Friends and IE/Body Acceptance

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

So, this past Saturday I was out with a friend for the night. This is a friend

that I've met recently (past three months or so) and we just kinda clicked and

have been spending a fair amount of time together. We were having a good time -

had a couple of drinks and then were on our way to a movie - when somehow the

conversation took a turn to food, bodies, etc. I've had conversations with her

before about this issue and I feel like she is very much at a place that I've

been before in my life of thinking that if she was only a couple of sizes

smaller life, dating, etc. would be so much easier and better. She has mentioned

before that her mom is kind of judgemental in the body image department.

Anyway, the conversation turned to what if we could just wish for a smaller body

and she was talking about how she wished she could be a size four or something

and we started speculating on this, like if I was a size 8 or 10 I would be

happy with this since I'm tall anyway and it would be great to be smaller

because of this that and the other thing. I initially tried to resist the idea

because quite frankly, in a lot of ways I'm more satisfied with the size I am

right now than I have ever been before. I tried to communicate this to her, but

I feel like I somehow failed and got sucked into all of this " what if " talk.

So I don't know if I've explained the situation well enough, but my question for

you all is this: how do you deal with friends, relatives, whoever, who just

don't understand how wonderful it is to accept yourself as you are and how most

of the body image stuff that we encounter in our society is just (for a lack of

a better term) a bunch of bs? I've never really felt quite as passionate about

another topic as I do about IE before, and now that I have had all of these new

thoughts/revelations, I just want to shout it from the roof tops. But sometimes

I find that shouting it from the roof tops doesn't mean it won't fall on deaf

ears. And even if people don't outright reject the ideas, they often just nod

along and say " body acceptance is a good thing " but then stop short of applying

it to their own situation or lives.

I feel like finding IE is helping me to become more confident in certain areas

than I've ever been before, but this confidence is being tested and sometimes I

end up backing down. So should I be more assertive with people? Say if we're

going to start having this conversation I'm not going to join in? Try to explain

my point of view? And what do I do when despite everything I don't seem to be

able to articulate it in a way to make people fully understand what I'm trying

to say?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Meg