Silencing the "If Only" - Start a Revolution

How many times have I/you thought, "I'd wear those shorts if I had shapely legs like her," or "I'd take that class at the gym if I was in better shape," or "Oh, she should not be wearing that?"

The pressure these days to have the perfect body...the perfect kids...the perfect life...everything is seen through an Instagram filter or benefits from photoshop. Full disclosure: I don't have/do/use Instagram nor do I usually post pictures of myself on social media but I see social media posts and wonder how people can be so perfect.  The answer is, they're not.  Of course they're not.  So why do we feel like we have to live up to this unreal/unrealistic standard?  Why do these obviously-altered pictures make us feel inadequate?

The amazing Angie at Angie Eats Peace is doing a series of posts about the wonderful spectrum of different people who do yoga.  She asked me to participate.  This included sending her a picture.  I took about 47 and hated them all.  The irony of the fact that I'm wearing a shirt that says, "Feel Beautiful Today," is not lost on me! I took another 90 or so and deleted every one of them.  I have body image issues.

I'm tired of being constantly unhappy with how I look and tired of hearing non-stop negative comments about people's appearance.  Enough already!  When someone posts a picture of themselves and gets comments saying, "If you're over 200 lbs you shouldn't wear a bikini," I want to cry for her and I want to punch the commenter in the face. We, as a society, need to Break the Self-Hatred Cycle for Our Daughters (and our sons). 

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Seeing this picture my first thought was, "If I had a flat belly like that I might consider posting a picture."  So, very quickly (otherwise I'd spend a whole day and end up with nothing I felt was good enough) and without even bothering to clean the mirror that's usually behind a shelf (I don't spend a lot of time looking at myself in the mirror!), I just took this picture....curvy belly and all.  I actually have pretty tight ab muscles but you can't see them because, as my Gran says, I'm fluffy. 

It is really not easy to put it up on the interwebs but I'm not going to apologize for not having a magazine-cover body.  I'm going to seriously work on being less judgmental about myself and other people.   The messages we're sending to young girls and boys these days are terrifying.  I can talk a good game about body positivity. It's time to start living it.  It starts now!

If you're so inclined, post your own picture and send me a link (feel free to link back to this post, too). Let's start a revolution!