I can spend hours on Instagram. Sue me.
Being that it's my social media app of choice, I can easily spend hours just scrolling. It always starts off with a purpose like career stalking or looking for fashion inspo, but somehow, (not even sure if this is much of a coincidence anymore) I end up in a bottomless pit of Shaderoom posts, instagram boutiques, and usually the women that advertise for them.
Although this archetype varies, I'm usually bombarded with images of racially ambiguous, hyper-curvacious women with enhanced lips; most of which strongly resemble a variation of Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner. With that being said, there's nothing wrong with Instagram boutiques or the women that support them. There's also nothing wrong with enhancing your body if that's what you choose to do. This isn't about shaming women for the decisions they make. But in a world with so much emphasis on physical perfection, it can get hard to digest those images on a daily basis. Often times as women, we internalize them-- both consciously and subconsciously.
Some of us hoard images of these bodies in our phones as "#goals", signifying what we'd like to look like. We begin a fitness journey and plan to look like that girl by the time that journey is over, instead of leading with obtaining a healthy lifestyle. Some of us aren't on a fitness journey but for some reason, the urge for a fatter ass or fuller lips consumes us, and we can't figure out why. It's because these are literally the images we are being force fed by social media. There's no harm in having health goals but when they are driven by unrealistic images, that's where things get tricky. Suddenly, you're consumed by insecurities that didn't even exist before.
Outside of a few insecurities, I never really had body image issues. Of course there were things that I was insecure about growing up (like my fat fingers, my fat feet, my teenage acne), but at a really young age, my mom instilled in me that that was the way God made me. And in true mommy fashion, she assured me that God makes no mistakes. She instilled in me at a young age to learn to love every part of me. And although, it took most of my childhood, I finally learned to do that.
At some point, I decided that I was no longer going to hold myself or others to a standard of beauty that honestly, doesn't really exist. Half the time, the people who look like this, don't even really look like this. Ironically enough, seeing all these images didn't make me want to look like them but it pushed me to become even more comfortable within my own skin. My fat hands and fat feet make me who I am. The way my solid thighs contradict my narrow hips is what makes me, me. Finding peace with the fact that you may look different than others is hard but once you do, it's a hard place to leave.