Wanting to please everyone around you and fit in with others is in human nature. We all want to fit in, belong with the crowd around us. Of course, not everyone has the same mindset but growing up and continuously hearing what others want from you can alter this. “Oh you shouldn’t wear this, it doesn’t work with the shape of your body.” “You should watch what you eat before it goes to your thighs.” “No one wants to date someone who looks like that.” Self love is something that plays such a crucial point in our growth, yet it’s so hard to achieve. It’s easier to put yourself down and constantly compare yourself to other people, than really appreciating yourself and what you do. This is why I think practicing self love and appreciation is something to really focus your attention on and work on. Positive affirmation and reading about how to help promote this can ultimately help. This is why I believe The (other) F word: a celebration of fat & fierce is the perfect book to read. You don’t have to be a certain size to read the book and learn from it. We can all benefit from reading it.

Like I mentioned before, self love is something that everyone should experience for themselves, but not everyone does. By practicing this, happiness and joy is fulfilled and your overall image about yourself is improved. This book features multiple stories, poems, and pieces of art written by various authors and their personal stories. You may not fully experience every detail of a story in this book, but I guarantee that you have experienced parts of it. We need to stop putting down ourselves and being so tough when things aren’t exactly how we want them to be. Just because you don’t look a certain way, it doesn’t give you the right to beat yourself up for it. We only have one body and we need to realize that we need to to start appreciating it before it’s too late.

Hearing different stories from different people can help us relate to them more, rather than just one person telling us their experience from their perspective. Having a book being more relatable can help its audience understand it more and enjoy it overall. The reason I talk about relatability is because it featured all throughout this book. The different authors having different lives and telling their stories helps create a sense of comfort. All these people aren’t the same and we may not relate to one person but we can find another one and relate to them. If you love hearing about people’s different stories and experiences, then I believe you’re going to thoroughly enjoy this book.

One story from this book that I think would help people is I Wear What I Want ‘Cause I Want To by P.S. Kaguya. This story emphasizes the idea of knowing your self worth. The story follows this girl who had the idea of being skinny was everything engraved in her head. She believed that being fat meant that you were just ugly. She constantly lived with this thought in her head that if she was just skinnier, she would be enough. She would be prettier and being skinny would mean everything. But growing up, she eventually learned it was all in her head. Sure people around her kept negatively nagging at her about what to wear, but it was her body. She lived with the regret that she wasn’t telling herself how beautiful she really was and how she should’ve loved herself. Knowing your self worth and repeatedly telling yourself that you are enough can block out the horrible images you have of yourself. 

The image that you create of yourself is something you should think dearly about. Especially as a teenager, a weird time where you think the world hates you and you hate yourself, knowing to love yourself just the way you are is something that not a lot of people tend to do. Nothing will ever last forever. The people who negatively comment on you won’t matter in the future, but the way you look at yourself does. If you continuously put yourself down and compare yourself to others, even though you are nothing like them, then yeah that will last forever. Practicing a positive self image is something important we should all learn to do if we want to be happy from here on out.