Ladies, What is Your Body Image Telling You?
It’s hard to sort out your feelings about your body and your clothes. How you judge one affects how you feel about the other. The worst obstacle is to be so self-conscious about your body that it overshadows your personality.
Almost every woman - no matter how beautiful she may be- is insecure about some aspect of her body. When a man slips on his jacket, he seems able to forget about his physique underneath. The cut and quality of his clothes take over and become his self-image. But when a woman slips on her dress it is as if it were transparent. She never forgets her body underneath. Because society has tied them together, to her they have become the same.
We women try so hard to look beautiful. If we don’t succeed as much as we would like, it’s not because we don’t try hard enough. It’s because we don’t try in the right places… the right ways. We concentrate on losing those stubborn 5 kgs we think are ruining our figures or trimming the extra half-inch around our hips. We constantly bad mouth ourselves.
Beauty is not far out of reach as we think- if we’d just approach it from a different angle. People don’t look at us with a disdainful eye. They look at the whole person in front of them, and what they see is something we can do alot more about, in a lot less time, than trimming half an inch, or losing 5 kgs.
What they see is how we carry ourselves, how straight we stand, how gracefully we move, how alive our faces are. How our clothes suit us, flatter us, attract people to us. In sum, people sense how happy we are just being who we are. And they respond accordingly.
The secret is to make yourself aware of yourself as you enter a room or rise from a chair.
Take a moment to collect yourself. Rise to your full height before you start walking forward. The minute you straighten up, hold yourself proudly, move gracefully; you’ll be surprised at the improvement. The trick is to make yourself remember to do it.
In your head-and in your muscles- try to keep a sense of young movement to improve your walk. It’s not your bones that are “heavy” -they’re only one-fifth of your body weight. Instead of coming down hard on your heels, cultivate a light quick step. And wear the kind of shoes that will let you do it-shoes that fit just right, with a heel that won’t have you clomping.
These are the things that add up to a very special kind of beauty. The beauty that makes you one of a kind. It’s not beauty given at birth, but beauty achieved. You can take credit for this kind of beauty and that builds self-confidence that nothing can take away from you.