Butt Dimples and Tiger Stripes
By: Edie Tuck
Tags: Body Image, Body Positive, Self Love, Body, Beauty

Real life isn’t photoshopped!

For decades, we’ve been programmed and brain-washed into believing the simple-minded falsehood of how the ideal body should look—smooth, flawless skin, free of pimples and dimples, scars and stretch marks. I mean, god forbid you look human! Hide those nasty imperfections! Um…No. Just no.

We think it’s cute on baby bottoms—we ooh and ahh over their dimpled bums and Michelin Man rolls. But the moment an adult sports the same look, it becomes unsightly and shameful. Kind of makes you go, hmmm…

Media does a great job of teaching us that to be considered attractive, we have to hold a specific set of ideal visual attributes. We need to slather on the primer and foundation to fill those pores and camouflage those blemishes. Exfoliate until the last flake of dry skin has been washed down the drain. Trim those dead-ends, and cover up those greys. Walk countless miles on the treadmill, and push through thousands of squats and crunches — we’ve got to be silver-screen-ready to go to the grocery store or drop the kids off at daycare, and anything less is completely unacceptable.

STOP!!

Thankfully, over the past few years, a new movement has emerged, and although it’s still in its fledgling stage as opposed to the decades of damage control it faces, it’s a much more positive and loving perspective.

Love the perfect imperfections

I’m not quite sure exactly when the oxymoron saying made its debut or who originally coined the now infamous phrase, but it is the epitomic description of what we are as humans — imperfect and yet perfect in our own unique and individual ways.

We are all beautiful, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder should be ourselves.

Instead of looking in the mirror with the eyes of a critic, why not try it with the eyes of a lover? Remove the stigma of perfection imposed by decades of media brainwashing.

“Mirro, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” — Starting them kind of young with the insecurities, aren’t we, Mister Disney?

We tell our children they’re perfect just the way they are, but in the next breath, turn around and glare at our own reflections, poking and prodding and hating, and teach these same ‘perfect’ children the complete opposite. Children learn by example — what lessons are we teaching them when we constantly put ourselves down?

Who decided that women should have smooth, hairless skin — shaved legs, armpits, and ‘other places.’ Who came up with the idea that we need to “fix” our appearance to be beautiful? Between magazine ads and television commercials touting the benefits of product after product to ‘enhance’ our appearance, it’s no wonder the beauty industry grossed almost $50 million in 2019 in the US alone.

Kissable lips with colour that stays on all day! Impeccably coifed and slicked hair that won’t shift in gale-force winds. Exquisitely trimmed beards oiled to perfection. Undergarments that nip and tuck and smooth out the dips and rolls and cellulite.

Walk like an Egyptian

Or rather, decorate your skin like one. The idea of makeup started about 5000 years ago when ancient Egyptians and Sumerians came up with the bright idea of crushing bugs and gemstones to colour for their eyes and lips.

Nowadays, however, it’s nothing more than a money-grab. If we believe that we need this product or that new gadget in order to look our best, then ‘they’ have won. They’ve — ‘they’ being marketing and advertising companies in the cosmetic and beauty industry — succeeded in making us believe we need these things; without them, we’re less than average and not worth looking at.

The worse we feel about ourselves, the more likely we are to spend our hard-earned dollars on products that promise to transform us into the perfect human replica. I say ‘replica’ because it isn’t real; we’ve lost the authenticity of how we were created. I’m no different; I rarely go out in public without mascara because I have this flawed self-perception that I look tired, sick, or just plain ugly without it.

This isn’t right.

We need to stop the madness and learn how to truly love ourselves in our purely natural state.

Enter the ‘body positive’ crusaders; now that’s a faction I want to be part of!

Instead of telling ourselves that we’re not enough if we don’t check off all of the necessary “beauty” boxes imposed by media and society, we should be working to reverse-engineer the lifetime of conditioning so we can truly see what’s underneath the lies.

The stretch marks that decorate your body, whether from a growth spurt, or childbearing, or weight gain — they’re proof of the amazing ability of your body to adapt to its conditions.

The crow's feet and wrinkles speak of all the laughter and the life you’ve experienced! The blemishes are your body’s way of expelling toxins from your skin. And that dreaded cellulite? News flash, nearly everyone has it, and it has nothing to do with how much you weigh!

I’m not sitting here telling you that you need to be okay with being unhealthy; of course, we should all strive to be the healthiest versions of ourselves — but ‘healthy’ can look very different for everyone.

What I’m saying is that we should all love ourselves for who we are. We should all be grateful for all the beautiful things our body does for us — think of all it’s capable of doing! The human body truly is a marvellous thing. We need to turn off the constant beauty ads and learn to love our body — love it by treating it the best that we can, and that includes not saying mean things about it. Not to ourselves or others.

Be kind to your body, and be kind to yourself. Speak nicely to yourself, because you’re always listening!