I wanted to talk about something that’s near and dear to my heart, a little something I call body love. I recently started watching these YouTube videos called “Style Like You” where people get vulnerable mostly about body image issues and how they overcame them, or their positive beliefs about them. Their tagline is “in your body is a good place to be.” So naturally I thought about it.
When I was young I was in an accident that left me with some physical impairments. I began to not be able to do things like I once had, and that eventually led to me not liking my body. Not because of the way it looked, but because of what it was no longer able to do. Once I disliked my body in one way it became easy for me to dislike it in all ways. I’ve only recently begun to fall in love with my body and what it can do for me because of this concept I want to share with you.
It’s my understanding that a huge percentage of women and men dislike their bodies, or wish they could change them to something the world has deemed attractive. Now firstly, whoever set the standard for male and female physical attractiveness and then said, “that’s it, that’s what you have to look like in order to be physically attractive,” was wrong. There’s one part in the Human Art lecture that I adore–my mom brings to your attention that we’ve lost the ability to look at human beauty objectively. She points out that in art, nature, and pretty much everything other than
humans, we don’t put beauty in a box. She says, “we don’t start a hike by saying, alright there’s only one really good looking tree up there.” It’s true, beauty is in all shapes, sizes, colors, and at Human Art what we call designs.
As a society, we really believe in no fat, no rolls, and close to no appreciation for wide hips, and dad bods. We’re definitely moving in the right direction, but there are so many different shapes and
sizes that are still feeling insecure. The skinny thing stuck so hard we had to create a category of modeling for women that weren’t eating orange peels and water for every meal. And we don’t even have one for men. Its an epidemic! If there is one thing Human Art has taught me and one thing I know to be true, it’s that ALL BODIES ARE GOOD BODIES! All bodies are capable, all bodies are masterpieces! So the next time you look at yourself in the mirror I want you to see yourself through Brook Thornley’s colored glasses, and say out loud, “YOU’RE A MASTERPIECE!!” I want you to love your tummy, I want you to dance around, I want you to eat what you want, and wear what you want, and take care of yourself all the time. Because you deserve it. When you look in the mirror, instead of critiquing yourself, I want you to see the lives you impact, how much you have to offer, and I want you to realize how beautiful you are, just the way you are! It’s less about what you look like, and all about what your body can do and who you uniquely are that’s beautiful.
-Kenni