Recently, there has been a phenomenon taking over Instagram in which women of every shape and size are openly showing off their stretch marks. Instead of being ashamed of a flaw that may be stigmatized, these women are more than proud to show off their bodies — flaws and all.
Rebelling against common expectations by the media that women have to look picture-perfect at all times, these women are taking a stand and showing that their stretch marks are more than just “disgusting” imperfections. They see them as battle scars.
One of these women posted a photo of her “scarred” body with the caption, “I like to see my body as a book, the stretch marks tell the story and the scars are the pictures.” If everyone could have this opinion of his or her body’s blemishes, as cliché as it sounds, I think the world would be a better place.
#LoveYourLines is the common hashtag these proud women are using to unite their photos in this anti-body shaming campaign. Such a positive spin on a commonly overlooked fact of life, and something that almost everyone can relate to, is truly inspiring.
We should constantly be reminded to love our bodies for what they do for us every day, instead of being inundated with images of what the media’s definition of “perfection” is.
Why do we constantly put our bodies down for not looking like what we want them to and what the media has told us is beautiful? It’s okay if we can’t compete with a Victoria’s Secret Angel or a UFC fighter. Their bodies are supposed to look like that. It’s what they’re being paid for.
If we could focus on all the amazing things our bodies do each day of our lives, maybe we would be more appreciative of their true purpose, which surprisingly is not to get over 100 likes on that bikini picture we posted on every social media platform, but to keep us alive!
With all the stress in our culture on how our bodies look from the outside, I think we tend to forget that what’s truly important is how they work on the inside because that is what allows us to wake up every morning and live the life we have been blessed with.
This kind of movement brings the focus back to the fact that we are only given one body and we should be proud of it — imperfections and all.