Self-image is one of those things I'm constantly thinking about, that unending, internalized question of "how do you think others see you?" It's such a complicated mess of psychology, media consumption, and life experience that pondering it for too long usually leaves me sad and depressed. It's been on my mind a lot lately and I certainly have lots to say regarding it, but there's no way I could type out all my thoughts coherently and there's no way you'd sit and read all of it, so I'll try and make this short and sweet.
Hold on to your socks folks, because it's about to get real personal up in here.
I've never been a fan of the way I look. I don't feel compelled to smash mirrors or anything, but if I had the choice of picking my appearance before I was born like some video game character creation suite, the face I've got wouldn't have been the one I picked. And I think that's true for a lot of people; everyone wants to feel desired and everyone wants to feel beautiful/attractive. We convince ourselves life would be better if we were just a little more handsome, a little skinnier, if we had different eye or hair color, or any number of things. I'd rather not go on a long spiel about our culture's unrealistic beauty standards and the effect it has on people (especially women and girls) because everyone's heard that before. What I'd rather share with you is a little revelation I had recently regarding the whole subject.
I started to seriously ponder the concept of self-image in response to discussions I had with several of my female friends regarding how they perceive their own appearance. I have many friends who I think are beautiful in every sense of the word, and yet they do not see themselves this way. I couldn't fathom how that was possible, to hear them lament how they don't think they're attractive, but listening to them made me reflect on myself, and I came to the conclusion that I have the same attitude. I'm not at all content with my physical appearance, regardless of how insistent or reassuring other people may be. And like almost everyone else, the way I feel about how I look is the result of many years of life experience. It is never as simple as a binary "you're either hot or you're not" equation, and I'm pretty confident I know where my own image issues come from.
I was never popular with girls. My teenage years were awkward as fuck, and I never had a girl express any outward interest in me for a very, very long time. Sadly, this manifested into feelings of inadequacy and the belief that I was undesirable (but I should clarify that hasn't left me with any grudges, because that would make me a misogynistic asshole). After so many years of receiving little to no positive reinforcement (and I mean that in a strictly sexual/dating dynamic with the opposite sex), it's impossible not to internalize certain opinions about yourself, regardless of what people may end up saying to the contrary; a girl could spend hours telling me how attractive she thinks I am and be totally sincere about it, but it's hard to erase years of internalized self-loathing with only a few kind words. I'm fairly confident this is true for everyone, that if you spend years in scenarios and relationships that give you the impression you're not good enough, then soon you will believe it yourself. It becomes part of your reality, and it's hard to shake off.
And so what do we do? My solution was (and still is) to exercise excessively because I'm convinced that somehow, if my muscles get just a little bigger, suddenly that internal switch will turn on and I'll be "attractive" to the rest of the world. And at the end of the day, that's usually what fuels our drive to look better, isn't it? We want other people to think we look good, because it is through our relationships with others that we receive positive reinforcement and derive value. And so we starve ourselves, belittle ourselves, put ourselves on the scale everyday, measure every inch and every pound, exercise until we throw up (which I'm sad to admit I'm guilty of) all because we want to look attractive to others.
It was while reflecting on this while simultaneously considering both my own attitude and those of my female friends that I realized who we're actually trying to impress: ourselves.
I exercise to excess because I want to make myself physically attractive to others, but the standard to which I strive has been constructed by me. I have an image of what I want to look like that has been fueled by a lifetime of media consumption, and I foolishly believe that if I were to attain that vision of myself I would be significantly happier and people would look at me in a more favorable light.
And I realize it's total bullshit, and what's more depressing is that it's everywhere. I have friends that are absolutely beautiful and stunningly attractive, and yet the standards they hold themselves to are (like my own) both impossible to achieve, woefully unnecessary, and exist merely as an abstract concept.
We want to look desirable to "the rest of the world" and so we create ideals for ourselves, ideals that are built and reinforced by our past experiences and relationships based on what we think other people find attractive. We create an image of what we think beauty is and lament that we don't match it. And so even if the rest of the world is screaming at us that we're beautiful, we shake our heads because we still don't believe it. All of the self-doubt and negative reinforcement and unrealistic cultural standards maintain their grip on our brain.
Imagine two identical twins who are separated at birth. One goes on to have healthy relationships and is constantly loved, supported, and encouraged to believe they are beautiful. The other goes on to have relationships where they are left feeling undesirable, unattractive, and ugly. To the rest of the world they look exactly the same, but to themselves, they couldn't be more different. There are certainly multitudes of shallow individuals who have thinly veiled concepts of "what's-hot-and-what's-not" but like almost everything in life, the worst judge is yourself.
The face in the mirror is almost always the hardest to impress. It watches us our whole life, through all our failures and rejections, and its eyes are always waiting to scrutinize every perceived flaw and imperfection. It is the mind behind those eyes that judges us the worst, often criticizing us for the things we aren't instead of praising us for the things we are. I know I will never look exactly the way I want, and I have no doubt those feelings of inadequacy will follow me forever, regardless of whatever future relationships I may have and regardless of what others may insist to the contrary. Now that I've identified the source of those feelings, however, I feel slightly elated.
Because I know the rest of the world doesn't care too much about how I look, and the people that do care accept and love me for what I am. And that means out of the seven billion people on this little blue planet of ours, I only have one person left to convince:
Me.
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