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Friday, December 3, 2010

One girl's guide to loving her "imperfections."

Along the lines of yesterday's post about being a Body Image Warrior, I wanted to share with you this great video by Caty. She found us on our new YouTube channel (due to our ONE and only mega-hit makeup tutorial, heeheehee), and my eyes were immediately drawn to the title of this video when I looked up her channel. 


If you've ever hated even just one part of your face/body/hair/whatever, and who of us hasn't, you really should take a look at this. She has a really interesting perspective. You might start to view those things in a new light. :)


Just for conversation's sake, since Barbie is mentioned in the video (and I'm not trying to be argumentative towards the video at ALL - just stating my own experience), it was never my dolls that made me try to live up to an impossible standard; for me, it was models in magazines, as I've talked about before. Actually, it was Niki and Krissy Taylor on the cover of Seventeen, if you want me to be specific. lol I was endlessly tormented over not looking like them. Oh, yeah, and Cindy Crawford's workout video. I was not a size 6 in high school, and every time she mentioned her size 6 jeans in that video, I felt fat, despite the fact that she was saying it wasn't a big deal not to be a size 6. Nowadays, I'm secure enough in myself (okay, MOST of the time) where I can look at models with appreciation rather than comparing myself, because I got older and started learning to appreciate me just for being me, but it wasn't always that way during those awful, sensitive pre-teen and teen years. Anyway, to me, Barbie was just a doll, not an ideal, and she taught me to hone my creativity by making up stories with characters, plots, and conflict resolution, as well as decorating, sewing, and improvising since I didn't have a "real" Barbie house and furniture. Some of my happiest childhood memories are of holing myself up in my room to play. 


Anyway, I guess maybe what I'm trying to say is that while I can definitely see why Barbie can easily be criticized, I think it's important to teach kids that she's JUST a doll and that magazines are JUST magazines. Appreciate them for what they are without internalizing it into your self-esteem. Easier said than done, but that's the goal. It's a weird, fine line, I think, between taking personal responsibility for how you feel about yourself and whether society has a moral obligation not to impose its standards onto you. On the one hand, I don't think society should impose beauty standards on us, yet I don't think it's completely unavoidable either, and I don't think Barbies should be banned either because I don't see them as inherently bad. It's all in how you perceive them, I think. I can feel myself beginning to ramble, so I will leave it at this. haha

1 comment:

Sara said...

Wow, I have never stopped to think about this before, but now I am wondering....lol

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