Body Image

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We have all seen the advertisements with well toned skinny people (who are also airbrushed)

I am wondering
Do you feel like you need to look like them?
Society does pressure people to look a certain way unfortunately.

No. Feeling pressured to look nice is not the same as feeling pressured to look airbrushed. The latter just is not going to happen, but the former is expected of you.

Why is there no 'no' otption? God help my bf if he ever suggested I lose weight....

Yeah, why is "Never" not an option?

I never feel any pressure from other people; I don't care what they think.

And when it comes to romantic interests, I understand that people differ in what they find attractive. If a guy rejects me because he's not attracted to me physically, I don't take it personally, just like a guy shouldn't take it personally if I reject him because of what he happens to look like.

nah. the pressure I feel to eat healthy/exercise comes from the fact that I know I will feel hopeless and have no concentration if I don't.

plus, I can't imagine being even slightly overweight, I've always thought it looks so damn uncomfortable to have to drag all that excess body everywhere.

I use to have an eating disorder.

I don't blame anyone but myself but for a long time I had the feeling that men and even women hated me for being fat (I felt like I was fat).

These days I really don't watch TV or see much of the media so I can't say it does much too influence my daily life. Do I have issues with my body? ...Yes but not to the extent I use to. I've kind of learned to accept myself the way I am but there are days where I look in the mirror and think "I wish I didn't look like this or I wish I wasn't so ugly."

Those magazines make me sick and are not worth the paper they are printed on. God I hate our society.

The poll has no option for "no", which would be my answer.

I would expect that folks here would be less likely to feel pressure to look a certain way than NTs. Either because we don't see that we're supposed to, or because we really don't care about fitting into someone else's image of what we should be. Even if we pick up on those messages, which some of us do, that doesn't mean we buy into them.

I have gone on a few mind trips over it...but right now I am not currently on one.
My "other" partner is really in to long lean ectomorphs with really nice butts, but I don't hold it against him because our relationship is based on more than just physical attraction...but I can't say I have never felt bad about it...and growing up, i went through phases where I was an obese child...I was made to feel bad when I would have otherwise been comfortable with myself....

I used to. Not any more.

I'm very thin and wiry, and I used to associate it with being weak and a "victim", and wanted to be heavier.

But I stopped caring.

Never.

I spend the better part of my teen years staving myself but it wasn't due to wanting to look like the woman on tv ect , I went from a healthly 5ft 120lbs I've got wide set shoulders and big bones to a very under weight 83 lbs. It how ever didnot help that my mother called me fat all the time and told me what "bad shape" I was in because I weighted more the she did and she had 4 kids. My mother is also only 4ft9 and has bird bones, my over weight grandmother alos didn't help by tellling me how fat I was everytime I saw her and telling everyone in earshot how we wore the same size. My grandmother is well over 200lbs and may shoe horn herself in to a size 8 at times but this hardly makes her the same size as I was. Being 14-18 yrs old I took all this to heart and begain a "diet" that was mostly made up of water and a piece of fruit now and then. When I begain eating normaly while pregant with my first child my weight shot-up and I'm now pre-diabietic and have to be very careful about how I eat and have a very hard time losing weight now that I need to. The kicker is now if anyone in the family brings up my size my mother jumps all over them.

I used to get a lot of flak from my mother for being a fat teen (I was a UK size 14, she was ultra-thin and despised anyone bigger than her). I then got a lot of flak from my ex - he'd thought I was too fat when he met me (he didn't actually tell me that till after we split up!), was delighted when I lost a lot of weight before the wedding (from being sick with stress), then expected me to keep it off for the rest of my life and was disgusted when I put it back on.

So basically, I've had enough body image crap from some of the most important people in my life that most of the crap from the media hasn't been that big a deal. Although I still try and steer clear of that stuff, because it's been proven that reading beauty magazines really does make you feel ugly. My hubby met me at the size I am now, a UK 18, and he loves me as I am and has never, ever put me down about my body. (If anyone who claims to 'love' you is consistently horrible to you about your body, I'd run very fast in the other direction.)

Check out something called Health At Every Size. There are people out there fighting against this pressure, because regardless of what anyone says, it's not 'healthy' to hate yourself...

my husband and inlaws love me for who i am.
My family however think im a freak.

my mother is constantly telling me i need to lose weight, but she doesn't get that i can't lose; the plus side is that i can't gain either