Love Your Selfie
A conversation on body image and self love - body 004
Hello, friend! Welcome to the first letter in the Body Series this year. I am so excited about the topics I'm going to be covering in this series. I'm touching on all the "better left unsaid" topics and starting these conversations with you. This letter is called "Temple Conversations" because I want to hear from you as much as you hear from me, so please engage. Without further ado, let's get into it!
My experience with beauty
Where to start? I have so much to say about this topic, and I'm so, so excited to get into it. Before I begin, I'm gonna pose a question to you: How do you see yourself? Are you one of those people obsessed with their appearance, always taking selfies and looking in the mirror, or is your relationship with your body an indifferent one? Whatever the case may be, I'm gonna touch on both extremes and then the in-between.
I'll share my journey with my body image with you guys because I 100% believe in vulnerability. As a kid, I didn't think much about my appearance at all, as I assume most kids wouldn't. I just loved to play and be. I didn't grow in one of those families where compliments were the norm; in fact, for me, it was quite the opposite, but I'll get into that later. My first consciousness of the fact that my body was even a thing to be thought of in any other way other than functional came when I was like 10, in my 5th grade. I had just moved to an all-girls school and was now, for the first time, really aware of beauty. Because I would now hear people (sometimes teachers) compliment some girls more than others, almost as if there was a preferred appearance of sorts.
By 6th grade, I started caring about things like the fit of my dress and all that jazz. I was just going with the flow, doing what everyone seemed to like and speak highly of. I started developing the desire to want to be complimented. Back home, things weren't helping my new desires, as my parents and those around me had the tendency to point out features on my body in a negative light. The main victim of these remarks was my nose. Oh, my poor nose. Every day someone would talk about how big my nose was or how wide my nostrils were, and for a long, long time, I didn't know what to do with those remarks because I didn't make this nose; someone else "wonderfully" made it.
This was just the beginning of a spiraling cycle of taking people's remarks to heart and viewing myself from that lens. From "your foot is too big" to "you don't look feminine enough," the list of things people found okay to say about something I had no control over continued, and so did the damage. By the time I was in high school, I didn't like anything about how I looked; everything had been torn apart and given a "not good enough" label.
I remember the first time I attended high school prep; I sat at the back, put my head down, and cried. I was in unfamiliar territory, and this time there were boys (after five years of being at an all-girls school, this was not easy for me). I cried for many reasons, but mostly because I was scared. High school was the world of "it girls" and pretty privilege; that place made it hard to escape those voices that would tell me I wasn’t beautiful. Boys would rank pretty girls like it was some game, not the real world where such things actually affect others. My high school experience was many things: fun, exciting, embarrassing, traumatizing, but mostly, it shaped me majorly. Uni has had nothing on my high school experience.
I shared the above story to draw you into the world I grew up in, the world of never liking this body that the Bible says is wonderfully made. And don’t get me wrong, I was never a timid person or shy in any way; I was as bold as a 15-year-old could be when I went to high school. I always liked my personality; I’ve always thought I was funny, and some people can agree with that ;) My personality was to some extent my cover-up for all the insecurities I grew up drowning in.
Some of you may relate to the above story, and some of you may not. If you don’t, I hope this letter helps you see others with more empathy, and if you do, I hope you know that you’re not alone, and as you read on, I hope you begin to see yourself as wonderfully made.
Function over beauty
A few days ago, I read a story online about how a lady died after getting knee liposuction. This was the first time I had heard that there is such a thing as knee liposuction. It was also the moment I saw how far people are willing to go to fit a certain mold of what is considered beautiful. It is actually a little wild how many people die each year because they are trying to change their bodies, trying to fix what’s not broken.
The world has created constructs around beauty that have led many, many people into dark places, Christians included. We live in a world where people see bodies as aesthetic objects rather than the functional tools God gave our souls to be housed in. There was a time my friend and I went window shopping, and I was trying on a pair of open heels. I remember like it was yesterday how she nonchalantly said that those shoes don’t match my feet or how my feet didn’t look good in those shoes. I was a bit taken aback because when did everything become so bad that people couldn’t just wear shoes simply because they liked them but by whether their feet looked good enough in the shoes?
But, that my friend is the system of the world. The system that teaches people to love themselves for who they are but also bombards them with endless amounts of tips, tricks, guides, and diets to change who they actually are. You’re told it’s okay to be thin, but then there’s a billion-dollar supplement industry that preys on insecure thin people, telling them how they can be thick or whatever it’s called, and don’t get me started on diet culture and its toxicity. The concept of self-love and body positivity as shown by the world is actually deceitful, and all it does is indoctrinate more and more people into either loathing their bodies or being so obsessed with beauty that they get knee surgery.
Now, friend, I want to suggest something to you. I want to suggest that starting right after reading this letter, you start unlearning certain things the world has taught you about your body and other people's bodies. I want you to stop thinking that bodies are primarily meant for beauty and maybe, just maybe, start looking at how bodies are meant to be functional, most importantly. Feet are for standing on, whether they are fat or thin, should never be a concern of ours. Our necks carry our heads whether slender, short, or long, and for Christ’s sake, noses are for breathing wide or thin, crooked or not. Don’t fall into the trap of categorizing the beauty of people based on a carefully curated image the media has portrayed.
You have a functional body, you have hands, legs, eyes, ears, and an entire body that carries you through life. It would be a disservice to yourself and a major lack of gratitude to God to think that that in itself is not beauty.
Beautiful Because God Made You
My journey to seeing myself as beautiful started in 2022. Before that, I had just reached a point of knowing I wasn’t ugly. That seemed to suffice at the time, but as God would have it, I had to confront everything fully and truly. In school (university), I had moved to a different hostel, and this hostel happened to have large mirrors in the bathroom. Unlike the other hostels, there was running hot water in these bathrooms. And this is going to be a little TMI, but whenever I’d bath, which happened often because I'm a sucker for hot water, I would have to look at my body in the mirror. At first, it was uncomfortable, and all I’d do was just nitpick at myself. However, as time went on, the nitpicking became silent staring, and the silent staring turned into questions like, “God, why did you make me ugly?” “Why don’t I look more like this or that person?” “Why isn’t my this a little like this or this more this and that?” (Not gonna be too open now, I’ve given you enough haha), and because God is good, those questions started receiving answers from God.
The first thing I learnt was that God was grieved by my assumption that I was ugly. That I thought something He made wasn’t good enough; I was essentially criticizing His creation. The one He carefully, intentionally, and deliberately made exactly the way it looked. With more mirror talks, God started to change my heart towards my body, and eventually, my feet stopped looking fat; they just became my feet, my nose stopped looking big; it was just my nose. I started to think I was actually beautiful, not because anything on the outside had changed, but simply because something on the inside had. Now, most days I look at myself, and I’m happy and content with how I look, and it’s not because of anything but the fact that I am made by God.
Friend, when was the last time you saw two things that looked exactly alike in nature? Two of the same mountains? Trees? Or even just stones or leaves? I’d bet the answer is never. And for some reason, most of us don’t go around calling one mountain ugly and another beautiful. We’ve done a great job of seeing the diverse beauty of nature, but somehow with people, we’ve let the world lie to us that a certain symmetrical face is more beautiful than another or that slender fingers are better than short ones. What’s even more important is that most of us have become God’s biggest critic in the way we judge ours and other people’s appearances. We are constantly telling God, “You could have done better here,” “This isn’t your best work,” and the list goes on.
Friend, please let’s change our perspective. I know the media is always throwing things at us, but we have to root our perspective on something greater. And that’s on the understanding that all people are made by God, that they’re as the above scripture says His marvelous workmanship that He knit together intentionally and purposefully so, with not one single oversight or error.
To anyone who, like me, was made to think they were not beautiful, I just want to tell you that you’re absolutely gorgeous for many reasons but mostly because God, the Creator of the universe, made you. He looks at you and thinks you’re the apple of His eye.
And to all of us that have fallen into the trap of looking and gauging people's beauty comparatively, always thinking this person is better than this one. Or always passing comments on people's bodies, please, I’m imploring you to stop. Stop being the voice that makes people question their beauty or worse still makes people think they aren’t good enough. Stop being God's critic; it’s not a good look.
Temple Tips
Instead of recommendations or journal prompts today, I’m sharing three tips that I believe will make you a better person to be around and also make you feel better about yourself.
Gas somebody up this week and every other day going forward. Tell them how beautiful they are, especially if they aren’t what you’ve always considered beautiful (I’m assuming you’re an honest person).
Look yourself in the mirror this week, really look and ask the hard questions. God can take it!
Stop telling people stuff about their body; your observations are not needed. Stop saying, “I think this dress would look better on your body”; if they like it, let them wear it. Let people be confident and happy; I promise you’ll lose nothing.
This is my longest letter yet, and I still have so much to say. I’m definitely gonna do a part 2; please share your experience with beauty in the comments or write me back. I’d love to actually have this as a conversation.
Till next Tuesday,
Love y’all
Ruth Musange
06/02/24, 10:55pm.
Mmmrh among all your letters I think this is my favourite yet.... as someone who struggled with liking thier body I totally understand.
When I was in high school I got bullied because my legs where bend honestly it was rough people would pass comments and trust me I really prayed to God and asked him why, I remember one time I searched on the Internet if they where surgeries where I could get them straightend or something like that.
The other time I attended some church program and when the man of God was praying for people those who could nor walk or the sick I remember crying and telling God heal my legs ah it was rough mweh😂, it got to a point that when people would look at me in my head I would be like iyeee so this person is looking at my legs sure. I hated the mirrors like crazy.
Through letters like this trust me they go far it helps people understand the real reason for our bodies the purpose that they have like you have put it to be functional bodies, people tend to forget that your body is created to Host the Presence of the most high God, it takes a lot for one to break from that mentality to thinking they are not enough.
Its articles like this help patiently waiting for next week Tuesday❤️
And now, I randomly compliment people because truly you don't know what people are battling with.
A small and genuine compliment can go a long way.