Body Diversity Is An Important Thing And We Need To Acknowledge It
We have all heard of the term body diversity but never ever really pondered on it and accepted it. In this article, I have talked about body diversity and why accepting it is important to us.
What Is Body Diversity?
We are a generation which is very much obsessed with how we look – how our face looks, how our hair looks, how our body looks, what size we are. But the human race is inherently diverse. We come from diverse locations, diverse heritages and have diverse ancestries, and we should be proud of this as it makes us unique.
We, humans, come in different shapes, sizes, skin color, hair color, etc… Just look around and you will not see any two people who look the same. Some of us are tall, some short, some super healthy and fit, some not, some have curly hair, some with straight hair, etc… We should not be ashamed of how we look at it’s these features which make us who we are – a unique individual.
Influence Of Social Media
Most of us follow the media and blindly try to be like the perfect men and women they portray on the television or the magazines. For women, they depict a slim person or an impossibly curvy individual, while for men, they depict an individual with bulging muscles and six-pack abs. Anything other than this is portrayed by the media as being imperfect.
Unfortunately, we are encouraged by the people in the media to emulate these ‘perfect’ bodied individuals. We should stop being blindly led by them and realize that their interpretation of perfection is based on paid advertisements. Some corporates even go to an extent of doing computerized enhancements and touch-ups of their models which they portray in order to make them perfect – which goes to show that a perfect body doesn’t exist; or even if it does, it might actually just exist with a very minuscule population.
This should not lead us to believe that all of us should look like them. Our body is unique. Our body is a temple – a sacred temple, and we should accept and love it. Having a negative perception of one’s body is unhealthy, destructive and can affect one’s self-esteem.
Acceptance
Diversity has value. We as a society should learn to accept and acknowledge that we are all unique individuals and that all our bodies are diverse. Acknowledging is the first step towards happiness.
The most important reason why we should acknowledge body diversity is because of the younger generation. Their minds are immature and can be easily led to believe what they see in the media. Now with the growth of social media like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat; every kid invariably has an account and has a front-row seat and access to see all these images of ‘perfect’ looking people who they try to then imitate. If brands keep posting images of the ‘perfect’ individual, this is what the kids will want to be.
They would be brainwashed to believe that you need to be thin, have perfectly straight hair amongst others, to be accepted in society, to be successful in life – which is what we need to change before it becomes too late. They need to be taught to accept and embrace who they are and accept what the man from above has given them.
The Change
Over recent years there has been a push across different organizations to accept body diversity and incorporate these into their advertisement. Until a few years back, we would only ever see a ‘perfect’ individual promoting a brand. However, now with the push towards accepting body diversity, we see a change and can see individuals with more diverse bodies promoting brands. There has indeed been a body diversity revolution. It’s about time this change has come about.
