More Than A Body: Your Body Is an Instrument, Not an Ornament

by Lexie Kite

We learn that the most important thing about women is their bodies, and the most important thing about women’s bodies is how they look.

Positive body image isn’t believing your body looks good; it is knowing your body is good, regardless of how it looks.

My body was never the problem; my perception of my body was the problem.

My purpose is to bring light into this world, not to decorate it.”

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

We believe women are suffering not only because of the ways beauty is being defined; we are suffering because we are being defined by beauty. We are burdened with the task of looking beautiful and feeling beautiful (to others as well as to ourselves) because we live in a world that defines our value in terms of our physical appeal to others and defines our body image in terms of our physical appeal to ourselves.

But self-care that is truly caring takes care of your whole self, not just your visible self. Self-objectification is not self-care.