Other People's Ideals: How Beauty Standards Turn Into Our Personal Introjections
We live in a world where beauty standards are changing, just like fashion. Sometimes it seems that you need to live up to these ideals to be worthy of love, attention, and recognition. Society dictates to us what we should be like, not always through direct messages, but through the images of characters in movies, TV shows, advertising, and celebrities. This is how social introjects are born, which we do not always realize and formulate for ourselves.
A social introject is a belief, norm, or attitude that a person learns from society or his or her immediate environment, accepting them as his or her own, even though they may not correspond to his or her true needs or values. We do something with ourselves, with our bodies, to conform to the social introjects we have picked up.
Let's try to look at them from your experience:
- Are real relationships built on perfect looks?
- Have you met outwardly beautiful people who turned out to be not so beautiful at heart?
From your own experience, maybe it will resonate with you, let's think together about another idea, perhaps it is banal, and you know about it, but try to feel it, let it in not as brain knowledge (cognitive), but as knowledge of experience and bodily sensations.
Weight, size of clothes, external forms are only superficial things that do not determine the value of a person.
People are not loved for their flat stomach or slender legs.
People are drawn to other people because of their warmth, sincerity, and appreciate the way they feel around them. In the end, when someone speaks fondly of another person, it is not because he or she looks like the cover of a magazine, but because they can give joy, make you smile, laugh together, support you in a difficult moment, etc.
The body is a tool we use to live and interact with the world, but it does not define our personality. No matter what a person's body parameters are, each of us is always worthy of love, attention, and care simply because of the uniqueness of our inner world. Human value is much deeper than appearance and cannot be measured in centimeters and kilograms.
Have you tried to compare the ideas? Which one appeals to you more? Make your own conviction out of the introject, choosing from the ideas above the part that is inherent in you and maybe you will love your body, and not force it with exhausting workouts, diets, etc. to be the way someone (or society) needs (or once needed) it to be in order to deserve love.
