Round is a shape...

Why is everyone so concerned with losing weight and toning up? I'm a bit of a Pinterest addict [a lot of] and I used to really enjoy cruising over the DIY section because I'm also a bit of a a craft addict. Really, I wish I had a whole separate room for all the craft crap because right now It's sort of scattered everywhere. Anyway, now I peruse the sections I loved and about 3/4's of the pins are about losing weight and toning.

"Get a better butt."

"Tone those thighs."

"Lose the love handles!"

Why is society so intent on making women (and men) feel inadequate as they are? If the focus was getting healthier that would be one thing and I would probably stop complaining about it (at least out loud) but it isn't. One doesn't have to be stick thin and have ridges of muscle and taut skin to be healthy, nor does one have to be the size of a house to be unhealthy.

A person can also have tons of health problems but have non related to their "morbid obesity". The same goes for an extremely thin person.

Why are we, as women, so into forcing other women to do things they probably don't enjoy just to end up unhappy and no better of a person than we were before we dropped all the weight and tightened our skin? We are all saying that mothers who have an apron and can't seem to tighten it back up (nearly impossible) needs to save up money so she can have surgery and get it removed. We are showing people that the only thing that matters is what we look like on the outside.

We are teaching our children to hate themselves.

Everything else I've said can flow right over you with annoyance, but if you can read past that last part and not feel even a little bit guilty for the children who start starving themselves at 10 because they're "too fat" then you might have something wrong with you.

I don't want my daughters to grow up thinking something is wrong with them if they don't resemble someone else. If one of my children comes to me and says they are fat, that they need to diet, that they hate the way they look, I am going to feel like a failure as a parent. Society is going to tell them and me that it was my fault as well.

Shouldn't society be held to those same standards?

When a person can't even turn on the television or open a magazine or play a game without having what they "should" be smashed into their face there's a problem. Thin doesn't make you pretty. Fat doesn't make you pretty. Toning doesn't make you pretty. Everyone is pretty. Everyone is beautiful. Every body type is attractive.

We need to start accepting ourselves as we are. 

I need to start accepting me rather than railing on my choices every time I eat a meal or neglect to exercise. It's so bad for me that I can't even eat a salad without saying "of course you're hungry, you're fucking fat and disgusting" as I shovel the lettuce into my mouth.

Why is that ok?

Why is this made to be the problem of the person not the image that is forced into us?

Why are we considered weak and sensitive if being told we're unattractive and wrong every day begins to affect us?

I don't have answers. None that will satisfy myself or anyone else at least.

But, I am going to do everything in my power to make my children love every single thing about themselves even if it kills me. I will fake my way to confidence in front of and around them so much that they believe I love the way I look rather than teach them that I'm fat and ugly, therefore fat is ugly.

Because my children are gorgeous and society is never going to change that.