Best 230 quotes in «body image quotes» category

How frequently do you look in the mirror? Does your face please you? Are you disgusted to detect familial features? Do you worship or hate your ancestors? Do you consider your image erotic? Do you pretend that you are a star's child? If you squint, does your reflection become abstract? Is abstraction a transcendental escape from identity or a psychotic spasm of depersonalization?

How stupid that all I have to do is grow two squishy lumps and suddenly I'm man's best friend

How we diminished her and in turn ourselves. Turned parts of her body into heavy burdens to carry. Watching. Tittering (we no longer laughed, from then on it was tittering). Commenting. Losing our composure. Falling in love, developing obsessions, and growing resentful when our shallow affections were ignored.

I banned the use of fat as a slur hurled toward myself and strangers. I'm not saying I don't see fat; saying that is akin to the people who make grand statements about 'not seeing color.' Seeing color doesn't mean you're a racist. It means your eyes work, but that you are hopefully able to see color not for a discrepancy in normal, but as a beautiful component of diversity.

I deny myself certain trappings of femininity as if i do not have the right to such expression when my body does not follow society's dictates for what a woman's body should look like.

I don't see the world as fat and thin. Gravity just likes some more than others.

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.

If my self was my dwelling, then my body resembled an orchard that surrounded it. I could either cultivate that orchard to its capacity or leave it for the weeds to run riot in. There are some truths in this world that one cannot see unless one unbends one's posture.

I got out of the shower and stopped to look at myself in the mirror. I looked blotchy and messy and not at all like those girls in magazines. But I was still fucking beautiful. I'm a real woman who digests her meals and breaks out and has sweet little pockets of cellulite on her upper thighs that she's not apologising for. Because guess what? we all have that shit. We're all human beings.

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.

I am my own cannibal.

I am protective of the gentle slope of stomach bulging like an early pregnancy, at my waist. I've earned its existence with everything I've been forced to swallow.

I choose this body just as it is.

I’d learned to avoid mirrors. They never seemed to show me what I wanted to see.

I found myself stuck into a Gertrude’s Dream Waltz universe. Like Gertrude, I was trapped inside a body that bellied little of the person inside, while simultaneously ensnared in a home filled with people that looked like the person inside the unsightly body.

If women cannot eat the same food as men, we cannot experience equal status in the community.

If you find the dividing line between fairy tales and reality, let me know. In my mind, the two run together, even though the intersections aren't always obvious. The girl sitting quietly in class or waiting for the bus or roaming the mall doesn't want anyone to know, or doesn't know how to tell anyone, that she is locked in a tower. Maybe she's a prisoner of a story she's heard all her life- that fairest means best, or that bruises prove she is worthy of love.

If you think my waistline defines my worth, you are not worth my time anyways.

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.

I have a body, but I am not my body. I have a face, but I am not my face.

I have two wardrobes. One, the clothes I wear everyday, is made up mostly of dark denim jeans, black T-shirts, and, for special occasions, dress shirts. These clothes shroud my cowardice. These are the clothes I feel safe in. This is the armor I wear to face the world, and I assure you, armor is needed. I tell myself this armor is all I need. When I wear my typical uniform, it feels like safety, like I can hide in plain sight. I become less of a target. I am taking up space, but I am doing so in an unassuming manner so I am less of a problem, less of a disturbance. This is what I tell myself. My other wardrobe, the one that dominates most of my closet, is full of the clothes I don't have the courage to wear.

I hate hating my body. Actually, I don’t even hate my body. I just worry everyone else might.

I keep telling you, nobody wants legs like a stick insect. They want a bottom they can park in a bike in and balance a pint of beer on.

I’m fifteen and I feel like girl my age are under a lot of pressure that boys are not under. I know I am smart, I know I am kind and funny, and I know that everyone around me keeps telling me that I can be whatever I want to be. I know all this but I just don’t feel that way. I always feel like if I don’t look a certain way, if boys don’t think I’m ‘sexy’ or ‘hot’ then I’ve failed and it doesn’t even matter if I am a doctor or writer, I’ll still feel like nothing. I hate that I feel like that because it makes me seem shallow, but I know all of my friends feel like that, and even my little sister. I feel like successful women are only considered a success if they are successful AND hot, and I worry constantly that I won’t be. What if my boobs don’t grow, what if I don’t have the perfect body, what if my hips don’t widen and give me a little waist, if none of that happens I feel like what’s the point of doing anything because I’ll just be the ‘fat ugly girl’ regardless of whether I do become a doctor or not. I wish people would think about what pressure they are putting on everyone, not just teenage girls, but even older people – I watch my mum tear herself apart every day because her boobs are sagging and her skin is wrinkling, she feels like she is ugly even though she is amazing, but then I feel like I can’t judge because I do the same to myself. I wish the people who had real power and control the images and messages we get fed all day actually thought about what they did for once. I know the girls on page 3 are probably starving themselves. I know the girls in adverts are airbrushed. I know beauty is on the inside. But I still feel like I’m not good enough.

I have not always been fat. I have certainly never been this fat. I am shocked, sometimes, at how uncomfortable I am in my own skin – I would expect to be used to myself by now, having weighed more than 400 pounds for a few years now, and only exceeding 500 this past year. You can get used to anything, right?

I’m not going to miss 95% of life to weigh 5% less.

I longed to love this frame that was projected towards me. I continued staring. This was me, my body, and it was mine.

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.

I'm sorry I don't conform to your standards of feminine perfection, but I'm quite happy the way I am—anyway, I wasn't born to be buxom.

I once heard her tell a friend that she was, in fact, a 120-pound woman, but she kept herself wrapped in fat in order to prevent bruising.

In the changing room, attempting to shove your misshapen body into the size you think you should be rather than the size you are usually leads to some form of weeping while screaming, "IT'S FINE, I'LL JUST WEAR A BAG OF FLOUR AROUND MY BODY UNTIL I DEHYDRATE ENTIRELY AND CAN DIE IN PEACE.

I try to stay fit and eat healthily, but I am not anxious to starve myself and become unnaturally thin. I don’t find that look attractive on women and I don’t want to become part of that trend. It’s unhealthy and it puts too much pressure on women in general who are being fed this image of the ideal, which it is not. I think America has become obsessed with dieting rather than focusing on eating well, exercising and living a healthy life. I also think that being ultra-thin is not sexy at all. Women shouldn’t be forced to conform to unrealistic and unhealthy body images that the media promote. I don’t need to be skinny to be sexy.

I'm mad because girls as young as eight years old are being shamed about their bodies. Fifth graders go on diets and admire Instagram pics of celebs in waist trainers. Some of the people I'm closest to have struggled with eating disorders. I'm mad at an industry that suggests that painfully thin is the only acceptable way to be. Please don't get on me for skinny shaming. If that's how you are shaped, God bless, but we gotta mix it up, because it's upsetting and confusing to women with other body types.

I strongly believe that our bodies give back to us whatever resonates with the thoughts we are thinking about it. If you truly love your body, are grateful and appreciative of the things it CAN do for you, and what it does for you every day without even having to ask, you will change your life.

It seemed to me that boys had a lot more fun. It was a relief. I didn't look at myself from the outside. I just lived inside my skin, looking out.

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.

It's easy to be worried about the media's influence on our lives. But there is a need for us to also simply be kind to ourselves, to be kind to our bodies. Not just because we deserve more respect and more self-care, but also because the world deserves more of our attention, and we just can't give it out if it's diverted to obsessing over our thighs.

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.

It's never been true, not anywhere at any time, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around. When we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels. We don't want to EAT hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to BE hot fudge sundaes. We want to come home to ourselves. (p. 174-5)

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.

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.

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.

I've got two backs, me - and I'm glad! Tits can be . . . mwa, I know, but they're always in the bloody road. Even in bed.

I was back in disgust. I stood in the centre of the big room, naked, letting the heat strike me from the three points of heat, and I knew, and it was an illumination — one of those things one has always known, but never really understood before — that all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh. If this goes, then the conviction of life goes too. But I could feel none of this. The texture of the carpet was abhorrent to me, a dead processed thing; my body was a thin, meagre, spiky sort of vegetable, like an unsunned plant; and when I touched the hair on my head it was dead. I felt the floor bulge up under me. The walls were losing their density. I knew I was moving down into a new dimension, further away from sanity than I had ever been. I knew I had to get to the bed fast. I could not walk, so I let myself down on my hands and knees and crawled to the bed and lay on it, covering myself.

Let go of toxic control, in order to regain healthy control.

I was on a path, and I became determined to give it everything I had — no matter what.

Looks are worth nothing, she thought, dismissing the butterflies in her stomach.

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.

May I see the beauty in others without denigrating my own.

Men who read it [beauty pornography] don't do so because they want women who look like that. The attraction of what they are holding is that it is not a woman, but a two-dimensional woman-shaped blank. The appeal of the material is not the fantasy that the model will come to life; it is precisely that she will not, ever. Her coming to life would ruin the vision. It is not about life. Ideal beauty is ideal because it does not exist; The action lies in the gap between desire and gratification. Women are not perfect beauties without distance. That space, in a consumer culture, is a lucrative one. The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage, its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion.