Why do we hate ourselves?
Why is it that women feel the need to declare their self-perceived (and societally perceived) flaws? Like we are protecting ourselves from eternal damnation by confessing our sins of imperfection. It’s as if these imperfections are evidence of moral impurity, which means guilt is the appropriate response. “Forgive me father, for I have sinned…my thighs rub together when I walk”
Everyone is trained to desire whatever beauty ideal is kicking about at the time, because we see in the media, and in our day to day lives, that the closer we are to the upheld standard, the better we are treated. On the depressing flip-side, people lose respect for us others when we don’t match up to that standard. Sex appeal is valued so highly, that being deemed less sexually appealing, is synonymous with being less valid.
Given this toxic context, declaring our ‘inadequacies’ as if they were gold bars in our suitcases at customs, is how we make sure people know we are aware of them, before they cringe at our (self-perceived) ugliness and shun us for being an unpleasant visual experience. We beat them to it, addressing the elephant in the room (us), before allowing people to assume that we actually have the audacity to like ourselves as we are. HA! No no no, we must publicly note our ‘shortcomings’, and set out our plan of action to change them.
Openly hating our bodies is a habit we have developed to protect ourselves from scrutiny and, in some twisted way, to regain people’s respect and admiration. It’s as if our ‘substandard’ looks are offset by at least trying to squeeze ourselves into the narrow window of acceptable attractiveness. Even if we haven’t achieved it yet, we redeem brownie points for bashing ourselves, because that means we are inspiring, hard-working and dedicated. In order to be satisfied, we have to earn it, through blood, sweat and tears (and spending lots of money).
As a society, we can’t compute the concept of being happy in oneself without some sort of martyrdom along the way. We are primed to view ourselves as three-dimensional before photos, like shit-hole houses awaiting refurbishment, that need to be broken down into sad little pieces and rebuilt to form new and improved versions. We have to be disappointed with our ‘original’ selves, before being allowed to contemplate self-acceptance. It’s rather curious: hating oneself is widely seen as the sure-fire way to eventually loving oneself.
Strange logic that. Oh, you still hate your body? You probably haven’t hated it enough yet.
We’ve been led to believe that if we hate ourselves enough, then maybe, just maybe we will be galvanised into bulldozing our shit-hole bodies to the ground to start ourselves from scratch. Et voila! THEN we can be truly happy.
You may be thinking, but what’s the problem with wanting to achieve my best-self? Am I not allowed to have goals? Isn’t my appearance my business, if I want to change it, that’s my choice. Why does it need to be so dramatic? If this is you, I hear you, and I am by no means placing any judgement on those who wish to alter their appearance, I just wish we didn’t feel they had to in order to like themselves, or make other people like them. Any behaviour that’s born out of hate is going to be unsatisfying and depleting.
It’s also impossible to separate wanting to change something about the way we look, and the context in which we live. Are you really spending £30 a bottle on fake tan and 5 hours applying it, letting it sink in and then washing off the residue for you? Or, are you doing it because you’ve internalised the idea that a sun-kissed look will make you more sexually appealing, which will then only make you feel better about yourself because other people will think you’re hot? Are you really going to the gym because it makes you feel good? Or because you think building a bum and visible abs will make you more pleasurable to onlookers? Do you really want to alter your appearance for you, or because of what you think other people’s opinions will be, thanks to the beauty and diet industries that shames imperfection?
We are set up to never feel appealing enough. The standard we are held to is ever-shifting and ever-unattainable. So, given it is our duty, apparently, to despise who we are until we achieve this nebulous standard, we are essentially left hating ourselves into oblivion, until the end of time, because we never quite earned the right to happiness and acceptance.
Isn’t that depressing? Just living our entire lives under the assumption that we are unworthy of happiness. Especially given the fact that research shows self-compassion is actually the most effective and sustainable way to achieve self-acceptance. It’s also shown to have an overwhelmingly positive effect on our physical health, so there’s yet another piece of evidence highlighting the harm of gruelling weight-loss regimes. Treating ourselves with compassion, even when we feel we don’t deserve it, has been found to teach our brains that we are worthy of love and respect, regardless of shape, size or appearance. Compassion breeds compassion, just as hate breeds hate.
We are so reluctant to be kind and gentle towards ourselves, because it has become synonymous with laziness and weakness. But why? We would be a far more resilient society if we weren’t all burnt-out from relentless self-deprecation. Can we not approach self-care as actually treating ourselves with compassion, rather than twisting it into yet another reason to feel like we really SHOULD just get out of bed an hour earlier to squeeze in a morning run, because NO ONE REGRETS A WORKOUT! We would be a far happier and healthier if we didn’t assume our bodies as machines in need of the latest software update, we are humans, and we need to start treating ourselves as such.
