#Blogfest: Self-love

#Blogfest 2:0 Day 18 – #30daysCountDownTo2016

Self-love, self-crush, WCW, are some of the famous hashtags women use to provide what becomes currency for male wank banks. While personally I find the idea of publicly declaring self-love somewhat of an overcompensation of underlying discontent with the self. For things we are very comfortable in, we don’t bother with reassuring ourselves by declaring it to others, especially over a platform that by definition thrives on outsider validation liking pictures. I mean, if you really wanted to just take pictures to appreciate privately, you camera phone has a photo album.

Not surprisingly, this behavior is found almost exclusively to girls. As is posting other women as WCW, which is almost social suicide if pictured on a guy’s wall. A guy wouldn’t even get away with posting a male celebrity as their MMC, posting a friend is just out of order. But let’s not digress. When women aren’t self-loving, or self-crushing, they are WCWing, and it’s still another picture of themselves. It is my belief that this is the case because generally, as a society, we put a lot more pressure on women when it comes to gaining acceptance. A man need only be rich in pocket and all else will be forgiven, even beating up Rihanna. A woman can’t even claim ownership of her own sexuality. Men cannot even believe to imagine a world where promiscuity attracted real shame. And that is just the tip of the iceberg as regards standards set for women to meet, and the boxes to tick are still expanding.

Naturally, it is understandable that as struggle to meet these standards rise, the level of insecurity in women for fear of failure. I have met girls that confess to have been ashamed of themselves after masturbation. In my opinion, self-love is about understanding that it is okay to be as you are, and that you don’t have to compare yourself to any standards besides the ones you choose to live by. It far surpasses being okay with your physical appearance. In fact, you can be aware that you are over-weight and wish to change it, and as the same time not violate loving yourself. Self-love isn’t about ignoring everything wrong about yourself. We are all with our fault and hence do not require to be perfect or see ourselves as perfect to love us.

While men need self-love too to help us manage our ego, women even need it more because the social assault of their identity is a never-ending onslaught. Understanding that in ourselves, we are but human, fallible, different, indefinable, and a million and two other things of which not all is positive, and understanding that all social assumptions and definitions are made by people no more exposed than we are today can give us a starting perspective on how to think of who we really are in relation to our society, and why me must love the person in the mirror far beyond attributes any camera can capture or filter can enhance.