Love Your Body

The blogosphere has been abuzz with talking about Glamour Magazine's September issue where they feature a picture of a nude woman who is not a supermodel, but a 20-something woman.

The picture was used in an article for the magazine called "What Everyone But You Sees About Your Body" in which several women discuss how hard women are on themselves and how to change this negative self-image around.

Dispensing words of wisdom like"when you focus on the body parts you love, your 'flaws' fade away" and "self-consciousness is getting in the way of your pleasure," the women who helped to contribute to the article give helpful advice on how to look at yourself through new eyes.

I love the message of the article and, per Jezebel, so have a lot of other women. My issue does not lie within the article itself, but with the fact that this is such an astonishment to so many people that a "real woman" is being pictured. With the huge reaction to Glamour's use of the picture, while is may be positive, I feel it really shines a light on how far the media's unrealistic images of women has gone.

Women are beautiful in all sizes and we should appreciate all the ways the female form presents itself. As a young woman myself, I would be lying if I said that I haven't struggled with self body image. The media is always going to try and push images on us that are unrealistic to the majority of the world. What this Glamour article is trying to explain is that as women, we don't have to give into that pressure and we should love ourselves for who we are, not what the media or anyone else says we should be. Maybe using more images like the one used for the Glamour article and talking about body acceptance more will help to influence the media into accepting and appreciating diversity in the female form.

Photo courtesy of Zawezome on flikr.com