Fitting In

Interpreting and responding to images and messages. We are so worried about fitting in that we are unable to realize what we are trying to fit into. Because this is a standard we start to believe that measures how good we are, how capable we are and we get caught up in playing along. The thing is I remember when fitting in was so important to me that you end up losing sight of who you are, your values, and your voice. You trap yourself in denying yourself what you really know just for the sake of belonging.

Ok, so what’s the point and where am I going with this…. let me give you an example: We follow people on Instagram that have beautiful feeds and amazing pictures of themselves. We start beating ourselves up because we don’t look like that. When in reality the girls you follow don’t look like that either. We keep going back to her feed and we keep feeling bad about who we are and what we need to do is STOP the crap! Comparison is CRAP! and we stop following the accounts that make us feel horrible about ourselves! My rule of thumb is this, if that person is not adding value to your life and teaching you something then there is no need to watch them. You will forget about that girl’s IG in a couple of hours when they stop showing up and you’ll feel happy and excited about who you are and what you have to offer.

Here is the sad truth social media is not going away and we have to figure out how to know what IS real and what is fake. Social media also has a huge influence on women and girls in how we feel about ourselves making us feel worse. Did you know that the number one thing that it influences is the desire to be thin? Yes, they have done tons of research about the relationship between self-esteem and media influence and it was all done on being skinny! ugh, which was also linked to eating disorders and extreme dieting. I know so now what do we do?

How do we stop this? We have to create a positive body image in our girls. The research found that girls that were 14 years old that had a positive body image were able to distinguish girls’ bodies and describe them as unnatural and unrealistic, and could actually separate that the media was only showing one kind of girl. The young girls who love themselves and see their bodies positively were able to speak about beauty in more than just one defined way - to them beauty was flexible and it was more important for girls to be themselves, instead of trying to look like everyone else. YES! this is where we start changing the lens.

My goal has always been to create that foundation of positive body image so that our girls will be able to know the difference.

I wasted so much time caring about what others thought that it makes me sad to think about all the missed opportunities and things I could have done. Yes, easy to say now that I’m older. I was so preoccupied with looks for so many years. There is so much life to be lived and I believe that with a strong positive base we can teach our girls to weed out the crap.

We need to block out the lies and stop this never-ending chase to be beautiful. We are all different kinds of beautiful. The goal is to make the girls aware, and critical, of messages communicated through media about women and girls.

So fitting is a huge part of growing up and