Unlearning internalized beauty standards and redefining beauty for myself continues to be a big work for me. As a young person, one of the ways several of the kids in my class (especially the girls) bullied me was with the label “fat.” I pointed out that the boys who were my size or larger were not also labeled this way, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t about them. It wasn’t really about me either, but I took it on. We learn many norms, like body norms of size/shape/hair/etc., through shaming because they aren’t about us. They are about control and power. They are sprayed on us to manage what is socially undesirable and we absorb them like pesticides, poisoning our ability to nourish ourselves. Instead we learn to shame ourselves, to keep ourselves in compliance, and forget we even had a choice in the matter.
In this episode of Unlimited, the podcast, I share a my most recent work to explore my own internalized beauty standards and empower myself through awareness and radical self-love.
Some of what I talk about in this episode includes:
- Societal and generational learning and unlearning
- The expansive experience of decolonizing my library
- Walking through shame toward radical self-love
- Challenging society’s beauty ideals
- Intimate relationships and what is “sexy”
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