I Hope Coronavirus Ends The “Summer Body” and Accept Authentic Bodies
As more and more coronavirus cases come to rise around the world, it’s hard to keep track of working out. Yes, we have the destiny to get our dream bodies for the hottest season of the year, but that’s such a cliche. Because we are in quarantine right now, we need to take this time we have right now to reflect and accept our bodies.
Many people are insecure about their bodies. Just think about it, when you think of a body-positive icon, you think of Lizzo because she’s the powerhouse singer who owns her curves, or maybe Ashley Graham. After all, she’s the first plus-size model to cover the 2016 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. While it seems like these two women made an impact on bringing body diversity into the world, it’s still in our nature to compare ourselves to celebrities and models that grunge the “perfect body” in the media. That should be easier said than done, but this pandemic gives us a signal to put an end to this.
I remember I forced myself to get an athletic body. I couldn’t get rid of my thick thighs. I always wanted to have the big muscles like the bodybuilders who lived at the gym, but I couldn’t get it because I do not build like them. I even had a personal trainer who suggested that I purchase a stimulant to flatten my stomach and make me lose weight, in which I declined. That’s when I realized that I was attempting to make my body perfect, but it is already perfect as it was before.
I was tall and skinny when I was growing up, mainly because I had braces and couldn’t eat anything. When I got my braces off, I was able to eat lots of food and went up a couple of pant sizes, which I gained 50 pounds. I worked out to lose this weight, but as you get older, you tend to gain it right back.
We live in a society that pressures and influences the media, which makes us believe that we accept fake over real; while having this idea in our heads, this could eventually affect our mental health and put ourselves on a pedal stool. The media creates this perception of beauty that we have to be a certain way, but be authentically ourselves. Working out is excellent for the body, but we must workout mostly for the mind and soul. We should work out to maintain our bodies and learn what our bodies can do instead of changing them.
We gain weight, and that’s life. So, let’s take this precious time quarantining and focusing on body acceptance rather than body positivity. Because that’s all we got right now.
