Spotlight: Weightless

Since I've started becoming more body positive, I've realized that it's a community effort. Through sharing stories, and sharing your confidence and your struggles, you can help out other girls on their journey to body positivity. I follow tons of tumblr blogs that help me feel more body positive, but a lot of the more text-heavy, serious posts can really help inform you about the bigger contexts of things.

I feel like tumblr is a different kind of blogging than a wordpress or blogspot is. Tumblr uses a lot of pictures/videos/short stories to help promote body positivity, but it isn't always really informative. It's a great place to receive a lot of support, though, on your journey to better body image!

I've found that bodypos blogs that aren't on tumblr offer a little more in terms of information, current news, and in-depth analysis of certain body positive issues. One blog that I really enjoy reading is Weightless, and it targets a lot of various issues within the fat community. The majority of it’s readers are female college-aged students in America, however, it has some hits from places like India and the UK.

It's written by Margarita Tartakovsky, who has a Master's Degree in clinical psychology, and is an associate editor at PsychCentral. While getting her MS, she focused her studying on body image and eating disorders. She also co-wrote an e-book with her friend about ways to embrace your curves. How she manages to do this and still update her blog multiple times a week -since 2009- is beyond me.

Basically, she's awesome.

Not only does she have a blog that focuses on body image (aka Weightless), but she also writes on other topics like anxiety, ADHD, couples, and creativity. She's a fan of listicles, usually in offering ways to boost confidence, and loving yourself. She writes to help others feel better about themselves, and offers ways to create a lifestyle change for leading a body positive life.

More specifically, she has a series of blog posts she calls "Self-Care Sundays", which are basically used to share links and sites that she feels can contribute to making you feel better, whether it be in regards to your confidence, stress levels, creativity, etcetera. Her post from Sunday (10/19), for example, offers a variety of links that expose you to different activities that you can try yourself, or that are simply just fun and interesting articles. There are links to how to use walking as a form of meditation when you're having a rough day, a link to a listicle about how to get out of a bad mood, how to deal with painful emotions, and a list of journals (which can promote writing as a method for meditation or therapy). A couple of her other posts in this series provide yummy, healthy recipes so that you can eat food that not only tastes good, but also makes you feel good. Overall, her Self-Care Sunday posts really help someone wind down after a long stressful week and sort of take care of themselves before jumping in to the next week. It’s nice that she shares things that make her feel better as a way to help everyone else feel a little better too. She deserves a hug.

Not only do I read her blog to inform myself how to lead a healthy body positive life, but I also read it when I am in a place of doubt. One of her posts, very fittingly titled "What to Remember When You Feel Terrible About Your Body", is one that I've re-read multiple times as a reminder for what to do when I don't feel so great. My favorite part is when she says

"So if you’re feeling like crap about your body, then you’re feeling like crap about your body.

That’s OK.

It’s something to acknowledge, accept and feel — instead of beating yourself up for beating yourself up."

It just reminds me that my feelings of self-doubt, or disgust with my body are completely normal, valid, and okay. It doesn't mean I'm being bad at being body positive, it means I've hit a rough patch, and that I will get over it just like any other obstacle. Feeling worse about the way I'm feeling - feeling wrong- won't fix anything, but rather knowing that it's okay to feel bad about myself opens up the possibility to feeling better. She says that in these times of doubt, just learn to be grateful, because although you may not be satisfied at this point in time, there are a lot of things that could be different, and maybe even worse. It's important to learn to appreciate the littlest of things. Her tone and voice are very soft and caring, while still being authoritative and informational. It's almost as if my older sister or mother was giving me some serious self-love advice.

Through Weightless, Margarita has helped me, and I'm sure many others, lead a positive self-loving life, acknowledging all the ups and downs you’ll face on the way. It's not always easy to love yourself, but it's definitely possible, and with the support of Margarita and her blog, as well as the other body positive blogs on her blog roll, you too can be on your way towards becoming a body positive goddess.

Good luck, lovelies. ~~

Social Bookmarking Soulmate

So, for this week's post, I tried to find a "social bookmarking soulmate." Essentially what that means is that I've trying to find someone online who bookmarked articles, pages, videos, blogs regarding things that I find particularly interesting (cough - body positivity and body image - cough). Now let me tell you, it wasn't easy. I was using a site called "citeulike" and was searching through the tags for "body image" and I found tons of articles tagged with either "body" or "image" or both. It seemed pretty easy so far, however, I struggled finding the users that posted these articles, or the users that liked them. 

Then, as I was playing around with the search options, user bjbraams was offered as a suggestion. I was so excited. I literally thought to myself "that wasn't all that hard." Turns out though, that after looking through his articles, they all had to do with physics and something called "three-body resonances and imaging." Boooooo. Not the kind of body image I was looking for.

So I tried again. And still nothing. I decided I'd try out another site, Diigo. It had a more friendly user interface, and I found it a lot easier to navigate around. I was trying different things, clicking random buttons, typing new key words. And then I found him. My soulmate. Well, my social bookmarking soulmate. His name is Adam Clark, and he has a list dedicated to stuff he finds on body image. Now, it's not super extensive, but out of all the other users that were provided, he had the most on his body image tag. 

It was refreshing to find a guy who found body image and body positivity interesting. I feel like, normally you find women and feminists advocating for body positivity and altering the media's perception of beauty, but Adam definitely had articles like that on his page. He had such a wide range of sources, that I found it almost endearing-- I just wanted to hug him for being so body positive! Not only did he have scholarly articles, but he also had youtube videos, and articles from Seventeen magazine. He even had a body positivity article from a blog that I follow, EverydayFeminism. I think I might be in love. Joking aside, I was really happy to find someone like Adam.

He reminded me that body image and body positivity is not only a woman's issue-- that men can struggle with body image as well. And I mean, I've been aware of that, because obviously women aren't the only ones who come in bigger sizes, but it works the other way around too, and sometimes I forget. I forget that being skinny can bring along self esteem issues. 

I recently watched a youtube video about a guy discussing his biggest insecurity-- and it was that he felt like he was too skinny, and that people took him less seriously because of it. It struck a chord with me because being a bigger girl, I constantly feel judged for my size, and felt envy towards skinnier people because they have it easy. And, you kind of have to admit that they do! But that isn't to say that being thin means you're going to be happy, or like your body. It just means that you're skinny, and more accepted by others and the media. 

But stuff like finding Adam and watching that youtube video give me a friendly nudge reminding me that body image issues aren't specific to gender or size. So thanks, Adam. It's inspiring to me that not only are you a thin white male (aka perfect to society), but that you understand and support body positivity and feminism (I peeked at your other tags, hehe.) And even though you have no idea I exist, we are officially bookmarking soulmates. xoxo

Beauty Standards: A Timeline

A little over 100 years ago, in 1908, a statuette now known as the Woman of Willendorf was found, and is dated back all the way to somewhere between 28,000 and 25,000 BCE. She's faceless, naked, and round.

It is said that she was made to represent fertility, as her belly might mean she's pregnant, and also because of her wide hips and large breasts. And apparently, there are a lot of other statuettes being found like her all around the world. Now, that's not to say that this was the ideal body for a woman back in those days, but it may simply indicate that this body type was common.

Fast forward quite a few centuries and we have paintings with somewhat fuller-figured bodies, compared to what we see today. Here's a painting titled Venus and Adonis, by Peter Paul Rubens from 1635.

We can see that Venus has a little bit of belly fat and thicker thighs and arms than what we are used to seeing today-- surely, they would have been photoshopped away. 

Then, fast forwarding some more, we have "The Gibson Girl" in the early 1900s, which was classified by a thin waist (achieved with a corset) and big bust. Next, there were the 20s flapper girls-- thin and exposing her arms and legs, and no emphasis on her waist. 

Moving along, women during the war went back to "normal" and practical looks that didn't emphasize their curves, but rather subtly highlighted them. And post-war, women like Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelley were idolized. Curves were in! But not for long-- in the 60s, models like Twiggy gained popularity, and so did the thin ideal. The 70s brought fad diets and diet pills, an increase in anorexia, and thin actresses like Farrah Fawcett. The 80s were the decade of big hair and small waists, as supermodels became more common, and the bony appearance was in. And by the time we reached the 90s, we had actresses like Pamela Anderson, Kiera Knightley, and Natalie Portman representing beauty, and they all were very thin. 

As time progressed, waists just got thinner and the BMIs of those in the media decreased, while they increased for the average woman in America. But it's hard to tell why that happened. However, studies very clearly show that the ever-so-present thin ideal in today's society plays a hugely negative role in women's body perception. 

And although I can't necessarily answer why the thin ideal became ideal, I can definitely shed light on the fact that this is not what should have happened. 

Some people say that thin models and actresses are preferred because clothing fits them better and being able to see the bone structure of the face and of the body allows for better-looking angles on the TV screen and magazine covers, etcetera etcetera. But that doesn't mean that "real" sized women can't be used in movies or magazines. What's the harm in making the average woman feel good about herself? That's why I applaud the brands I mentioned in last week's post about "real women" campaigns. They showcase real, attainable beauty. Anyway, I'm digressing.

Backtracking for a second, I'd like to mention that I kind of glossed over something when I mentioned the 50s and Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly. This was a time when there were ads that literally told women to gain weight, otherwise men wouldn't like you. Women were told to gain a few pounds to fill themselves out. Apparently, a few extra pounds gives you sex appeal! Who knew!? (read:sarcasm)

Can you believe that? Imagine seeing that around now. You'd think it's some sort of sick joke. Women were encouraged to gain weight. But what bothers me about this is that they were told to gain weight so that they would be attractive to men. And this is where the feminist in me gets angry. Being told to change your appearance for the male population is not okay. 

Media and advertisements play such a huge role in the self-esteem and body image of women, and being told to gain weight in the 50s and being told to lose weight now is sending the same message: you are not good enough the way you are.  

And yes, most of us want to be considered attractive, but the beauty of it all, is that if you love yourself, others will learn to love you too. And that's what matters most--that people love you for the right reasons, and that you love yourself because you are able to recognize the beauty in your flaws and uniqueness.

The progression of beauty standards in America hasn't been the best, and in all honesty, it's always been kind of wrong. But it's good to see that more brands and mass media outlets are progressing into using real-sized women, and that will always be right.

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[Disclaimer: a lot of information was gathered from this article.]