Loving Yourself and Your Body

Staff writer: Kyrsten Rose Dickinson

“To all the girls that think you’re ugly because you’re not a size 0, you’re the beautiful one. It’s society who’s ugly.” -Marilyn Monroe 

Marilyn knew what she was talking about. A common illusion in society is that skinny is healthy and/or beautiful. An illusion is all that is. If everyone on earth ate and exercised the exact same, everyone would still look different. 

Body image is something that is always affecting how people see themselves and others. Someone that has a body that you might want, could hate themselves and wish they looked like you. Can we expect everyone to accept us and the way we look? No, and it’s too much to ask of everyone. But, does it really matter what everyone else thinks about you and your body? Acceptance from everyone else shouldn’t be a factor on how you see yourself. The only acceptance you should ever feel the need to get is from yourself. 

People often struggle with a HUGE factor of loving your body. It’s confidence. Having confidence is so incredibly important. I interviewed one of the most confident people I have ever met, Trinity Starzyk, on her personal opinions on body positivity and she went on about how crucial it is to have confidence. 

“If you’re confident in yourself, then you’ll look at people and think, ‘Oh, I saw a girl that was much skinnier than me,’ I’d be like, ‘Oh, she’s beautiful,’ but, if you’re lacking confidence, you’re like ‘I want to look like that.’” What Trinity is trying to say is that if you have confidence in your body, you shouldn’t feel the need to compare your body to someone else’s body.  

Everyone has a different situation on the topic of their body image. Too skinny? Too fat? Too muscular? There is no such thing as too skinny, too fat, or too muscular. Everyone’s body is different and shouldn’t be thought of as having too much or not enough of something. 

I asked Trinity about her personal experiences on how she was treated because of the way she looks. “I was treated a lot different before I got confident in my body and I could tell that people treated me differently. Growing up, I used to hate my body because beauty standards are so stupid and I don’t fit them in any sort of way, I still have my insecurities. They’re still there, but I’ve gained confidence and now that I think about it, my body is beautiful the way it is.”  

Nobody is perfect, everyone has imperfections. Trinity wasn’t always confident, but she’s proof that you can become confident.