BODY IMAGE: A LATE NIGHT CHAT

The brainchild that is this post was thought up on a blistering hot sunny day in Majorca, whilst I was wearing my Topshop high-waisted black bikini and nursing a ridiculously bloated tummy (seriously cocktails, must you?!) Perched on a heinously uncomfortable plastic chair on my hotel room’s balcony sipping a badly mixed vodka and lemonade, I started to think about body image. The subject of body image is a complicated minefield of opinion, fact, words like ‘disorder’ and sadly, more often than not feelings of negativity. Firstly, I’d like to hold my hands up here and say I am in no way claiming to be definitively right on the matters I discuss in this post, I’m a teenage girl growing up in the thick of the digital age where body image is a massive issue, and I’m simply stating my opinion.

To use myself as an example, before I went on this holiday I exercised at the gym for about a month, ate healthily and cut out excessive alcohol and treats. My reason being that I wanted to look like the best version of myself and feel proud of my appearance. In the days before jetting off to Majorca, I’d discovered some newly found ab muscles and a slightly more even complexion. All in all, I was happy. So why was it, that AS SOON as I whipped off my kimono to reveal my bikini bod I immediately felt on edge? Honestly, in my head it was as if the lifeguard had sounded an alarm, called round his mates, and set up camp in front of my sun lounger. I felt as though walking to the bar was an inspection of my fat percentage and muscle tone. Let me just interject here to say that my hotel resort was like a retirement home - my dad is a typical grumpy old man and had carefully selected an adult only resort to avoid the hordes of school children, and every single person besides me, my sister and one other twenty-something was over the age of fifty.

Nobody gave a shit what I looked like in my bikini, but there I was breathing in so fiercely I probably looked a bit blue. WHY? Why do we, as women, have an incessant need to please others and fit into the mould of a certain beauty ideal?

We’re a generation obsessed with our appearance. Our mornings spent poring over the likes of Instagram and Tumblr have undoubtedly changed our mental perceptions of what we consider beautiful, and most importantly, ‘normal.’ Perhaps controversially, I’m not going to claim that’s a bad thing. As a fashion blogger, I find visual images of models, clothes, and other everyday women looking amazing really inspiring. To me, there’s no harm in recognising that another human being is having a good beauty day. The danger becomes apparent when you start using your own appearance to hold up as a negative contrast to Jourdan Dunn/Cara Delevingne/(insert other insanely gorge lady here.)

There are a multitude of reasons for low body confidence, but one which I’ve particularly noticed is actually girl on girl shaming. I’ve been programmed to assume that someone is always judging the way I look. Way too often do I hear girls slamming other girls for taking ‘selfies’ and posting pictures of themselves online, branding them ‘self-obsessed’ and ‘stuck up’ the moment they upload, unpicking every inch of the snap in question. I’m not going to go into detail on this particular aspect of body image, but Shona wrote an amazing blog post vis a vis selfie shaming here if you want to go and have a read.

If we as girls don’t have the confidence to applaud others on their good hair days, a fab outfit combo, or just a bloody brilliant body, who’s going to? In my opinion it’s high time that we started focusing on the good things about ourselves, and that’s always easier to do if somebody else notices it too (back to that incessant need to please others eh?) So instead of sighing at each other’s selfies, rolling our eyes when a girl struts past confidently, try giving her a supportive ‘like’ or smile.

Maybe it was the vodka in my drink or maybe it was just the slightest whisper of maturity, (scary) but staring out at the Majorcan sea, it was easy to see that appearance is not the be all and end all. Bloated or not, I was still on holiday, I was still enjoying cocktails on a faraway Island, and as far as I know the world did not stop turning because I was wearing a bikini.At that moment, I decided when I headed back down to my sun lounger I was going to breathe out, sit back, and sip my drink. And do you know what? No-one ran away in horror. Except the Spanish bar man when I tried to order a drink in his native language. And that was only because he was dumbfounded by my superb linguistic abilities. Probably. 

Sara x