Pretty, thin, and fictional

Good morning gorgeous, I'm so happy you popped in. Grab yourself some coffee and a blanket, it's time for us to catch up. It's Pride Month, happy Pride!!

Today let’s talk about goddamn "appetite suppressant lollipops" and the real work of self-love.

It’s summer, and even though the weather hasn’t gotten the memo yet, it’s going to get warm. Warmness is a trigger for a lot of us. We were brought up in an era of low-fat cottage cheese, spray margarine and waif-thin models with jutting hip bones in low cut jeans. Now isn't much better. We live in an era of keto diets, Instagram celebrity, FaceTune, and goddamn Kardashians selling us bowel-issue-causing tea every time we open our phones. Really, you drink that shit, Kendall? I don’t believe you, get the hell out of my phone.

Sometimes it’s hard to be body positive. “Love your body” is a great t-shirt slogan, but anyone who says they love their body every minute of the day is probably selling you something. Unlearning a lifetime of toxic beliefs about our bodies is really fucking hard.

Self-love isn’t a slogan or a hashtag, it’s a practice. And like everything else we practice, it takes work. We have to consciously interrupt our shitty thoughts about ourselves. We have to deconstruct our deeply rooted belief systems about what beauty looks like. Loving yourself requires an unlearning and an unraveling.

Like everything we do that’s hard, we’re going to fuck it up. We’re going to talk down to ourselves because that’s what we learned to do from a much too young age. Don't feel guilty because you didn't live up to your body positive goals. Just keep trying, keep challenging the voices in our heads, and the voices in the heads of our mothers and friends and daughters. We have to practice self-love on ourselves every day to make it real.

Remember that your body is a vessel. It’s the ship you get to voyage through this one wild and beautiful life. Celebrate it. Show it the same love and care you’d show your best friend.

And remember, in a world that wants you to be pretty, and thin, and fictional, you are real.