I Am Beautiful.
- Alice Seah
- Oct 18, 2015
- 3 min read
Chapter 5: The Self talked about self-concept, "beliefs a person holds about his/her own attributes and how he/she evaluates these qualities", and I couldn't agree more as the lecture was being delivered. Growing up, I always had a feeling that society only accepted females with sharp, attractive facial features (double eyelids, long eyelashes, well-curved eyebrows), and balanced physical attributes (hour-glass body). I still do from time-to-time, but I am slowly growing out of it.
I was never the most beautiful one amongst my friends or people that surround me and I never had the confidence to say that I am. I only have single eyelids, my eyebrows are barely visible, I get blackheads on my forehead easily and let's just say I have an average body shape. But I'm a little tummy-flat, have muscular thighs and arms (from sports and dance) and because I'm tall, I pretty much look disproporionate. Or at least to myself.
The first year I came to Carleton, I lived in residence. That meant having meal plans, and having most of my meals at the all-you-can-eat buffet style cafeteria. The good thing for a foodie like me, is of course, the non-stop eating. But the bad thing, was also the non-stop eating. Thank goodness for my high metabolism rate, my tummy stayed flat. But I knew years later that being tummy-flat isn't necessarily a good thing. I still ate a lot of fried food, consumed too much calories than I should.
As I got into second year, I moved out and stayed off campus, and soon developed my passion for cooking. Same goes for my third year, and I was still the same. I constantly had meat, cheese, fried ingredients in all my meals, dined out a lot, rarely ate fruits, and barely exercised. I eventually grew chubbier on the cheeks, and always felt like my weight got heavier (I didn't bother checking on a scale).
Only until this year it kicked in. Maybe because I was sick of the heavy-flavoured food that I've been consuming, or I've just grown up to be more conscious of my health. Activity-wise, I started swimming, playing ultimate frisbee for intermurals, sleep and wake early, and workout/exercise at the gym twice a week. Diet-wise, I eat at least one vegetarian meal per day, have fruits more often, only eat brown/grain rice and bread, and don't purchase any sort of processed or red meat. Of course, I'll always have cheat days, where I get a box of my favourite chicken bites and fries from Pizza Pizza, or even a bowl of pistachio ice cream at 9pm at night. But I kept myself a promise to reduce the amount, and it's been working out well so far.
Soon after, I realized the change in my body, in which changed my mood and attitude towards different things. My body weight fell back to normal (I started checking them from time to time), I gained abs, my mood becomes more and more lighthearted (from eating healthy and feeling great), and thus my attitude becomes better towards those around me. That in all changed my perception of my own body image.
I still don't have the "sexiest" body, but my ideal self, "the conception of how we would like to be," and my actual self, "more realistic appraisal of the qualities we have," are slowly getting smaller in distance, and with confidence, I can now say, "I am beautiful, and I feel good." Society will always have a criteria of how females should be, and there will always be people judging about how you should look or be, but I'd say just be yourself. Everyone is beautiful, just in many different ways.
However, one most important tip that I've learnt throughout my food journey in life is what they always say, "you are what you eat". As long as you pay attention to what and how you consume, as long as all things you do balance well, as long as you're healthy and you feel good, all is good.
Sources:
Solomon, M., White, K., and Darren Dahl. Consumer Behaviour: Buying, Having, and Being, Sixth Canadian Edition. US: Pearson Canada, 2013.
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