Hey beautiful members! I’ve been mostly absent for a long time but I’m going to try to be more active again, as I want to see this community boom again! I recently wrote up a set of habits that I learned mostly from this community and I want to share them here, so here they are (under LJ-cuts for length):

replace comparison with celebration of variety:

This is about “different than” versus “better than.” I used to have a habit of looking at other people’s bodies to rate myself. If I thought that some aspect of my body was “more attractive” than theirs, I felt vindicated for all of the work I did to maintain a particular look in my body. Instead of seeing them for themselves, as human beings, I saw them as a sample that I could take to see if I was “achieving” “prettiness.” And if I thought that some aspect of my body was “less attractive” than theirs, then I felt panic and despair at not being able to “achieve” that aspect. Most people inspired BOTH reactions.

I overcame this by practicing celebration of variety. If I caught myself comparing, I consciously mentally corrected myself; told myself that there was no “achievement” nor “failure” when it comes to bodies, that beauty is uniqueness and everyone is unique. I practiced this with every body part, from nose to knees to belly to bum, etc. I taught myself to look at other people to appreciate them, and crowded out comparison with appreciation. This leads to the second principle:

replace false images with real ones:

The media are FLOODED with false images; if we were to take our cue from the media, one perceived as “woman/girl” should always be wearing makeup, be white or light-skinned, (usually) be blonde and blue eyed, have a small nose and large eyes and full lips, have body hair shaven, have straight or sleekly coiled hair, have flat bellies, long slim legs, and adolescent-shaped yet heavily large breasts (mainstream media doesn’t like to show many women of color, but there are further restrictive demands if it does show them). That is a VERY specific and VERY unlikely collection of traits. The ‘ideal’ for one perceived as “man/boy” is also restrictive, and there are few to no images of anyone other than “woman/girl/man/boy.” (that lack of images is in itself a false image of invisible/non-existent, also harmful) You can reduce your consumption of these images by not watching TV (especially ads) and not reading magazines; but you will still be forced to see them on billboards and the covers of novels, etc. 

To get rid of the idea that that ‘ideal’ is what beauty is, I reduced my consumption, and I think even more importantly, I surrounded myself with photos that I found beautiful of people of a variety of shapes and sizes and colors (one place to find them is curvygirls). I made those images my computer desktop and my screensaver and I hung them on my walls and I looked for more on an at-least-weekly basis. I also surrounded myself with mirrors. Once I realized that there is a very real “oh that’s weird” reaction when I see anything I’m not used to, I determined to change what I was used to.

Read the entire article here!