100 Quotes About Body Image

Some people are born with a body type they hate, while others aren’t lucky enough to be blessed with the ideal figure. What’s even worse is that everyone has different needs and expectations when it comes to their appearance. No one wants to be judged by the way they look, but what if your perception of yourself wasn’t your problem? People who are overweight often feel like they can’t stop themselves from overeating. But research suggests that this isn’t always the case Read more

Check out these body-image quotes below for some common misconceptions about being overweight.

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A fit, healthy body–that is the best fashion statement Jess C. Scott
How beautiful would it be if we could just see...
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How beautiful would it be if we could just see souls instead of bodies? To see love and compassion instead of curves. Karen Quan
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There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty. Steve Maraboli
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Be patient. Your skin took a while to deteriorate. Give it some time to reflect a calmer inner state. As one of my friends states on his Facebook profile: "The true Losers in Life, are not those who Try and Fail, but those who Fail to Try. Jess C. Scott
The human body is the best work of art.
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The human body is the best work of art. Jess C. Scott
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When our emotional health is in a bad state, so is our level of self-esteem. We have to slow down and deal with what is troubling us, so that we can enjoy the simple joy of being happy and at peace with ourselves. Jess C. Scott
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To cherish my purity and set boundaries are, in my opinion, the highest forms of feminism–a woman who saves her body proves she is strong and secure enough to resist the men who seek to claim her, that she’s more than what lies between her legs. Caroline George
Our bodies were printed as blank pages to be filled...
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Our bodies were printed as blank pages to be filled with the ink of our hearts Michael Biondi
May I see the beauty in others without denigrating my...
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May I see the beauty in others without denigrating my own. Kimber Simpkins
She was every inch the skeletal goddess that had been...
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She was every inch the skeletal goddess that had been promised by the bones of her feet. Jefferson Smith
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Right. I look fine. Except I don't, ' said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman's magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki's knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it. . Zadie Smith
It's my choice to be beautiful. It's my choice to...
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It's my choice to be beautiful. It's my choice to be ugly. And it's my choice to decided what those words actually mean. Virginia Petrucci
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So get up, pretty woman! And from your beautifully shaped body don’t be ashamed For we are meant to be different, Rounded shapes and squared We come in a small, medium and a large size And to each there is still a wide range This is to create a beautiful portrait for the eyes And we are not supposed to please the “media-thinking” and change! So woman up! Whether your size is infinity- X large or infinity- X SmallIn love with “you” you should fall Don’t let them and their meaningless words or shallow looks Make you lose it all As to this nature you belong, The beach, the mountains, the oceans And the colorful life this mother earth has to give So embrace this with your body and soul No matter how they evolve… For as long as you live! . Abeer Allan
Stop making someone else's looks your
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Stop making someone else's looks your "#goals". By all means aspire to be a better version of your current self, but don't glorify others when you yourself are glorious. Miya Yamanouchi
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So what if you have stretch marks. So what if you have cellulite. So what if you don’t have a big butt. So what if you don’t have large breasts. So what if you don’t have flawless skin. So what if you don’t have a body that other people deem to be perfect. So what! Don’t allow people to define YOUR beauty. Hold your head up high and know who YOU are! DO NOT EVER allow anybody to make you feel as if you’re NOT enough. You ARE enough! BELIEVE that. Stephanie Lahart
You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are...
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You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful. Amy Bloom
Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love...
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Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so. Naomi Wolf
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Sadly, the signals that allow men and women to find the partners who most please them are scrambled by the sexual insecurity initiated by beauty thinking. A woman who is self-conscious can't relax to let her sensuality come into play. If she is hungry she will be tense. If she is "done up" she will be on the alert for her reflection in his eyes. If she is ashamed of her body, its movement will be stilled. If she does not feel entitled to claim attention, she will not demand that airspace to shine in. If his field of vision has been boxed in by "beauty"--a box continually shrinking--he simply will not see her, his real love, standing right before him. . Naomi Wolf
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Men are visually aroused by women's bodies and less sensitive to their arousal by women's personalities because they are trained early into that response, while women are less visually aroused and more emotionally aroused because that is their training. This asymmetry in sexual education maintains men's power in the myth: They look at women's bodies, evaluate, move on; their own bodies are not looked at, evaluated, and taken or passed over. But there is no "rock called gender" responsible for that; it can change so that real mutuality--an equal gaze, equal vulnerability, equal desire--brings heterosexual men and women together. Naomi Wolf
To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence...
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To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself. Simone De Beauvoir
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Beauty shouldn’t be about changing yourself to achieve an ideal or be more socially acceptable. Real beauty, the interesting, truly pleasing kind, is about honoring the beauty within you and without you. It’s about knowing that someone else’s definition of pretty has no hold over you. Golda Poretsky
By choosing healthy over skinny you are choosing self-love over...
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By choosing healthy over skinny you are choosing self-love over self-judgment. You are beautiful! Steve Maraboli
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What becomes of a man who acquires a beautiful woman, with her "beauty" his sole target? He sabotages himself. He has gained no friend, no ally, no mutual trust: She knows quite well why she has been chosen. He has succeeded in buying something: the esteem of other men who find such an acquisition impressive. Naomi Wolf
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You look beautiful, " Alodia says. I startle at the compliment. Then I smile. "I’m beautiful to the one person who matters." She nods. "Hector’s mouth is going to drop open when he sees you.”“ I hope so. But I meant me. I’m beautiful to me. Rae Carson
The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not...
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The beauty myth is always actually prescribing behaviour and not appearance. Naomi Wolf
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We do not have to spend money and go hungry and struggle and study to become sensual; we always were. We need not believe we must somehow earn good erotic care; we always deserved it. Femaleness and its sexuality are beautiful. Women have long secretly suspected as much. In that sexuality, women are physically beautiful already; superb; breathtaking. Many, many men see this way too. A man who wants to define himself as a real lover of women admires what shows of her past on a woman's face, before she ever saw him, and the adventures and stresses that her body has undergone, the scars of trauma, the changes of childbirth, her distinguishing characteristics, the light is her expression. The number of men who already see in this way is far greater than the arbiters of mass culture would lead us to believe, since the story they need to tell ends with the opposite moral. Naomi Wolf
The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has...
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The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her "beauty. Naomi Wolf
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Is the beauty myth good to men? It hurts them by teaching them how to avoid loving women. It prevents men from actually seeing women. It does not, contrary to its own professed ideology, stimulate and gratify sexual longing. In suggesting a vision in place of a woman, it has a numbing effect, reducing all senses but the visual, and impairing even that. Naomi Wolf
Healthy emotions come in all sizes. Healthy minds come in...
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Healthy emotions come in all sizes. Healthy minds come in all sizes. And healthy bodies come in all sizes. Cheri K. Erdman
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Women could probably be trained quite easily to see men first as sexual things. If girls never experienced sexual violence; if a girl's only window on male sexuality were a stream of easily available, well-lit, cheap images of boys slightly older than herself, in their late teens, smiling encouragingly and revealing cuddly erect penises the color of roses or mocha, she might well look at, masturbate to, and, as an adult, "need" beauty pornography based on the bodies of men. And if those initiating penises were represented to the girl as pneumatically erectible, swerving neither left nor right, tasting of cinnamon or forest berries, innocent of random hairs, and ever ready; if they were presented alongside their measurements, length, and circumference to the quarter inch; if they seemed to be available to her with no troublesome personality attached; if her sweet pleasure seemed to be the only reason for them to exist--then a real young man would probably approach the young woman's bed with, to say the least, a failing heart. Naomi Wolf
What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they...
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What are other women really thinking, feeling, experiencing, when they slip away from the gaze and culture of men? Naomi Wolf
A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession...
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A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience. Naomi Wolf
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Value yourself for what the media doesn't - your intelligence, your street smarts, your ability to play a kick-ass game of pool, whatever. So long as it's not just valuing yourself for your ability to look hot in a bikini and be available to men, it's an improvement. Jessica Valenti
Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through...
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Beauty provokes harassment, the law says, but it looks through men's eyes when deciding what provokes it. Naomi Wolf
For too long, and despite what people told me, I...
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For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms. Anne Lamott
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No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society. Naomi Wolf
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A man is unlikely to be brought within earshot of women as they judge men's appearance, height, muscle tone, sexual technique, penis size, personal grooming, or taste in clothes--all of which we do. The fact is that women are able to view men just as men view women, as objects for sexual and aesthetic evaluation; we too are effortlessly able to choose the male "ideal" from a lineup and if we could have male beauty as well as everything else, most of us would not say no. But so what? Given all that, women make the choice, by and large, to take men as human beings first. Naomi Wolf
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Why should her lover, just because he is male, be in a position to judge her against other women? Why must she need to know her position and hate needing to, and hate knowing? Why should his reply have such exaggerated power? And it does. He does not know that what he says will affect the way she feels when they next make love. She is angry for a number of good reasons that may have nothing to do with this particular man's intentions. The exchange reminds her that, in spite of a whole fabric of carefully woven equalities, they are not equal in this way that is so crucial that its snagged thread unravels the rest. . Naomi Wolf
Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements,...
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Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful. Germaine Greer
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Young women today feel vulnerable to judgment; if a harsh sentence is passed (or even suspected or projected), it is not her reputation that suffers so much as the stability of her moral universe. They did not have long to explore the sexual revolution and make it their own. Before the old chains had grown cold, while young women were still rubbing the circulation back into their ankles and taking tentative steps forward, the beauty industries levied a heavy toll on further investigations, and beauty pornography offered them designer bondage. Naomi Wolf
Beauty discrimination has become necessary, not from the perception that...
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Beauty discrimination has become necessary, not from the perception that women will not be good enough, but that they will be, as they have been, twice as good. Naomi Wolf
Cosmetic surgery processes the bodies of woman-made women, who make...
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Cosmetic surgery processes the bodies of woman-made women, who make up the vast majority of its patient pool, into man-made women. Naomi Wolf
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Beauty" and sexuality are both commonly misunderstood as some transcendent inevitable fact; falsely interlocking the two makes it seem doubly true that a woman must be "beautiful" to be sexual. That of course is not true at all. The definitions of both "beautiful" and "sexual" constantly change to serve the social order, and the connection between the two is a recent invention. Naomi Wolf
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When [beauty pornography is] aimed at men, its effect is to keep them from finding peace in sexual love. The fleeting chimera of the airbrushed centerfold, always receding before him, keeps the man destabilized in pursuit, unable to focus on the beauty of the woman--known, marked, lined, familiar–-who hands him the paper every morning. Naomi Wolf
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The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold. Or, if your ad revenue or your seven-figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it is an operable condition. Naomi Wolf
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Self-denial can lock women into a smug and critical condescension to other, less devout women. According to Appel, cult members develop.."an attitude of moral superiority, a contempt for secular laws, rigidity of thought, and the diminution of regard for the individual." A premium is placed on conformity to the cult group; deviation is penalized. "Beauty" is derivative; conforming to the Iron Maiden [an intrinsically unattainable standard of beauty that is then used to punish women physically and psychologically for failure to achieve and conform to it] is "beautiful." The aim of beauty thinking, about weight or age, is rigid female thought. Cult members are urged to sever all ties with the past: "I destroyed all my fat photographs! "; "It's a new me!. Naomi Wolf
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Cosmetic surgery is not "cosmetic, " and human flesh is not "plastic." Even the names trivialize what it is. It's not like ironing wrinkles in fabric, or tuning up a car, or altering outmoded clothes, the current metaphors. Trivialization and infantilization pervade the surgeons' language when they speak to women: "a nip, " a "tummy tuck.".. Surgery changes one forever, the mind as well as the body. If we don't start to speak of it as serious, the millennium of the man-made woman will be upon us, and we will have had no choice. Naomi Wolf
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Healthy" and "diseased, " as Susan Sontag points out...are often subjective judgments that society makes for its own purposes. Women have long been defined as sick as a means of subjecting them to social control. Naomi Wolf
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[Women's magazines]ignore older women or pretend that they don’t exist; magazines try to avoid photographs of older women, and when they feature celebrities who are over sixty, ‘retouching artists’ conspire to ‘help’ beautiful women look more beautiful, ie less than their age.. By now readers have no idea what a real woman’s 60 year old face looks like in print because it’s made to look 45. Worse, 60 year old readers look in the mirror and think they are too old, because they’re comparing themselves to some retouched face smiling back at them from a magazine. Dalma Heyn
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Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West is is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact. Naomi Wolf
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As soon as a woman's primary social value could no longer be defined as the attainment of virtuous domesticity, the beauty myth redefined it as the attainment of virtuous beauty. It did so to substitute both a new consumer imperative and a new justification for economic unfairness in the workplace where the old ones had lost their hold over newly liberated women. Naomi Wolf
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Sometimes I look in the mirror and think I'm really good looking. Then other times I think my body's all wrong. Unknown
Today a woman must ignore her reflection in the eyes...
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Today a woman must ignore her reflection in the eyes of her lover, since he might admire her, and seek it in the gaze of the God of Beauty, in whose perception she is never complete. Naomi Wolf
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The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill. Naomi Wolf
If women cannot eat the same food as men, we...
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If women cannot eat the same food as men, we cannot experience equal status in the community. Naomi Wolf
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In a sexual double standard as to who receives consumer protection, it seems that if what you do is done to women in the name of beauty, you may do what you like. It is illegal to claim that something grows hair, or makes you taller, or restores virility, if it does not. It is difficult to imagine that the baldness remedy Minoxidil would be on the market if it had killed nine French and at least eleven American men. In contrast, the long-term effects of Retin-A are still unknown-- Dr. Stuart Yusps of the National Cancer Institute refers to its prescription as "a human experiment"--and the Food and Drug Administration has not approved it yet dermatologists are prescribing it to women at a revenue of over $150 million a year. Naomi Wolf
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The surgeons' market is imaginary, since there is nothing wrong with women's faces or bodies that social change won't cure; so the surgeons depend for their income on warping female self-perception and multiplying female self-hatred. Naomi Wolf
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Since middle-class Western women can best be weakened psychologically now that we are stronger materially, the beauty myth, as it has resurfaced in the last generation, has had to draw on more technological sophistication and reactionary fervor than ever before. The modern arsenal of the myth is a dissemination of millions of images of the current ideal; although this barrage is generally seen as a collective sexual fantasy, there is in fact little that is sexual about it. It is summoned out of political fear on the part of male-dominated institutions threatened by women's freedom, and it exploits female guilt and apprehension about our own liberation -- latent fears that we might be going too far. Naomi Wolf
The stronger that women grow, the more prestige, fame, and...
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The stronger that women grow, the more prestige, fame, and money is accorded to the display professions: They are held higher and higher above the heads of rising women, for them to emulate. Naomi Wolf
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Why does the social order feel the need to defend itself by evading the fact of real women, our faces and voices and bodies, and reducing the meaning of women to these formulaic and endlessly reproduced "beautiful" images? Though unconscious personal anxieties can be a powerful force in the creation of a vital lie, economic necessity practically guarantees it. An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that "justify" the institution of slavery. Western economies are absolutely dependent now on the continued underpayment of women. An idealogy that makes women feel "worth less" was urgently needed to counteract the way feminism had begun to make us feel worth more. This does not require a conspiracy; merely an atmosphere. The contemporary economy depends right now on the representation of women within the beauty myth. Naomi Wolf
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Where woman do not fit the Iron Maiden [societal expectations/assumptions about women's bodies], we are now being called monstrous, and the Iron Maiden is exactly that which no woman fits, or fits forever. A woman is being asked to feel like a monster now though she is whole and fully physically functional. The surgeons are playing on the myth's double standard for the function of the body. A man's thigh is for walking, but a woman's is for walking and looking "beautiful." If women can walk but believe our limbs look wrong, we feel that our bodies cannot do what they are meant to do; we feel as genuinely deformed and disabled as the unwilling Victorian hypochondriac felt ill. . Naomi Wolf
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Sexual satisfaction eases the stranglehold of materialism, since status symbols no longer look sexual, but irrelevant. Product lust weakens where emotional and sexual lust intensifies. The price we pay for artificially buoying up this market is our heart's desire. The beauty myth keeps a gap of fantasy between men and women. That gap is made with mirrors; no law of nature supports it. It keeps us spending vast sums of money and looking distractedly around us, but its smoke and reflection interfere with our freedom to be sexually ourselves. Naomi Wolf
Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her
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Spokespeople sell women the Iron Maiden and name her "Health": if public discourse were really concerned with women's health, it would turn angrily upon this aspect of the beauty myth. Naomi Wolf
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Modern cosmetic surgeons have a direct financial interest in a social role for women that requires them to feel ugly. They do not simply advertise for a share of a market that already exists: Their advertisements create new markets. It is a boom industry because it is influentially placed to create its own demand through the pairing of text with ads in women's magazines. The industry takes out ads and gets coverage; women get cut open. They pay their money and they takes their chances. As surgeons grow richer, they are able to command larger and brighter ad spaces. Naomi Wolf
Aging in women is 'unbeautiful' since women grow more powerful...
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Aging in women is 'unbeautiful' since women grow more powerful with time, and since the links between generations of women must always be broken. Naomi Wolf
Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without...
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Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight. Naomi Wolf
I have found that most people are more willing to...
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I have found that most people are more willing to accept physical pain and limitation rather than acknowledge and deal with the mental and/or emotional pain that might have caused it. Tobe Hanson
Maybe beauty had nothing to do with the garbage TV...
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Maybe beauty had nothing to do with the garbage TV tried to sell us. It was more a matter of confidence. Either way, I had none. Gaia B. Amman
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But no matter what my eyes report, there is beauty that lives under the skin, under the surface, under the standards set up for me by outside arbiters of what is good and true. Those arbiters are not always so reliable. They can be bought and sold. They can be marketed and manufactured. The real standards, the ones set forth by the One who made me, are solid, knitted into me at my beginning. This beauty is true and real, and it lives within the heart. It is my heart that must be trained to recognize this beauty. . Angela Doll Carlson
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The flower of the ginger is superb and regal, but if we focus on nurturing the ginger plant to bloom we are unable to harvest its root. Enjoying the exquisite beauty of the plant will prevent us from unlocking its true potential–the nutrients secretly stored beyond the reach of the sun. Why care about trivial matters such as external beauty? What matters lies beneath the surface. What a waste! She is much more beautiful on the inside where she has so much more to give to the world. . Jamie Le Fay
I used to never get in a swimsuit. I used...
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I used to never get in a swimsuit. I used to feel so embarrassed about my skin and scars. I'm over that, it wasted too much of my time and I missed out on too much. Stephanie Nielson
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There is something about my face in the mirrors that catch it. Even at a distance it will never be right again, not even to a casual glance. Beauty: it's the upkeep that costs, that's what Balzac said, not the initial investment. Joanna Walsh
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Appearing nude on film was not easy when I was twenty-six in Body Heat; it was even harder when I was forty-six in The Graduate, on the stage, which is more up close and personal than film. After my middle-age nude scene, though, I unexpectedly got letters from women saying, "I have not undressed in front of my husband in ten years and I'm going to tonight." Or, "I have not looked in the mirror at my body and you gave me permission." These affirmations from other women were especially touching to me because when I began The Graduate I'd just come through a period when I felt a great loss of confidence, when my rheumatoid arthritis hit me hard and I literally couldn't walk or do any of the things that I was so used to doing. It used to be that if I said to my body, "Leap across the room now, " it would leap instantly. I don't know how I did it, but I did it. I hadn't realized how much my confidence was based on my physicality. On my ability to make my body do whatever I wanted it to do. I was so consumed, not just by thinking about what I could and couldn't do, but also by handling the pain, the continual, chronic pain. I didn't realize how pain colored my whole world and how depressive it was. Before I was finally able to control my RA with proper medications, I truly had thought that my attractiveness and my ability to be attractive to men was gone, was lost. So for me to come back and do The Graduate was an affirmation to myself. I had my body back. I was back. Kathleen Turner
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In every age a general misdirection of what may be called sexual "taste".. [is] produce[d by the devil and his angels]. This they do bu working through the small circle of artists, dressmakers, actresses, and advertisers who determine the fashionable type. The aim is to guide each sex away from those members of the other with whom spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely. Thus [they] have now for many centuries triumphed over nature to the extent of making certain secondary characteristics of the male (such as the beard) disagreeable to nearly all the females-and there is more in that than you might suppose. As regards the male taste [they] have varied a good deal. At one time [they] have directed it to the statuesque and aristocratic type of beauty, mixing men's vanity with their desires and encouraging the race to breed chiefly from the most arrogant and prodigal women. At another, [they] have selected an exaggeratedly feminine type, faint and languishing, so that folly and cowardice, and all the general falseness and littleness of mind which go with them, shall be at a premium. At present [they] are on the opposite tack. The age of jazz has succeeded the age of the waltz, and [they] now teach men to like women whose bodies are scarcely distinguishable from those of boys. Since this is a kind of beauty even more transitory than most, [they] thus aggravate the female's chronic horror of growing old (with many [successful] results) and render her less willing and less able to bear children. And that is not all. [They] have engineered a great increase in the license which society allows to the representation of the apparent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhibition on the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, or course; the figures in the popular art are falsely drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actually pinched in and propped up to make them to appear firmer and more slender and more boyish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be. Yet at the same time, the modern world is taught to believe that it is being "frank" and "healthy" and getting back to nature. As a result [they] are more and more directing the desires of men to something which does not exist-making the role of the eye in sexuality more and more important and at the same time making its demands more and more impossible. . C.s. Lewis
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If you think my waistline defines my worth, you are not worth my time anyways. Maria Elena
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Simply being born female in our society is to grow up being told your worth as a person is tied to how slim and attractive you are. Even for those of us lucky enough to have evolved parents, the message is still driven home by the world at large. Padma Lakshmi
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The patriarchal/kyriarchal/hegemonic culture seeks to regulate and control the body — especially women’s bodies, and especially black women’s bodies — because women, especially black women, are constructed as the Other, the site of resistance to the kyriarchy. Because our existence provokes fear of the Other, fear of wildness, fear of sexuality, fear of letting go — our bodies and our hair (traditionally hair is a source of magical power) must be controlled, groomed, reduced, covered, suppressed. Yvonne Aburrow
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Health makes good propaganda. Naomi Wolf
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Sometimes you need a reminder that negative comments about your body aren’t even really about your body, they’re about society and our society’s wrongheaded and impossibly narrow definition of a “good” body. Your body didn’t do anything wrong. What’s fucked up about your body is not your body at all, but that your body has to live in a society that thinks it has a right to say fucked up things about your body. Golda Poretsky
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A mind wanders, thoughts flee and memories fade. But tattoos, tattoos are forever. And if it is true to say that we carry ourselves with when we travel - then the body may very well be a beautiful canvas for the timeless lessons we learn and will learn when we travel. Lauren Klarfeld
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One humid summer afternoon, Remy got to missing his dad, who was in Japan doing fieldwork. After searching around the house, I found him in the backyard sitting on a rock and crying tears that were so sincere and alone that I immediately cried right along with him--out of both empathy and also a sense of joy that he, after a mere five years on this earth, was able to feel so deeply for someone else. Because I was crying, I was short on words, but I carried him inside to an overstuffed chair and let his little heaving body fill in every space on my stomach and chest. We stayed there for a long time without speaking while he calmed--he seemed to want to melt right into me until any hurt he felt was gone. I had already been thinking a lot about bodies and the spirit, but that moment brought new clarity to my abstract ideas and tentative conclusions. My body is home to my children. I lie between my children each night while they fall asleep, and they reach out in the dark and stroke my face or reach for my hand. It's like the reaffirmation of both their place in the world and their place in a larger plan, as they run their tiny hands across the familiar and tangible landscape of my body. My body for them is a manifestation of home, and home is what the spirit has always felt like for me. There have been times in my life, more than I'd like to admit, that I've spent copious amounts of thought and energy trying to rearrange the home of my body. Roughly pushing furniture around with dissatisfaction, barging in with the latest trend, sitting at the window wishing my home was anything other than what it was. I think, like many, I've been harsh to my body, spoken unkindly to and about it. Watching Thea move through the world with almost comical confidence has shifted my paradigm. Since she has been around, I slowly, one step and one day at a time, began reclaiming confidence in my body. I feel fierce in protecting her confidence, and I've learned in order to do that I have to protect my own. I've learned that in order to be an efficacious woman with any sort of spiritual power, I first have to love my body. . Ashley Mae Hoiland
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I’m not going to miss 95% of life to weigh 5% less. Dan Pearce
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I am, for some reason, actually happy with who I am and the muscle, the bones, and the flub that exist beneath these clothes. I don’t need to lose 20 lbs. to be attractive. I don’t need to starve myself of the good things of life to be healthy. And, I don’t need to chase someone else’s ideal of what I should be looking like. Dan Pearce
84
The skinnier and more toned I got, the fatter I felt. The more in shape I got, the more out of shape I felt like I was. And the more I made myself look good to the masses, the less attractive I felt like I was. Dan Pearce
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I’ve been chained to my bathroom scale for two decades now. I’ve used the number on my scale to tell me if I’m valuable or not. I’ve let the number on my scale destroy many beautiful opportunities in my life such as scheduling family photos, having fun at the beach, or giving myself 100% in intimacy. I’ve let the number on the scale tell me if I should be confident in who I am. I’ve let the number on the scale tell me if I am worthy of kind thoughts from others. Ultimately, I’ve always let some ridiculous number on the bathroom scale tell me whether or not I should love myself. Dan Pearce
86
I enjoy a torture session on the rowing machine and I also enjoy my mom’s homemade peach cobbler. I enjoy flopping like that dead fish with hips that can’t lie in dance class, and I also enjoy ordering pizza with my kid, renting a movie, and downing popcorn while we share some special time together. I enjoy seeing how much I can lift at the gym and I also enjoy stuffing a fresh chewy chocolate chip cookie into my face when I’m having a hard day. Dan Pearce
87
The strangest thing was, as beautiful as I found her to be, she admitted that she wasn’t always comfortable in her own skin. I found that hard to believe until she explained herself. All of the sudden I was not so much in awe of her but found myself empathizing with her. Michele Jennae
88
You are you, no one else is you, you are the right you, and the right you, is the you that you love. Yaira Somerville
89
Choosing to accept yourself is a political act. An act of liberation. Unknown
90
And suddenly, lying in bed, I became aware of every inch of my body and I apologised to it, quietly. I apologised for bring so ungrateful for so long. Then I thanked my arms, hands and fingers for always trying so hard. I thanked my legs and feet for holding me up all the time. I thanked my brain for working so amazingly well and conjuring up thoughts and dreams and sentences and images and crazy poems. And I thanked all my organs for working together and giving me life. It had taken four and a half billion years for me to be here. Right now. In this universe. And in that moment, I felt totally overwhelmed at being alive. There could be nothing but there was everything. I didn't want to waste a single second more worrying about trivialities. Worrying that I'd never match up to an ideal that didn't even exist. Nobody is normal. We are all different. I had to make sure that every moment I had left on this planet counted. . Unknown
91
Proper posture sends a positive message since 90% of all communication occures through body language and how you carry yourself. Cindy Ann Peterson
92
Eating disorders are prevalent among women who were sexually abused as children. They seem to have components of other symptoms such as obsessions, compulsions, avoidance of food, and anxiety, and they primarily include a distorted body image and feelings of body shame. For some women, eating disorders are related to the loss of control over their bodies during the sexual abuse and serve as a means of feeling in control of their bodies now. Eating disorders can also be indicative of the developmental stage and age at which the sexual abuse began. Women with anorexia and bulimia report that they were sexually abused either at the age of puberty or during puberty, when their bodies were beginning to develop and they felt a great deal of body shame from the abuse. By contrast, women with compulsive eating report that the sexual abuse occurred before the age of puberty; they used food for comfort. Karen A. Duncan
93
My body is like a Temple in Nepal. It is sacred, but has a lot of damage from the earthquake of my youth! James Hauenstein
94
Culture alone cannot explain the phenomena of such high rates of eating disorders. Eating disorders are complex, but what they all seem to have in common is the ability to distract women from the memories, sensations, and experience of the sexual abuse through starving, bingeing, purging, or exercising. They keep the focus on food, body image, weight, fat, calories, diets, miles, and other factors that women focus on during the course of an eating disorder. These disorders also have the ability to numb a woman from the overwhelming emotions resulting from the sexual abuse – especially loss of control, terror, and shame about her body. Women often have a combination of eating disorders in in their history. Some women are anorexic during one period of their life, bulimic during another, and compulsive eaters at yet another stage. Karen A. Duncan
95
Our first experience of life is primarily felt in the *body.* ... We know ourselves in the security of those who hold us and gaze upon us. It's not heard or seen or thought it's felt. That's the original knowing. Richard Rohr
96
I took a breath and watched as he leaned down over my exposed, lumpy belly. Very lightly, he kissed it. He kissed the spot beneath my ribs and all the way down to my navel. He kissed across my lower stomach, that wretched expanse where the stretch marks raked across my skin, then up and down my sides. Harry kissed every inch of my horrible flesh with a tenderness so great and loving, and all the while, my eyes stayed clenched tight. 'I am loved, ' a voice inside me declared. Kelsey Miller
97
It wasn't a perfect body but it was the body she deserved. Not just from every bar of chocolate or bag of crisps or laden plate of food that she'd eaten. This body was also testament to all the hours in the gym and cycling up hills on her bike and glugging down two litres of water a day and learning to love vegetables and fruits that didn't come as optional extra with a pastry crust. She'd earned this body. This was her body and she had to stop giving it such a hard time. Sarra Manning
98
Chubby chasers don't prove that fat is beautiful. Chubby chasers show us that ugliness is optional. Dan Oliverio
99
Only on a few occasions had I ever been comfortable showing my body off, and now here I was, taking a job where Asian boobs and ass ran free. Teresa Lo
100
As our body journeys through life, and life journeys on our body….life will leave marks on us too. From the creases of our wrinkles to the birthmarks on our bodies to the tattoos we decide to place. Lauren Klarfeld