Don't Let Your Negative Self-Thought Make You Think Less Of Yourself

A Body Image Lesson I Learnt On My Birthday

Rubina G Gomes

Feb 14, 2022

I am 27 years old, and I have never worn a dress.

You know the knee-length ones, and you get to show off your legs?

I never felt confident enough to rock those types of dresses. I believed I didn't have the right figure for them.

But over the last year, I have been slowly coming to terms with my shape.

Was there room for improvement? Of course!

But that didn't mean I had to be mean to my current shape and weight.

So, while shopping for my 27th birthday, I got myself a light burgundy calf-length dress. I thought to myself, it's high time I dressed myself up the way it made me feel special.

Then my birthday came. This is where things got interesting.

I got dressed in my new and first-ever dress for my birthday lunch with my best friend.

Then, like I usually do, I went to my mum to get her opinion.

Mum looked happy. Both she and I realised that I had finally become a woman.

And then mum made the following comment -

"Everything is fine. If you could just reduce your tummy, you would have looked more beautiful."

Now, as you can imagine, all my weight-related triggers got, well, triggered.

Up until that comment, I was feeling beautiful. (Very different from looking beautiful.)

But after that comment, all I could see was the things wrong with me.

Let me be clear here.

My mum didn't make that comment to taunt me or pull me down. It was said out of motherly love.

But what most people don't realise is that there's a way and time for saying things.

My mum didn't even realise that she indirectly hurt me.

Do you know what I did next?

I started looking for my shapewear.

I bought that shapewear million years ago because I never liked how my body looked. But I could never wear it. It was too uncomfortable for my body and my heart. It reinforced the fact that my body was wrong and needed correction.

I was on the verge of changing into that demoralising shapewear when I heard my voice speak to me.

"Are you seriously going to wear that? You don't need it."

Thankfully, I have been working on myself for the past couple of years. Because of that, I was self-aware enough to hear that voice and stop myself from being unkind to myself.

"You know what," I said to myself, "I seriously don't need this." And I threw away that shapewear. Literally.

You see, most of the time, we are not even aware of our own thoughts.

And we are also not aware that we are, most of the time, beating ourselves up.

Being unkind to yourself is the biggest mistake you'll ever make in your life.

You're being unkind to your best friend, your partner for life.

So I am happy to let you know that that dress was a success.

My best friend had his jaw on the floor when he saw me. My other friends commented on how pretty I looked.

But do you know what the best compliment was?

Me finally accepting myself for who I am. No matter how I looked.