Why body positive affirmations don’t work.
There are so many culs de sac and dead ends along the quest to a self image that feels revitalizing, empowered, and pleasurable. As women, we spend so much of our time and energy trying to find ways just to feel good in our bodies.
We are on a never ending hamster wheel chasing youth, vibrance, glow. We run, skip, leap in a desire for perfection, trying everything under the sun:
Workout routines
Diets
New clothes
That one cream that will finally change the texture and tone of your skin
All forms of contouring- whether it be with bronzer or spandex
Hair removal (sometimes permanent)
Hair dye
Facials
Complex and untested procedures
If we are aware enough to poke our heads out from under the endless tsunami waves of societal judgment to see that this isn’t actually an issue of changing your body for the better, but rather changing how you feel about your body now, we may try things like:
Affirmations
Mirror practices
Journal prompts
Meditations.
And yet…
The negative self talk remains.
Maybe with all of this body positive practice you’ve learned how not to stare at yourself in the mirror daily and scrutinize every little thing you see, but the way you’ve learned to avoid this is by not looking at yourself at all. You may no longer be hating your body, but you’re certainly nowhere near loving it. It’s the last thing you think to turn to when you’re feeling overwhelmed, scared, or insecure.
I know it can feel like a long journey from where you are all the way to body love, but I can assure you, your body was made to feel pleasure, you were born to love yourself, to provide yourself with everything you need to feel vitality, sensuality, and purpose. We just need to walk along the right path to get there.
First, let’s talk about two common ways we are led astray in the quest to body love–changing our bodies to improve self esteem and trying to change our “mindset”.
Dead end #1: Why changing your body doesn’t lead to improved self esteem
Have you ever realized that the definition of perfection changes over time? What was hot yesterday is not today. Sonya Renee Taylor offers a framework exposing the capitalist track back to our body shame and these ever shifting perfection paradigms, widening our lens far past our individual experience. She points to the matrix of body shame carefully crafted by the money making forces governing so much of our society today:
“Relationships with our bodies are social, political, and economic inheritances. The nature of these inheritances has changed over time, the default body morphing and transforming to suit the power structures of the day. We have not always seen fat bodies as less valuable. Throughout periods of human history, we have seen larger bodies not as markers of laziness or ill health but rather as representative of a life of wellness, wealth, and ease—something to aspire to.”
-Sonya Renee Taylor inThe Body is Not an Apology
She calls this conglomerate of social, political, and economic forces driving us towards body hate the Body-Shame Profit Complex (BSPC). Thank you, Ms. Taylor, for giving us a name for this invisible and nasty monster.
There is a lot working against us in our journey to body love and it’s all by design. We are supposed to unlock our phones to find sources in abundance of self doubt. It’s what’s driving the billion dollar industry we are satirically calling the “beauty” industry.
We don't have to fall prey to this… ahem… bullshit. There are a lot of ways we can exit this god damn body shame matrix. As women, I think we are all becoming a little disillusioned with the plastic, primped, and plumped self image they keep trying to sell us.
We will no longer be fooled. To demonstrate, allow me to quote one of my favorite songs:
I know Victoria's secret
And, girl, you wouldn't believe
She's an old man who lives in Ohio
Making money off of girls like me
Cashin' in on body issues
Sellin' skin and bones with big boobs
I know Victoria's secret
She was made up by a dude (dude).
- Victoria’s Secret by Jax
The prospect of altering our bodies to improve how we feel is sold to us many times over as a quick fix, but the reality is, to change how we feel about our bodies, we are going to have to get real about connecting to our feeling body, our somatic patterning, our access to pleasure, and our embodied experience of moving through the world.
There’s even been some research done on how altering our bodies affects our self esteem. They found that out of all participants that received elective surgical alterations to a part of their body, a majority of 89 percent said they were ‘somewhat satisfied’ or ‘extremely satisfied’ with the body part… yet, “they reported no significant changes in self-esteem or in symptoms of depression.” In other words, they didn’t actually feel any better.
Changing your body isn’t an effective way to change your self esteem. Not to mention it’s a never ending battle, especially as women with our fluctuating, fluid, morphing bodies. Our bodies change so many times during our lifetime, through our menarche, pregnancy, birth, menopause and even on a monthly basis with our moon cycles. Our bodies are fluid, and they were meant to ebb and flow with the lunar cycle and the changing landscape of our world. We are the creators of life, and our containers need to be malleable to hold the life within. We can be anything we want 💗.
Dead end #2: Changing your “mindset” to change your self esteem
Now let’s chat about why affirmations, mirror practices, and other “mindset” methods don’t make much of a dent towards body love, at least not in the long term.
Trying to tell your body and mind to feel something different when it comes to your body image is a lot like telling a friend in distress that “they will get over it soon” or “it’s not that big of a deal”. Your body has adopted this encoded belief pattern for good reasons… It has brought you safety when you felt there was no other way to get it, belonging when it felt unreachable, and dignity when it seemed like no one had your back.
Our mindset about our body is the output of a very, very long production line including our familial history, our cultural roots, societal expectations, physical ailments or impediments that we may have experienced, impactful somatic experiences such as birth or injury… all of which get encoded into how we inhabit our bodies. How we move through the world–our posture, the way we position ourselves in a room, the tone of our voice, whether or not we speak up when something doesn’t feel right, the way you touch people, and the way you touch yourself–these are the building blocks of how we feel about our self image, and they are the perfect entry points to inhabiting your body differently and, ultimately, having different conscious beliefs about who you are and how you look.
For you to embody a different set of beliefs, your body needs to feel that it is equally as safe to move through the world in a different way, that you can still feel safe at the center of the room with your forehead held high, and your voice booming as loud as your message requires.
To change your mindset, you must work compassionately and lovingly with the body.
Just like when you learn to play an instrument, the theory or instruction (mindset work) may have helped you get there, and got you to take the first steps towards putting your hands in the right place, but you couldn’t have learned to play that instrument without putting your hands on it and trying to play.
The beliefs we have about our bodies are just like that. Your body is a physical incarnate thing, and you’ve learned to play it in a certain way.
To learn a new way, a new language, or a new song, it isn’t about mantras, or affirmations, or beliefs, it's about actually practicing doing something different with your body, in small doable steps, steps that feel safe and secure to your body. Doability is newness that is able to actually be integrated into your way of being.
Exploring the song you have, listening to it with compassion, love, and curiosity, and meeting your body where it’s at today, that’s what we are talking about here. Making change is about leaving just a little bit of room for improvisation in that comfortable, familiar song you’ve been playing your whole life.
What might that look like?
I’ve got a practice for you to take steps towards body love today. If you’d like a video demonstration of me guiding you through one of these simple somatic practices, look below. You are only a few small steps away from a pleasure filled body image, my dear. You were meant to feel the pleasure you are so longing for when you gaze upon your beautiful form. Start the smallest piece of your journey today. And remember, the gold is in the practice.
