You look pretty today....

Take a moment and read this as truth:

You look pretty today.

Stop, read it again. Imagine I’m standing in front of you, with every inflection of sincerity.

You look pretty today.

Only four words, but to a woman they hold an awful lot of power. They can add a bounce in your step that you may not otherwise be able to give yourself or can crush your self-esteem when you feel you don’t hear them often enough.

You look pretty today.

They are also the words we use to compliment each other, or boost a friend when we notice they’re feeling down. I love your hair! Great outfit. You’ve lost weight! Almost everyone has told a friend she looked pretty, even when we don’t really think so. We do this, because those words are the quickest way to generate a smile. You know that it’s something she wants to hear. Even if met with modesty, you know that she’s going to walk with her head a little higher that day.

You know this because you would too.

In many ways, we tell others they’re pretty because we long for someone to tell us the same. We crave that instant gratification and it lends more to our self-worth than it should.

But why, in a world where we try to remind ourselves that looks don’t matter, do we still allow ourselves to get high off the ‘pretty’? Despite our best efforts, we feel good when we look good and having someone else tell us we look good is strong, fast validation. It’s such powerful validation, that without it we often feel ‘less than’.

In her post Say bye-bye to bad body talk, Mina Samuels discovers that it’s harder to stop the body talk than she thought. In fact, she couldn’t go more than 4 hours without commenting on someone’s looks. And that was when she was TRYING! It’s so normal for women to comment on each other’s looks, that we barely even notice how detrimental it really is.

Consider this: the average woman spends 5 days a year looking at herself in the mirror. Imagine! That’s like a vacation! In fact, some women spend up to 2 weeks a year analyzing every part of their bodies and scrutinizing each imperfection. Add to this all the time we then walk around comparing ourselves to other women, sizing them up and down with the same insane scrutiny. Even subconsciously, we do this so we know where we stand (I’m pretty sure all of you can look around you right now and judge where everyone in the room would fall on your attractiveness scale of one to ten… and how you compare to them).

Have you noticed that women often have little empathy for those they deem more beautiful than themselves: a pretty girl who feels bad about her body doesn’t receive much support. Or that women feel better about themselves when we judge ourselves more attractive than someone else. Gain a pound: sad. Lose a pound: happy. The cycle goes on and on. We feel bad, we feel good, we feel bad… And the good feeling is ALWAYS a temporary high.

That’s because we use others as mirrors. We compare our bodies to celebrities, or the women walking down the street in the hopes of knowing where we stand. When someone tells us that we look good, it carries a lot of “credibility” and makes us feel better about ourselves, even if temporary. Imagine your body image as a glass of water that is continually drained; it needs constant “topping” off. And while it’s better if we can fill it without external resources, it’s easier & quicker to have others top it off for us. We can also top it off ourselves by judging others (I’m prettier than her or At least I’m not chubby) or drain our glasses faster when we deem ourselves less attractive by comparison (I wish I could be that thin or I wish I had her breasts).

Have you ever thought that telling a friend that she looks good could be detrimental? Why? Because adds to the core issue that looks matter. While she might smile in the moment, the pressure of feeling as though someone “notices” stays. Every celebrity image you cut out, each time you compare yourself to someone else, or compare women to each other: you’re unknowingly adding to the problem. It’s not that telling others they look good is wrong: it’s that we’re under too much pressure already.

My Challenge/ Resolution is :

See how long I can go with no body talk. None. Not the bad, not the good, NONE.

Having a healthy body image is not about being beautiful. It’s about being free of the pressure to look a certain way or hold yourself to a standard that you shouldn’t.

We shouldn’t measure our self-worth this way. It’s toxic. Not only to ourselves, but each other. In the end, that temporary “pretty” high disappears. Demolishing our desire/need to compare ourselves to each other is the only way we can truly be free.

I’m going to see how long I can abstain. How long could you go?

Ashley M.