What would the world be...

What would the world be like if women no longer had to worry about their body image? Would we be a happier gender? Would we be more productive? How do we move to that world? The one where women are not catty and do not gossip behind each other’s backs? The one where every person is comfortable in their own skin, no matter their size, weight, skin color, hair color, eye color, or height.

For this blog post, I set out to answer this question by turning to some of the strong beautiful women in my life, my girlfriends. I asked each of these women a series of questions:
1. What kind of world would it be if body image were not an issue for women? What would we accomplish that we don't currently? How would it change your daily life?
2. How do we, as women, work together to make progress towards eliminating body image as an issue for women? What do we need to do to affect that change?

Their answers were unique and yet, still had the same major ideas. J was the first one I interviewed. She gave a very candid answer to the first question, “In my world, I would just be lazy! Just kidding. It would be empowering to just be who you are.” J also noted that she doesn’t feel like she suffers from body image issues as much as some of her other friends, because, “I think that I was raised by a mother who always let us be who we were and didn’t try to change us. We’re all so different, my sisters and I.”

When I asked K the first question she said, “I think I would focus more on others if I wasn’t so worried about my body image. It would be a more selfless world. We would have more time to help people. It would make me more happy.”

S answered the first question by saying, “I would like to think there wouldn’t be any judgment but I feel like the human race is always judging. We’d probably be more productive and think about global image, maybe we’d be more focused on energy and the green movement as opposed to an individual body image.” S also had a great answer for the second question pinning mentoring as a good opportunity for women to move past body image issues. “A mentoring relationship can benefit in so many ways. If we’re going to eradicate body image as an issue for women, if we join forces and share experiences, we all mentor each other on some level, it will really help. When you know you always have someone to talk to your self confidence is stronger and with a stronger self confidence, body image is not as much of an issue.”

K’s answers followed the same pattern but in different language. She suggested we, “spend time communicating about it and encouraging one another.” J also followed the same theme saying, “I think, as women, we need to be more supportive and not care what other people look like. We need to educate children to give them the tools to live healthy. Things like how to eat properly, not fast food 3 meals a day, and exercise and getting out from behind the TV and the computer screen.”

The theme I see weaving through this all is that women need to be more supportive of each other. We need to lift each other up instead of cutting each other down. We need to pass along confidence in ourselves from one generation to the next through being a living example.