The Pressure to love ourselves.

From influencers to the media it seems that as a woman, wherever you look, people are talking about our bodies. Whether it’s their own or someone else’s, all it takes is a scroll and the unavoidable subject is staring you in the face. In recent years I’ve seen an overwhelming amount of influencers promoting ‘self love’. As much as I love to see reminders, I can't help but ask myself, when do daily reminders to love yourself become a new societal pressure?

We all know the saying “fake it til’ you make it” but lately I've seen all faking and no making. And it made me question, if it's not okay to show someone else inauthentic love, why do we think it’s okay when it comes to ourselves? As a society, we have always struggled with balance. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve come a long way from Jane Fonda workout videos, the Vogue wine diet and ‘Heroin Chic’ but I can't help but notice the trends that have replaced them. From “what I eat in a day” which is just enough food to feed a rabbit, to promoting binge eating like “mukbangs” and other self sabotaging behaviours. It seems that as a society, from one extreme to the next, we can never get the balance right.

As a 20 something year old woman, I have been a size 4 to a size 14 and no matter what size, I have always found something that I wanted to change about myself and I don't think that’s a bad thing, but with this new found pressure to love everything about ourselves, comes the overwhelming guilt when we don’t. Although the media over the years has taught us to dislike things about ourselves, I think if there was less focus on our bodies, we would realise how insignificant our appearance really is. We have been fed that the idea of loving ourselves is loving every single thing about our bodies, when in reality, it’s deeper than that. Instead, we end up with the immense pressure to either, fit into the unrealistic beauty standards, that change too quickly to keep up with, or to love everything about ourselves, even if we don't.

The subject of perfection and unrealistic beauty standards has been discussed endlessly over the years, but this new pressure from influencers, not so much. So what happens when the harsh contrast of magazines and the media, meets the influx of influencers that are promoting “self love”? Conflict. Accepting ourselves is important, but how are we expected to love ourselves if we’re not doing anything to support it? The harmful side of these influencers, is creating the idea that ‘self love’ is accepting yourself, when in reality, self acceptance and self love are completely different.

The reality is, any form of influencer is benefiting from engagement from their content, so of course when people see them promoting the idea of ‘self love’ they are going to engage. When we take a look on our social media feeds and see one post, like it and move on to the next, pretty soon more and more are going to appear. Our algorithm only picks up on words, but we need more than that to really love ourselves and show ourselves kindness. Because we all deserve the acts of self love, not just words.

Self love comes in all forms, but when someone is being told to love themselves whilst doing the opposite, it can warp peoples perception of what self love really is. The content that is slowly turning up in our algorithms like having a “sweet treat” can easily turn into less of a treat and more of an unhealthy lifestyle. Giving yourself “rest” when you haven't left the house in a few days can leave us feeling depressed. Of course the gentle reminders to be kind to yourself are important and have a big impact, but the influencers that are only showing unhealthy lifestyle choices and promoting it as ‘self love’ are becoming increasingly more common.

The best thing we can do is be aware of the way ‘self love’ is being disguised as positive content, when in reality, it has the opposite effect. It’s important that we show ourselves love and not just say it. Otherwise we’re left with either, not feeling good enough for the unrealistic beauty standards, or wondering why we don’t love ourselves when we're telling ourselves we do? Both opposite sides, but both leaving us not feeling like we’re enough.

So next time you ask yourself “why don’t I love myself?” instead, say “what am I doing to love myself?”. Once we start to replace words with actions, then we can start to see the benefits of self love. We deserve more than just words.

Turning our focus onto what we can do to show ourselves love, is much more effective and sustainable than trying to speak it into existence. The content we consume has such a big impact on our minds, so filtering the negative, despite the intention, will really help to change our perspective.