worth from things other than your appearance. You may like to be enthusiastic, strong, idealistic, or creative.
Body neutrality is also about getting back in touch with your body. After years of being critical of themselves, it can help women to consciously focus on what they feel in their body, what signals their body gives and on the wonderful workings of the body. It is also the first practical tip for applying body neutrality: look at what your body can do and what it does for you. See how wonderfully it is made and how it works. Your body digests your food, it takes you from a to b and is a place where God lives, as stated in the Bible. This way of looking is related to higher body satisfaction, according to research by Alleva, which was also cited earlier in this article.
Mirrors
Woertman: “To improve your body image, you have to find out what triggers you to become negative about your body. Are those images in the media? First make sure you drastically reduce the exposure to those images (tip: on page 70 you learn how to make such a change). And try to create awareness. For example, you can discover whether you are constantly looking for confirmation about your appearance by monitoring yourself, taking selfies or checking how you look in the mirror.”
Credits: Linda Roelofs.
To improve her self-image, journalist Kalinka Hählen also avoided mirrors for a week. She only realized how many mirrors and reflective surfaces there are around her when she was not allowed to look into them: it became a week of bending over and dodging. “Virtually everyone around me thought they needed mirror confirmation, essential to feeling good. But man, what a huge space in my head this experiment created,” she says. Hählen also became kinder to himself: “I became less focused on what I thought others thought of me.” Hählen not only got more space in her head, she also had plenty of time left over that she would otherwise spend in front of the mirror.
Woertman: “Connecting with others is also essential in having and maintaining a positive body image. Therefore, also consider what you radiate when you are completely wearing make-up or have done all kinds of procedures on your face or body. You say with that: look at me, admire me, but don’t touch me. Connecting is then difficult and that creates a loss, emptiness, loneliness.”
See with the heart
What does having a positive body image give us? Woertman: “That may sound very strange, but for that we have to look at a child. Then you see what we as adults should do too. Namely: experiencing pleasure in and on our body. Back into that open-mindedness.”
This does not mean that the unattainable beauty ideal has suddenly disappeared. But, says Woertman, “I am confident that every person will at some point look for an answer to the question: what kind of person do I want to be, what do I actually stand for? And that everyone will gradually focus on what you really find important in life.”
Every person finds out at some point that the body ages and decays. And that it is not sustainable to spend all your time, thoughts and money on it. So use your body for its intended purpose, like a child. Don’t live in your head, but in your body: swim, dance, hand out hugs, jump, sing and hop, love.
Perhaps you can relate to the fox’s famous statement in the book The Little Prince: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” You can only see clearly with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye. When we look at ourselves and the other with the softness of our hearts, we see the things that really matter.
Text by: Heleen Bastiaanse
2023-07-06 12:27:41
#Happy #body #Strength #important #cellulite
