voice memo poem about body image

I don't know what is wrong with this world to make a young girl think that her body, when looking in the mirror, is ugly because her tummy is full of food. Oh.

Food, it helps you live, helps you grow stronger, taller, older, braver, but also keeps you going. And I already said grow, but I want to emphasize that point.

As a girl, it is essential to be brave and be true to yourself, and I have already mentioned bravery. But I want to emphasize that point because being brave, being a courageous, kind girl. That knows who she is in a world that is constantly trying to pull you down, down the gutter of self-hatred, and down into that spot in your belly that's full of fear. Fear that, that little round chubbiness in your tummy is not meant to be there.

That I still, to this day, struggle to fight off the fear that because I ate. Just maybe a tiny bit too many carbs, or I shouldn't have eaten that frosting, or shouldn't have eaten that ice cream, because now people can see my belly when I'm wearing a t-shirt. But then I look at my mom, and I look at my aunt, and I look at my cousin, and I see that they also have these fears very deep, deep inside, and drag them down, down, down, into that spot.

In our minds, that is taught to us. When we are little, little tiny girls. To tell us that because we eat and because we have a belly and don't have a rack of abs, or because you cannot see our chest.

Because our belly sticks out, maybe a little bigger than our butt, because that's normal, because in order to have a child or in order to grow old and stay strong and have a happy, loving life. You need to eat.

You need to feed yourself. Because I'm gonna emphasize this point. Whatever you know, yes, man, lives and exists in this world in a comforting spot inside.

The space is kind and caring. You need to have a little bump. And I keep telling myself this, over and over, keep telling this to myself so that I can be that role model for the little girl that I never caught when I was young, and looking at all those models on Instagram, and in magazines, it seemed to be so perfect.

Hourglass, yet not a curvy hourglass, a thin hourglass. An hourglass was edited and surgery fied, and all those ridiculous things that are not realistic are shoved inside our brains. And I can't emphasize this enough that it's fake.

And it's fake, and I cannot get my brain to remember, but I want to. Oh, I want to so bad for the little me and the other little girls that I see standing here. My little cousin. While we were working out kept sitting down and taking a video of her tummy rolls because she didn't want them because her friends didn't have them.

And I looked at her, and I saw myself. Even though she is younger than me by several years, I saw myself in the pain that I felt. Was unbearable.