Our culture is extremely body conscious, with a rigid sense of what is right and wrong, as exemplified in the phrase “you can never be too thin or too rich.” In truth, we can be both, and the measure of too much is not a BMI or bank balance—it’s the obsession with either. That’s what is, in part, so compelling about the “When Did Self-Love Become Shameful” YouTube video by Alice Marie Foster.
Her premise is that to say, “I like myself” is a battle cry, an act of rebellion against an almost overwhelming culturally imposed, narrow and rigid image of what is beautiful. So when did arbitrary norms of beauty become so powerful? Is it a factor of pervasive, powerful media? Was there a time when we—women especially—were not measured, and did not measure themselves, against impossible standards? The case can be made that we have a more diverse ideal of beauty than ever before, given greater exposure to beauty as it is measured and celebrated by different cultures. Yet the pain of not measuring up, of “being guilty of not being enough” in Foster’s words, is as real as ever, nor are Americans alone in this.
Jews, Christians and Sufi Muslims believe in the concept of imago Dei—that humans are created in the image of God. Precisely what imago Dei means has been debated for centuries, but this is not: God calls creation—calls our embodied selves—“good”. For many of us, to say the same is a life-long struggle toward our whole, authentic selves that transcends the negative messages of the world and our own fearful inner voices. Better the voice of sacred Wisdom that whispers lovingly to us again and again: “You are enough. You are good enough. You are a child of God.”
Seems that not only is self-love not shameful, it’s downright Godly.
