body positivity Archives

How To Deal With Breast Insecurities

Each person has a different perception of their appearance, particularly regarding the shape and form of their body. For some, being confident about their bodies comes naturally. Meanwhile, others may struggle with their body image, often wishing to have a specific size or shape different from how they currently appear. Among women, it’s common to experience anxiety about the appearance of the thighs, abdomen, buttocks, or legs. Some also feel insecure about how their breasts appear.

There can be many causes of breast insecurity. These causes can be internalized from childhood until adulthood, and some women tend to feel powerless against these influences. And in other cases, women may feel unconfident with their breast size or shape because they affect how they dress or carry themselves.

Regardless of the cause, breast insecurity can negatively affect a woman’s confidence, self-esteem, and overall well-being. Some may also feel mentally and emotionally distressed by their body shape. Hence, seeking ways to overcome negative thoughts and emotions about their appearance becomes essential. Some may also opt to have breast augmentation or reduction procedures, as discussed on this website: https://drnathanstewart.com.au.

For most women, overcoming body insecurity is a multi-step process that requires thorough understanding and preparation. If you’d like some tips on how to deal with breast insecurities, here are some suggestions you may find helpful:

Understand The Causes Of Breast Insecurity

A negative body image can root in various causes, and most leave a lasting impact that may take time to heal and fade. Some of the common reasons for poor body image and breast insecurities include peer pressure, bullying, family influence, and cultural and societal expectations.

Young women are also heavily influenced by media portrayals or advertisements, which greatly emphasize a woman’s figure. In many cases, these images or depictions of women on TV and other platforms can leave an impression on young audiences in a way that shifts their self-perception. Girls can be misinformed about attaining specific beauty standards that the media may not depict as realistically. Because of this, many of them may reject their natural traits and develop poor body image or insecurities.

Understanding the source of breast insecurity allows you to reflect on your thoughts and feelings, including those growing up. By doing so, you’ll better understand how you perceive your body and how your perception can be improved in a way that would positively impact your self-image.

Determine How Your Insecurity Impacts Your Life

Women who experience breast insecurities may develop thought patterns and maladaptive behavior, affecting their quality of life and relationships. For instance, those who feel conscious about having petite bosom may hesitate to make friends and form relationships with the opposite sex. Meanwhile, some women may also feel insecure about having ample breasts and choose to adjust their clothing choices to conceal their figure. In addition, it’s also possible for some women to skip activities or social functions because they are concerned about their appearance.

Suppose you recognize certain habits or behavioral patterns you’ve formed due to breast insecurities. In that case, it may be helpful to analyze how they impact your life and if anything should be amended. For example, you wish to expand your wardrobe choices, but you feel compelled to limit your options to particular articles of clothing due to your body image. In this scenario, your confidence may be negatively affected by the limitations that you have when it comes to clothing. It can be detrimental to your well-being in the long run.

By knowing how your insecurity impacts your life, you can be in a better position to make decisions that can help you address the issues and allow you to be on the path of managing your thoughts and slowly accepting and loving your body.

Find Healthy Ways To Cope With Insecurities

Overcoming one’s insecurities requires time and effort. As you work on rebuilding your confidence and improving your self-perception, learning how to cope with the negative feelings that insecurities may entail will be helpful.

For instance, socially, those who choose to withdraw and isolate themselves due to poor body image can look for motivation to interact with others and enjoy social situations. Meanwhile, women who feel embarrassed to wear specific clothing due to their body shape can gradually introduce the apparel to their wardrobe until they feel more comfortable.

The key to coping with insecurities is acknowledging their presence and impact on one’s life. By doing so, you can identify thought patterns and behavior that manifest negative self-image and find ways to counter them on your own or with the help of others. You can also alleviate or reverse the detrimental effects of breast insecurities which may have negatively influenced your quality of life when you learn how to cope with your thoughts and emotions.

Seek Support

Due to the sensitive nature of breast insecurity, it can be hard to talk about your feelings and experiences with your immediate circle. However, seeking support from loved ones and friends is an essential step toward healing and overcoming insecurities. Doing so can gain valuable insight from people who care about your welfare and have your best interests in mind. It can also help you express your thoughts and feelings in a healthy manner, without fear of judgment.

Furthermore, you can also seek professional counseling from a licensed therapist who can guide you as you address issues concerning your body image. This way, you can understand your situation better, improve your self-esteem, and care for your mental and emotional health at the same time.

Conclusion

It’s common for women to feel insecure about their bodies due to environmental or social factors. However, having negative thoughts and feelings about your physical appearance is a concern that needs to be addressed immediately and treated with serious consideration, especially if it starts affecting your well-being, self-esteem, and quality of life.

To do so, it’s crucial to identify the underlying causes of breast insecurity and its impact on one’s life. Moreover, those who experience this can benefit from support from loved ones, friends, or professionals who can offer counseling or treatments as needed.

8 Men Get Brutally Honest About Women’s Body Flaws

Recently our friends at Berry asked several men what they thought about women’s perceived “flaws.” The men were asked to be brutally honest, since they’d be anonymized anyway. Here it goes.

1. “I don’t even care about your arms.”

“I never see your “fat” or “untoned” arms — but it’s clear that you do every second of every day. Men are simple creatures. We fall into a few categories — and those categories don’t ever include arm guys. We like tits, ass, legs. So am I worried about your arms or knees or hands? No. I’m just looking at your tits and your ass. So have a great time with your arms.”

2. “Most bellies are fine.”

“I’ll be honest — if your belly is proportionate with the rest of your body, it’s fine. If a lady has a beer gut — well, sure, that can seem unattractive depending on the rest of her body, but more often than not, it’s just more cushion for the pushing’. We definitely don’t want to see someone who doesn’t care for their body, but we really aren’t as damning as you think.”

3. “Body shape means nothing to me.”

“Some men like really skeletal women and some men love curvy women. There’s a man out there that craves every type of women’s physique — and magazines or whatever teach you about literally ONE of those — or maybe two in the modern era of the curvy girl, but they don’t talk about the men who prefer bigger women or bottom-heavy girls or small-chested women. But we’re out there.”

4. “Your breasts are fine the way they are. Trust me”

“There are men who like all types of tits. Different size breasts, big nipples, small nipples, saggy boobs, big, small, full. What you see in magazines — ripe, firm, pert breasts — is probably not something they’ve ever seen in real life. Their experience of breasts is of the normal breasts, not these abnormally “perfect” ones (that are usually implants.) At the end of the day, if you like tits, you like tits. It has very little to do with size, I think. Shape trumps size any day, in my opinion.”

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You Attack My Size 0, But I Can’t Attack Your Size 16

“No, I don’t starve myself. I’m naturally skinny and probably eat more than you.” -Anonymous

Why are you allowed to say I’m too skinny when I’ll be publicly torn apart for saying you’re too fat? This has been a topic of discussion that I’ve been seeing everywhere lately.

The god-awful phrase “real woman” makes me grit my teeth with true anger. Apparently, only women who are a size 8 and above are real women.

I don’t know who died and made these standards but please, let me know. Now I know what people are thinking as they read this, that size 0-2 are the general beauty standards, which is slowly fading.

Yet when was it okay to pick apart a young girl or a woman saying that she needs to eat a cheeseburger? Since when has it become socially acceptable to bully one size but when it’s done in reverse to a size 16 everyone is in an uproar?

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You Attack My Size 0, But I Can’t Attack Your Size 16

“No, I don’t starve myself. I’m naturally skinny and probably eat more than you.” -Anonymous

Why are you allowed to say I’m too skinny when I’ll be publicly torn apart for saying you’re too fat? This has been a topic of discussion that I’ve been seeing everywhere lately.

The god-awful phrase “real woman” makes me grit my teeth with true anger. Apparently, only women who are a size 8 and above are real women.

I don’t know who died and made these standards but please, let me know. Now I know what people are thinking as they read this,that size 0-2 are the general beauty standards, which is slowly fading.

We all want to preach about unrealistic body standards, but what’s the harm of being naturally thin or desiring to stay within a smaller weight range?

Does that make us smaller individuals, not real women? Do people realize the young thin girl may feel self-conscious when she reads things on Facebook of people ripping someone her size apart?

You bigger girls are no better than the skinnier girls bullying peoples’ weight online. I’ll probably be fused at for saying this but women are the first ones saying us skinny girls aren’t real women but you’re also the first ones wishing to wear the crop tops and short shorts I wear.

Is it that you secretly wish you could look like me or is it that you truly hate the body I possess?

Or is it an insecurity that your man would want someone like me over someone like you. If that’s the case then he’s obviously not someone you should be with.

Rather it be insecurities or not, please figure it out and stop body shaming us and we’ll stop body shaming you.

I’ve been made fun of a lot, especially by men, that I’m to skinny. I don’t have an ass and my breast aren’t big enough. I’ve been told I need to eat more than I would care to hear.

My own family remind me on the daily bases they would love to be smaller but not my size cause I’m way too skinny.

They say it like it’s a bad thing. When I complain about how I feel no one listens cause I’m luckyto be skinny so I have nothing to complain about.

So I’ll leave you with this wonderful quote I found online that I wish I could identify who wrote this lovely very true statement:

“Hey eat a cheeseburger gang. Iv’e seen you around Pinterest and Tumblr, and blogs with your obvious concern for skinny women. While I appreciate your desire to lead them to a healthy way of life by eating crappy food, I would respectfully suggest that you stop attacking other women’s bodies. Stop throwing around the cheeseburger line along with these silly ones.”

‘Real women have curves’ There are no fake women.

‘Men like women with meat on their bones’ My self worth isn’t determined by men or what my body looks like.

‘She looks unhealthy’ Really? Do you personally know her? Are you suddenly the body police and get to decide what is and what isn’t healthy.

Attacking other women’s bodies isn’t concern for healthiness, it’s called Misogyny.

10 Ways Getting Tattoos Helped Me Love My Body

I’ve always struggled with body image issues, as most young girls unfortunately do. Growing up, I struggled to see anything but flaws on my body. Even parts I like about myself, I would scrutinize because they still weren’t perfect. As a curvy Hispanic girl, I didn’t really see anyone who looked like me on TV. All I wanted was to be skinny like the Olsen twins, but alas, I never would be.

Sometime in my freshman year of college, after spiraling into a deep depression, I realized that I would literally never look like anyone but myself. I began a journey to loving my body for what it is and having the autonomy to change parts of myself through tattoos helped me along that journey.

1. I reclaimed my body

I got my first tattoo when I was 19 after a musical festival. I had wanted to get one before I got the idea to wander into the tattoo shop at midnight, but if I’m being honest, I did this mostly on a whim. I got the number thirteen in roman numerals on the back of my right ankle. It was 2014 and the previous year had been an especially rough one. When I first got it, I loved looking at it. I loved wearing anything that showed my ankle because I felt like I owned this tiny piece of my body. I finally got to choose something about the way that I look, which made me want more.

2. I began to love specific body parts

Tattoos allowed me to mark my skin with the things that I loved and I began to see parts of myself I disliked as in a positive light. I have a human heart on my hip that my best friend and I got as semi-matching tattoos. I used to despise my hips. They kept me from wearing so many trendy clothes when I was younger because they were too wide. I chose my hip because I wanted to like to look at my hips and to see something beautiful when I did. I now see the beauty in my hips, even if they did prevent me from participating in the jean skirt phase of 2006.

3. Tattoos remind me of positivity

I got a tattoo after I graduated college that says “it’s all happening,” which is a quote from one of my favorite movies “Almost Famous.” I used to obsess over the movie in my teen years. It’s part of what inspired me to pursue journalism. It felt fitting that I’d mark (literally) the end of my college career with something from the movie that made me want to do it in the first place. It’s a positive reminder to keep going and that everything will happen in due time. Having the positive reminder etched on my body makes me love it a little more.

4. Their meaning has evolved with me

Although I did get some tattoos in dark periods of my life and they had a specific meaning when I got them, their meanings have continued to evolve over time. This has been a great reminder of how I have changed and how far I have come. I love being able to have something permanent to remind me of this.

5. They allowed me to change parts of myself

In a world where we are given one body that we can’t choose, having autonomy to change parts of yourself that you don’t particularly love is freeing. Even though I do work on loving my body as it is, being able to mark myself with art that in places on my body that I don’t love makes me love my body that much more.

6. Tattoos have marked my life trajectory

I’ve made it a tradition to get a tattoo when I visit new places. This might eventually die out because I travel a lot, but it has allowed my body to become a map of memories. Every tattoo holds a special memory of a happy time in my life. They each tell a story about specific moments of my life and I get to wear that on myself every single day.

7. I take my body less seriously

I have a light bulb tattoo on my forearm that serves as a reminder that I am more than my body. It represents my intelligence, my ideas, and my creativity — all of the other things that I have to offer that have nothing to do with the size of my pants. I realized that my body is not all that I am and it doesn’t really matter how big or small it is. It is mine to shape, mold and mark.

8. I feel more myself

As I’ve continued to get tattoos through the years, I’ve felt more and more comfortable in my own skin. Having chosen to present myself with art that I feel represents the ~real me~, I’ve never felt more myself. The ink I have has allowed me to express myself fully.

9. My “flaws” turned into art

When I look at my body now, I still see flaws, but I don’t hate them. I don’t scrutinize myself the way that I used to. Rather than seeing stretch marks and cellulite in the mirror, I see little pieces of art. And more importantly, I see a whole person. I see the good and the bad without judging each part.

10. I’ve gotten a higher self-esteem

I can’t completely give credit to tattoos for my higher self-esteem, but I know they definitely helped. I feel hotter with my tats, honestly! Apparently, I’m not the only woman who feels this way. Women with multiple tattoos report higher self-esteem than anyone else, according to a 2015 study.

“I think women, especially, are more aware of their bodies through, among other things, fat shaming, the cosmetics and plastic surgery industry and hyper-sexualized imagery in media,” Sociologist Jerome Koch of Texas Tech University said. “What we may be seeing is women translating that awareness into empowerment.”

My tattoos are part of me and my favorite accessory. I look and feel better than ever and it’s (mostly) thanks to some tats. It’s amazing how small changes on your body and in your mind can make loving yourself a little easier.

It’s Time To Stop Slut-Shaming Women For Feeling Themselves Online

It’s 2019 and women are all over the world preaching about equality, empowering one another, and women’s rights. More often than not, I find that women feel more comfortable speaking up and speaking out when other women are being held down from their liberties and freedom. But, as quick as we are to speak up against injustice against other women—we’re equally as quick to judge them for the way in which they live their lives.

When it comes to social media, we have the ability to get a taste of other people’s lives through words and photos. Obviously, people choose how they want to be seen on social media by deciding which photos to post and what to write. Women, for example, like to post photos in which they look and feel their best—obviously. And, if they choose to do so in poses that may seem provocative to you or outfits that seem revealing to you—who said it’s your business to comment on it?

So often, women will post photos that make them feel empowered and strong—and, if that means embracing their sexuality and their bodies, then it does. Why is it your problem if another human being decides to post a photo they like on their social media profile? Is this photo physically harming you in any way? Is it affecting your life in any shape or form? More likely than not, the answer to these questions are both “no.” Therefore, it’s not your place to judge them, comment on the photos, or “report” them for any reason at all.

Part of the women’s movement is not only about equal rights and taking “back” certain liberties from the patriarchy, but it’s taking back female sexuality from men, too. For so long, men have used women’s bodies for their own consumption. From TV shows to advertisements to film. I was in undergrad when I read about Laura Mulvey and “the male gaze.” The male gaze, in media theory, is “the act of depicting women and the world, in the visual arts and in literature, from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male viewer.”

By judging women for embracing their sexuality and taking back their sexuality, we conform back into this pre-women’s right’s movement notion of objectification of the female body. That, women, are only showing their body off for the male consumption and not for their own confidence, happiness, or pride. We perpetuate the mentality of the patriarchy and the mentality that a woman is only put on this earth for men.

It’s time to stop allowing women to be judged and labeled as something derogatory because they are happy and confident in themselves and their bodies. In fact, in this new era of the “empowered female,” it’s time we stand up for each other, instead of bringing each other down. I’m sick and tired of someone viewing another woman on Instagram and—due to the outfit she’s wearing—call them a “slut” or a “whore.”

These words have consequences and, in fact, are perpetuating a male-dominated culture of holding down women and allowing them to solely be known by these male-ego centric standards. It’s time to put an end to it. Stand up for your fellow sister, no matter how she chooses to live her life.

35 Women Who Ditched Their Razors For No-Shave ‘Januhairy’ Share Progress Pics

A new year brings new trends and resolutions to try. This year, many women are out trying to smash the patriarchy and unrealistic beauty standards and expectations of women all over the world. To do this, some have decided to partake in a no-shave “Januhairy.” The idea came from student Laura Jackson, who said that the idea behind the campaign was to empower women to understand more about themselves and about others. Essentially, the goal is that women grow out their hair all January long without shaving. And, to celebrate how far they have come, women have been sharing their progress pictures so far, in the second week of January.

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25. 20 People Share The Traumatizing Times They’ve Been Fat-Shamed While Shopping

For many women who are plus-sized, they experience some traumatizing moments while having to try on clothing and look for their size in stores. Not everyone who works in retail are understanding and kind—in fact, most are not. There are dozens of times where people avoid going shopping altogether because they don’t want to feel as though they’re being judged and ridiculed for their size. BuzzFeed recently asked users to share their traumatizing experiences to shed light on how cruel retail workers and everyday people can be—and, hopefully, inspire more people to be kind.

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In high school I want prom dress shopping at a little dress store in the mall. I grabbed a dress to try on and asked the shop lady for a dressing room. She looked me up and down, took the dress out of my hands, and said “there is nothing in my store that will fit YOU” while pointing up and down and across my midsection. Then she asked me to leave.

–maegank3

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When I went dress shopping for prom with just me and my other plus sized friend, we went to the store in our town where most people go for prom. We got there and they said that they were not ordering in extra sizes this year, and they decided to do as system where they only had what was on the rack only. We ask if they have a plus size section and they lead us straight to the clearance rack, which only had about 4 plus sizes and they we’re all extremely ugly. We asked if that was all that was left they said that was about all they ordered in. My friend almost cried because it just felt so embarrassing to go into that store and the only dresses they had that might fit you are ugly and aren’t even the right plus size. It felt kinda like they were saying if your bigger or a fatter that you can’t wear pretty dresses like the rest of the skinny girls. It just felt very size discriminatory Luckily we found a store that had a lot of beautiful plus sizes. But the experience we had at that dress shop was disheartening and we will never be going back.

–f4d870508e

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Went to VS for something new to wear for my six year anniversary with my fiancé. Couldn’t find anything in my size. So I asked one of the girls to help and she said to me “well maybe once you lose some weight, we’ll find something in your size!”
Yeah I left the store in tears.

–mariahn44513b2a5

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25 Moms Share What Postpartum Bodies Really Look Like

One of the hardest things for women to deal with after giving birth is feeling insecure and ashamed of their bodies. And that makes sense, I mean, you just carried around an entire human for 9 months and then delivered it out of your vagina!

Instagram account @takebackpostpartum is changing the way that women view themselves and their bodies after giving birth by sharing real women and real photos and stories.

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Woman Shares A Harrowing Picture To Expose The Reality Of Extreme PMS

Malin Oloffson is a 27-year-old anorexia survivor, as well as a body positivity advocate, according to Cosmopolitan. Getting others to get rid of anybody shame or hang-ups they might have is a big task, and it goes far beyond the usual topics associated with the issue, such as weight. It can involve temporary if difficult changes to the body, such as the ones that come each month with PMS. Oloffson suffers, as many women around the world do, from extreme PMS.

In the caption, Malin Oloffson explains that her distended belly is the result of extreme PMS. To her, and many other women, it manifests in the form of bloating. For Oloffson, it’s extremely pronounced, but also, and she can’t stress this enough, a completely normal thing that the body does, and that it’s absolutely “nothing to be ashamed of.”

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