When we love someone — a boyfriend or girlfriend, a best friend, our parents, our kids — we love them unconditionally. We don’t keep track of random criteria that the person must fulfill.
Our loved ones don’t need a six-pack to gain our respect. They don’t need muscular legs, thinner thighs or chiseled cheekbones to have our appreciation and utmost love.
So why wait to respect our bodies based on a singular, random ideal? A standard essentially set by the very companies that profit from our insecurities, hang-ups and regular body-bashing?
Our bodies are intricate and complex machines and breathtaking works of art. They work behind the scenes on the bare essentials — like breathing, moving, seeing, hearing, touching — so we can go after our dreams.
So we can make our art. So we can make babies. So we can give love. Give hugs. Cook a delicious meal. Savor that meal, bite by tasty bite. Dance. Learn something new. Laugh.
Our bodies are vehicles that take us to amazing places, whether we get there through our feet or our hands. Whether we physically arrive at a destination, are able to read about it or compose a story.
We don’t need to wait until we have blemish-free, wrinkle-free skin to respect, appreciate and love ourselves. We don’t need to wait until we shed X amount of pounds. We don’t need to wait until we have a muscular stomach or a tinny tiny waist.
And we don’t need to stop respecting, appreciating or loving our bodies when we can’t do a certain exercise, or when we’re sick or tired or bloated.
Perfection — whatever that means to you, whether it’s continuously performing at your peak or having a sculpted stomach — isn’t a prerequisite for a positive body image, and it’s certainly not a prerequisite for appreciating and loving ourselves as a whole.
If it were, no one would love. No one would be loved.
But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Love, of course, exists. And it exists in all shapes, sizes, colors, forms and flavors.
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