Straight Talk by Nimfa L. Estrellado If we aren’t objectifying ourselves, we naturally associate our visual impression of ourselves with ...
Straight Talk
by Nimfa L. Estrellado
If we aren’t objectifying ourselves, we naturally associate our visual impression of ourselves with our internal experience of ourselves.
When we have this natural perception of ourselves, we don’t define ourselves according to a “body image.” We don’t think of our body primarily from an outside viewpoint, as if we were someone else looking at our body.
It’s not that a self-possessed person doesn’t care about her appearance. The opposite is true. When we feel self-possessed, we care about our appearance because we are proud, in a healthy way, of who we are.
Some in the “body positivity” movement have said that women’s appearance is emphasized too much in the media, and that women’s qualities other than physical appearance should be valued instead.
I think what they are intuitively objecting to is the media’s objectification of women’s appearance.
Appearance does matter - because we matter. Our appearance is part of our wholeness.
It’s the internalized separation of body from selfhood - self-objectification - that needs mending.
It’s the sexual objectification of women and girls in society that needs changing.
When we are self-possessed, we love our body without ever having to reflect on whether we love our body.
We love being alive, we love being ourselves, we love being in an amazing human female body, amazing because it is alive, and it gives us life.
We are all by nature self-possessed - before our relationship with our body is severed by the violent and the subliminal insistence throughout society and throughout the media that the female body does not signify human selfhood. Instead the female body is conceived of and presented as if it is publicly accessible, until it has been privately claimed by someone other than the human self in that female body.
The natural self-love we are all born with is injured or destroyed in this process.
The battle against the inflexible ultra-thin beauty standard seems to have been won, or at least victory is in sight. But the problem behind that beauty standard, why it was so injurious, and why it existed in the first place, is sexual objectification and disrespect toward women. It all begins with objectification.
It’s time to name that “invisible” elephant in the room.
The problem that’s currently identified as women’s and girl’s “poor body image” will continue until we launch another movement that effectively challenges the objectification of women and girls.
We already made some progress. Let’s keep going with making change.
If we aren’t objectifying ourselves, we naturally associate our visual impression of ourselves with our internal experience of ourselves.
When we have this natural perception of ourselves, we don’t define ourselves according to a “body image.” We don’t think of our body primarily from an outside viewpoint, as if we were someone else looking at our body.
It’s not that a self-possessed person doesn’t care about her appearance. The opposite is true. When we feel self-possessed, we care about our appearance because we are proud, in a healthy way, of who we are.
Some in the “body positivity” movement have said that women’s appearance is emphasized too much in the media, and that women’s qualities other than physical appearance should be valued instead.
I think what they are intuitively objecting to is the media’s objectification of women’s appearance.
Appearance does matter - because we matter. Our appearance is part of our wholeness.
It’s the internalized separation of body from selfhood - self-objectification - that needs mending.
It’s the sexual objectification of women and girls in society that needs changing.
When we are self-possessed, we love our body without ever having to reflect on whether we love our body.
We love being alive, we love being ourselves, we love being in an amazing human female body, amazing because it is alive, and it gives us life.
We are all by nature self-possessed - before our relationship with our body is severed by the violent and the subliminal insistence throughout society and throughout the media that the female body does not signify human selfhood. Instead the female body is conceived of and presented as if it is publicly accessible, until it has been privately claimed by someone other than the human self in that female body.
The natural self-love we are all born with is injured or destroyed in this process.
The battle against the inflexible ultra-thin beauty standard seems to have been won, or at least victory is in sight. But the problem behind that beauty standard, why it was so injurious, and why it existed in the first place, is sexual objectification and disrespect toward women. It all begins with objectification.
It’s time to name that “invisible” elephant in the room.
The problem that’s currently identified as women’s and girl’s “poor body image” will continue until we launch another movement that effectively challenges the objectification of women and girls.
We already made some progress. Let’s keep going with making change.
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