Home > Work > The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
41 " There is gorgeous potential and heinous instinct in us all. "
― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love
42 " Consider this hypothesis: when we don’t see ourselves reflected in the world around us, we make judgments about that absence. Invisibility is a statement. "
43 " Like many people, he felt that his intention should have absolved him from his impact. "
44 " I learn how to listen to my body. I must listen or I will die. In the water, I must learn the difference between fear and danger. "
45 " But why do we have to be all radical about it?” To answer this question is to further distinguish radical self-love from its fickle cousins, self-confidence and self-esteem, or its scrappy kid sister, self-acceptance. "
46 " The most powerful antidote to a world of body terrorism is a world of compassion. Giving yourself the gift of grace is an act of revolution! "
47 " Think of body shame like the layers of an onion. For decades in our own lives and for centuries in civilization, we have been taught to judge and shame our bodies and to consequently judge and shame others. Getting to our inherent state of radical self-love means peeling away those ancient, toxic messages about bodies. It is like returning the world’s ugliest shame sweater back to the store where it was purchased and coming out wearing nothing but a birthday suit of radical self-love. "
48 " Natasha, your body is not an apology. It is not something you give to someone to say, ‘Sorry for my disability. "
49 " Making peace with your body is your mighty act of revolution. It is your contribution to a changed planet where we might all live unapologetically in the bodies we have. "
50 " Radical self-love invites us to love our bodies in a way that transforms how we understand and accept the bodies of others. This is not to say that we magically like everyone. It simply means we have debates and disagreements about ideas and character, not about bodies. "
51 " Terrorism is defined as “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.”39 It takes no more than a brief review of the historic and present-day examples of media manipulation and legislative oppression to acknowledge that we are indeed being coerced into body shame for both economic and political reasons. "
52 " If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive. "
53 " Our inherent sense of radical self-love doesn’t speak to us with cruelty or viciousness. Radical self-love does not malign our gender, sexuality, race, disability, weight, age, acne, scars, illnesses. A world of body terrorism that impugns us because of our identities is the only thing that would dare speak to us with such malice. Just "
54 " Equity proposes that we give people what they need to best meet their unique circumstances.Equity acknowledges, we have varying needs and seeks to provide resource, and opportunity, based on what will help us achieve the best outcomes, based on our specific circumstances. "
55 " An acorn does not have to say, ‘I intend to become an oak tree'. Natural intelligence intends that every living thing become the highest form of itself and designs us accordingly. "
56 " Our exploration into advertising and media is at its root a critique of the exploitative nature of capitalism and consumerism. Our economic systems shape how we see our bodies and the bodies of others, and they ultimately inform what we are compelled to do and buy based on that reflection. Profit-greedy industries work with media outlets to offer us a distorted perception of ourselves and then use that distorted self-image to sell us remedies for the distortion. Consider that the female body type portrayed in advertising as the “ideal” is possessed naturally by only 5 percent of American women. Whereas the average U.S. woman is five feet four inches tall and weighs 140 pounds, the average U.S. model is five feet eleven and weighs 117. Now consider a People magazine survey which reported that 80 percent of women respondents said images of women on television and in the movies made them feel insecure. Together, those statistics and those survey results illustrate a regenerative market of people who feel deficient based on the images they encounter every day, seemingly perfectly matched with advertisers and manufacturers who have just the products to sell them (us) to fix those imagined deficiencies.18 "
57 " Not knowing is an opportunity for exploration without judgment and demands. It leaves room for the possibility that we might conduct all manner of investigation, and after said research is completed we may still not “get it.” Whatever “it” may be. Understanding is ideal, but it is not an essential ingredient for making peace. "
58 " I just want this complete stranger, whose life I know nothing about and who I have made no effort to get to know beyond this Twitter thread, to be healthy.” This is called health trolling or concern trolling, and it is just another sinister body shame tactic. Given that we can make no accurate assessment of any individual’s health based simply on their weight (or photo on social media), it is evident that such behavior is not really about the person’s health but more likely about the ways in which we expect other bodies to conform to our standards and beliefs about what a body should or should not look like. Equally damaging is our insistence that all bodies should be healthy. Health is not a state we owe the world. We are not less valuable, worthy, or loveable because we are not healthy. "
59 " For most humans, transformation does not seem achievable from the distant shores of another person’s life. From far away, transformation looks like a miracle, or the result of magical powers possessed by the transformed person. Transformation is not magic. It’s hard work. But it is also doable work. When we can see another person’s labor toward their transformation, we know it is not some secret sauce but instead a daily commitment to a new way of life. "
60 " Although well-intentioned, not seeing color is ultimately a reflection of our personal challenges around navigating difference. "