How A Hashtag Helped Me Love My Legs: #TheseThighsDontLie

If I were to gripe about how society pushes ideal looks on women daily, you’d roll your eyes and say, “Here we go again. I don’t need to be reminded!” But, it’s the truth, and I would be lying if I said that I don’t feel that sometimes I fall short in regards to what the world wants of my appearance. I’m crazy, right? I shouldn’t feel that way, right? I feel that loving yourself is like loving a partner: it probably takes some degree of work, and it may not always be easy.

Let’s get real for a minute. I have struggled for some time with my legs and how they look. They’re on the shorter side (but balanced out by a long torso, which I love), and have always been “muscular.” They are not straight up and down, and there is definitely a lot of quadricep action happening. I could lose all the weight in the world, but I would never have long slender legs. They’re just built that way. And I’m learning to slowly love them just the way they are.

I have learned that many people try to cover up insecurities by joking about them. The problem with this is that it actually draws attention to some part of you that most people probably have never noticed before. For instance, as I started to put on weight during and after college, I would joke about them, calling them my “thunder thighs.” I grew self-conscious of them, especially the way they looked in photos, even though I can bet you no one else cared. As I began blogging, I learned quite quickly that I could try to mimic, to the tiniest detail, another blogger’s pose, but it would never look the same. Here’s another fun fact for you: many fashion bloggers, especially the big ones, are going to be on the smaller side. And why do you think that is? If you said society, you guessed it!

As my blogging has taken off and I myself have grown (which is a whole LOT in the last year!), I’ve learned to take pictures and pose in ways I think translates best through photographs, but there will always be that one photograph that I will look at and think, “Man, this would have been perfect if my body was balanced better.” The internet then delivered Nadia Aboulhosn to me, and I realized that I was crazy. She is one of the sassiest, most confident, “IDGAF” bloggers I’ve ever stumbled across, and she makes me so happy. She wears what she wants, doesn’t care what her legs look like, and runs around in ridiculously short dresses and shorts.

www.NadiaAboulhosn.com

It’s funny how one person doing their own thang over in their own world can positively affect someone else. I’m a firm believer in putting out good energy into the world. And I sort of absorbed Nadia’s. By reminding myself not to worry about others, and praise myself, I’ve started to feel more comfortable in my own skin. I unknowingly implemented a hashtag that helped. On a lot of my posts that involve my full body on Instagram, you’ll see #thesethighsdontlie. I did it once as a joke, and then I added it to another photograph. And then another. By using that hashtag, I felt like I was owning my body. I was owning my look. I was drawing attention to that part of me on purpose. And I was celebrating what makes me different. Sure, my thighs aren’t really as gigantic as I might make them sound, but they’re definitely me.

Instead of thinking, “What would I like to change about myself?” I’ve started thinking more along the lines of “What makes me who I am?” I’m always focusing on improving myself, and making sure I’m the best version of myself, on the inside and outside. This year will be MY YEAR, even though I feel like I say that every year.

What about you? Do you have a part of you that needs positive attention? Let’s start a self-love hashtag revolution!