Redefining Standards: You Are Enough

I’m frustrated.

With the unrealistic expectations of society.

The distorted ideals upheld for women.

And the toxic behaviors women adopt to chase these ideals.

It’s sick. We’re sick.

And the only cure is a radical shift in how we perceive and treat ourselves.

The perfect marketing strategy emphasizes inadequacy. We’re told we’re lacking something, and the only fix is to spend money – so we strive to fill our flaws with products. While this strategy benefits big business, it etches a ruthlessly self-critical voice into our psyche. We’re ashamed of ourselves; we feel as if we’re never enough. Especially for women, this destructive attitude leads to similarly destructive behavior. And, ironically, most women aren’t even aware of the harm they’re causing themselves, manipulated into believing that what they’re doing is good.

Conventional ideals for the feminine physique emphasize a slender, dainty look. Raised with this model in mind, most women chronically struggle to attain such thinness, demonizing fat and learning to despise their own body for its imperfections and curves. It’s no surprise that diet culture has a history of targeting women, offering new tricks and trends to help one develop a lean figure.

The constant dieting and cardio focus sold to women seems enticing but ultimately results in poor health, while rarely effecting the sought-after “toned” body. Pursuing physique goals with such a technique at best achieves unsustainable weight loss. The negative repercussions, however, are much greater: muscle loss, fat re-gain, malnutrition, menstrual problems, even osteoporosis.

Nonetheless, there’s a more pernicious side to the attitudes ingrained in women: we’re taught to hate ourselves and our bodies. It’s this fundamental mindset that drives all other detrimental decisions. Women learn to restrict their diets and ignore hunger signals because they’re afraid of gaining weight; and cardio becomes a source of punishment when they overindulge in food. Behaviors are motivated by self-hatred and fear rather than self-love – perhaps the saddest realization of all. We learn to resent our bodies when the deceptive weight-loss methods marketed by influencers fail to transform ourselves as we’d hoped. And we blame every one of these failures on ourselves.

I’ve come to loathe this mindset with a passion I can’t fully verbalize. I’ve seen the damage it’s done to women – and continues to do to women. And it takes hold from such a young age that these beliefs are adopted without question.

Everybody has value and deserves to be loved, to love themselves. We need to realize that unwarranted self-criticism only serves to harm us – and that, no matter what, we are always enough. We are adequate as we are. And our self-worth will never depend on how our bodies look.

When we learn to love and accept ourselves, our behaviors come to reflect true health. We exercise because we want to take care of our bodies; we eat because we want to fuel our bodies with proper nutrition. Acting from a place of care will benefit you astronomically more than acting from a place of insecurity.

So where do we go from here? Awareness is the key. When we’ve come to realize our “free will” has been high-jacked by a society thriving on self-hatred, we can learn to separate ourselves from these ingrained mental programs. Genuinely and deeply reflect, consider your intentions and self-talk as you go throughout your day.

It’s never easy overriding thought processes that have become second nature. But we all deserve to realize how amazing each of us is – how we are actually more than adequate. Embracing the self-love we’ve eluded for so long is more transformative than any diet plan or workout regimen: a new perspective creates an entirely new world.