This Friday I'm joining in with the Guest Post Day organised by Little Mummy. I was so lucky to be partnered with another Emily at Mummy Limited. She's sent me a really great, thought provoking post about the problems so many of us seem to have with our bodies. In the meantime, I waffled on about baby stuff or some such rubbish on her blog and was not nearly as interesting.
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What do you see in the mirror?
Pants with Names has kindly given over her blog to me today as part of Guest Post day organised by Erica at Littlemummy.com. You can read Pants with Names post over at my blog, Mummy Limited, where you can usually find me blogging about life as a Stay at Home Mum to my very energetic, but pretty cool one year old son. I started blogging at the beginning of this year to ensure that my brain didn’t turn to mush now that I’m not scrabbling about in the rat race. Some day my brain still feels pretty mushy but at least blogging ensures I can still string a sentence together. Many thanks to Pants with Names for making me feel so welcome today.
I’m sure that most of you have seen at least some of the entries in last week’s Gallery over at Sticky Fingers, entitled ‘Self-Portrait’. If you haven’t you really should get over there and have a look, as there are loads of really fantastic photos.
When the topic was announced it struck fear into many, some who had never revealed their image on their blogs at all, or perhaps only in a slightly arty, obscured way. I had no idea that it would become such a positive, empowering exercise, but by publishing our photos and receiving tons of lovely comments I think everyone who took part walked a little taller for a few days.
The photos were a joy to view, so many beautiful, real women sharing their images, even though they were reluctant and so many shots that encompassed great strength, love and happiness for lots of different reasons.
This together with the very glamorous photo shoot that English Mum, Paula at Battling on and some other brave and gorgeous ladies took part in for Figleaves.com, got me thinking about body image and how it seems our perception of ourselves is quite different to the one others have of us.
So many people clearly see a different thing in the mirror to what everyone else sees. Women who admitted not wanting to be in photos and hiding behind the camera as much as possible were, to everyone else’s eyes, gorgeous.
The comments that The Gallery prompted and the tweets that I read on Friday, when @englishmum and @peebee72 bravely used a swimwear shot as their avatars, were focused on the positives. It seemed that others pointed out the good things that the subject of the photo couldn’t see. They tended to focus of the things they would like to change about themselves.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Why focus on the stuff that we’d rather be without when we could be making ourselves feel great, by celebrating the bits we do love. I’m not suggesting we spend our time gazing in the mirror marvelling at how beautiful we are, but would it really do us any harm to celebrate our bodies and the bits of it that we are happy with.
So, seeing as it’s Guest Post Day and we can all take this opportunity to be something a little different, join me in throwing modesty out of the window and share your ‘good bits’.
Personally I think I’ve got pretty good legs, to be more specific, from my knee to my toes. They’re not perfect by any means, they have bumps and bruises and are very short, but they are a nice colour and shape; my ankles are slim and didn’t even puff up when I was pregnant. I’m lucky enough to have small feet which tend to look dainty and suit most shoes. I could list too many things I’d like to change but just for today I’m all about the legs!
What about you? What do you like about your body?