By: Mikailagh Anne Gifford
“Self-love” is a topic tossed around all the time in media and the “girl world,” but what does self-love really even mean? I would like to start by saying I have always been a self-love advocate, or at least I always felt that I was. Cosmo magazine tells us that self-love and self-acceptance means taking a Sunday to do our nails and wear a cucumber face mask, or that self love is indulging in sweets when it’s our time of the month and not worrying about if we bloat. Self-love was often described to me as knowing you aren’t perfect and loving yourself anyways, but shouldn’t the love that we have for ourselves go further than the pride we have in showing cleavage and having fresh shaved legs?
I experienced my younger years identifying with Barbie, cheerleaders and Daisy Duke. All women who were lusted for. Turning boys down and getting attention simply for physically existing was common and even comfortable for me as it is for so many young girls. By the time I was turning 18, ready to have a boyfriend and lose my virginity, I had no doubt that I understood self-love and was ready to become someone else’s love. 11 months later, I was lying on a bathroom floor sobbing my eyes out—I’d say that’s the way pretty much every first love experience comes to an end. Experiencing rejection for the first time left me confused, vulnerable and often feeling like I was drowning. I turned to loving myself the only way society had ever shown me how, for my physical appearance. I loved the attention I got for being ironically slutty; I thought if you objectify yourself first then can they really objectify you? If you sexualize yourself, it doesn’t hurt when someone else sexualizes you. BOOM. Feminism.
This is where I was so incredibly wrong. Sexualizing yourself still makes you sexualized and there is nothing ironic or edgy about selling yourself short. You cannot cater to the desires of the general male population in the name of feminism. I took pride in knowing that so many men desired to be with me and I started becoming consumed by the worth others saw in silly things like my social media posts. When the world would stress me out I would doll myself up, take the girls out and proceed to selfie. If you asked me then if I loved myself through my glowing insecurities, I would’ve told you “more than anything else.”
What I have since learned is that I loved my long blonde hair because others did; I loved my DD boobs because others did, and I loved my laugh because I had heard my whole life that it was cute. If you would’ve told me then that in two years I would have short and I mean short (shorter than my little brothers) brown hair and a C cup chest, I probably would’ve cried or laughed in utter disbelief. What I hadn’t yet realized was that I loved myself based on physical features the world taught me to appreciate. Something I have found to be truly important is learning how to deeply love yourself. I’m talking if you were stripped of all your favourite physical features, could you still look at yourself and smile? If someone asked you to name the things you love about yourself how many things would you name that were features other people had complimented you on? How many of those things were physical? How long would it take you to talk about the fact that you’re a warrior, a bundle of perseverance and hope? Would you mention that project you worked your ass off to get a good grade on? Or the way that you always volunteer and make donations to the food bank around the holidays?
For a short time after my first heartbreak, I felt that I was some sort of unicorn because I was “so hot” and “so cool,” but social media just fed me lies. I didn’t have “followers” or “friends,” I had grown-ass men following my every young and provocative move. I quickly learned that when you base your worth on the opinion of “followers,” you’re putting your impressionable heart into the hands of people who do not care for your well being. It wasn’t really until I started weight training and pushing my brain and body to places they had never been before that I realized thinking you reflect an image of exactly what society wants you to be is NOT self-love. Self-love comes from within, so far within that sometimes it takes extreme measures to really find it. The gym gave me a place to be rawly myself; a place for my mind to develop my body. By July, I was twenty years old and in the best physical condition of my life; yet for the first time when men lusted for me it meant nothing compared to the worth I saw in myself. This is because the worth I saw in myself came from a place only I had ever been and only I could understand. The respect that I have for myself is respect that comes from pushing myself past a breaking point, and doing everything it takes to bounce back.
Ladies, it is amazing how when you begin to see yourself as determined, strong, and even unstoppable as opposed to, long legs, cute nose, pretty freckles, nice eyes, etc. Your dreams become goals and the love you have for yourself outweighs any negative attention you receive. When I stopped feeling the need to live up to a Barbie doll standard I chopped my two and a half feet of hair off into a pixie cut, and when insecure males unfollowed me and called me a dyke it didn’t hurt me, it empowered me. BOOM. A new concept of feminism. My entire idea and understanding of “self love” changed from women being confident in their bras and underwear to women being confident covered head to toe because of who they are on the inside. MY LOVE GREW SO MUCH DEEPER BECAUSE I STARTED TO SEE THAT AS WOMEN WE CAN BE SO SO MUCH MORE THAN OUR PHYSICAL BEAUTY; WE ARE UNYIELDING BEINGS.