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