#BREAKFREE Week Seven: Body Hate
Hands up if you feel insecure about your body, right now. If there's something you would tweak, or change - if you could. Now put your hands down, and vow to #BREAKFREE
Hands up if you feel insecure about your body, right now. If there's something you would tweak, or change - if you could. Now put your hands down, and vow to #BREAKFREE
How do you feel about your body, right now? Do you love it? Or do you resent it - for not being smooth, streamlined or slim enough? For moving in the wrong places at the wrong times, or curving out where you wish it went in?
Have you ever felt yourself growing hot-cheeked and humiliated at your own reflection in the changing room mirrors - or do you just close your eyes and get the naked-bit over with? Do you tell yourself that if you don't look, 'it won't be as bad'? Do you just want to cover up - to hide under loose tops and baggy jumpers - so people can't see. Won't see. Can't tell.
Do you worry that your body is holding you back - that if it was different, somehow, things would be easier?
Does your body make you feel like you're not good enough?
According to statistics (and boy, how we love statistics), 97 per cent of you will have answered yes to one of the above.
It's no wonder, really. As a society, we're obsessed with women's bodies. We sexualise, fetishise and criticise them. We blame them and we punish them. We reduce our worth - and other women's worth - to the curves of our hips, the rolls of our belly and the size of our hips.
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And yet, we all know it doesn't matter. We all know that 'beauty is on the inside' - that what we achieve in our lives has little to do with the way we look doing it (or at least, that what we achieve in our lives should have little to do with the way we look doing it) - and that our bodies are beautiful, just the way they are.
So this week, we want to #BREAKFREE from body hate. With the help of our amazing ambassador Hannah Gale, we plan to examine why women are still defined by what they look like, rather than what they do. We want to explore the reasons why we continue to beat ourselves - and others - up for our reflections. And we want to investigate the ways in which you can learn to love yourself - without sucking in your stomach in the process.
Find out more about our #BREAKFREE campaign here.
Join the #BREAKFREE discussions on Twitter and Instagram @marieclaireuk, or email us at corinne.redfern@timeinc.com
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