Behind most common pieces of advice is one deceivingly simple message: Have confidence in yourself. But how? That essential follow-up question is never really answered by the advice-giver, and any allusion to it is usually a dead-end. We are quick to dismiss each other’s insecurities with remarks like “You know that’s not true,” or “You’re being ridiculous.” On the other hand, the compliments we dish out to counter our loved ones’ insecurities often fall on deaf ears, as they insist that we are only saying that to be nice – which, unfortunately, is usually true. It is more often than not a useless and uncomfortable exercise for both the giver of compliments, who feels helpless, and the receiver of compliments, who feels irrational and burdensome.
Is there a better solution? The only advice I’ve heard regarding this issue that has ever given me pause, let alone changed my perspective entirely, was from a Q&A on British actress Jemima Kirke’s Instagram story. Below the question “[Any] advice to unconfident young women?” sits Kirke’s unamused expression and her curt answer: “I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much.”
It was as if a switch flipped in my mind and the minds of thousands of others who found revelation in Kirke’s nonchalant response. Suddenly, I had a new way of seeing every insecurity that had ever haunted me. The asymmetry in my eyebrows, the width of my face, the repetition in my clothing and the occasional stutter in my speech all had one thing in common: no one cared, and I had been self-absorbed to think anyone would.
The self-absorption that fuels our insecurities does not stem from narcissism but from the self-obsession that’s been drilled into us since childhood. We are told, implicitly and explicitly, that to appease the watchful eyes of the people around us, we must spot and cover up every blemish, erase every flaw with FaceTune — if not Botox — and burn or starve away every pound. Through countless internet trends, normal features of the human body that could have gone a lifetime unnoticed — stretch marks, the breadth of one’s shoulders, “strawberry legs” and even the “back profile” — become pressing issues to address with the help of cosmetics and lifestyle influencers. Makeup companies convince us that to wear their products every day, and to fear leaving the house wearing only the face we were born with, is to be a strong, confident woman. They then take it one step further, perversely insisting that this is the very essence of feminism. And so we stare into the mirror for hours on end every day, taking in every flaw until flaws are all we see.
To tie it all together, we assume others are criticizing us as much as we are criticizing ourselves, because to us, our imperfections are the only thing worth perceiving. We cruelly assign the role of the judge ready to condemn us for these flaws to the people around us, and we resent them for it until we are paralyzed by self-hatred.
We should not let the presence of the judge – real or imaginary – take control. The first time I ever saw a woman exposing her unshaven legs, I was shocked — not by her legs themselves, but by my own lack of a reaction. Oh, I thought, it’s nice that she feels comfortable enough to do that, and that it’s just a normal thing. The crux of the nonissue was that she did not seem to care or even notice that she had broken one of the most strictly held norms for women, and apparently neither did anyone else, despite my long-held notion that such a thing would have been totally unacceptable. When we see other people breaking these ridiculous rules that we allow ourselves to be governed by, our eyes are opened to our own unexpected open-mindedness. We are more accepting than we give ourselves credit for. Only by realizing this will we see that, likewise, most people are not judging us as much as we think they are.
The obsessive insecurities we’ve been raised to harbor may not stem from narcissism, but that does not mean they cannot express themselves in a manner reminiscent of narcissism. In high school, hours spent staring in the mirror and thousands of selfies from every possible angle granted me the ability to point out every imperfection in my face, which I began to believe were conspicuous to everyone else, too. The more time I spent obsessing over myself, the less I looked around me. Instead of seeing the faces of others, I saw my own in my mind’s eye, and I wondered how everyone was perceiving me at every moment. To my own detriment, I was thinking about myself too much, even if those thoughts weren’t self-absorbed in the usual sense of the word.
None of this is to say that insecurity is a personal failing, or yet another thing to be ashamed of. As human beings it is inevitable that we will never be the ideal versions of ourselves, and the virtue of self-awareness lies in our acknowledgement of our own shortcomings. However, when we absorb the vanity of beauty standards to the point that we lose ourselves, we must put our foot down. It may be as simple as reminding ourselves that, most likely, no one will see, let alone be bothered by, that pimple on our chin or the way one of our eyes is slightly larger than the other. We can choose to fight the instinct to scoff at or deny any compliment we receive, and instead, at the very least, take it as a perspective worthy of consideration. We can protect ourselves from our own exhausting scrutiny by resisting the urge to seek a mirror in every room because, as the old adage goes: out of sight, out of mind. As it turns out, a whole world of kind and accepting people opens up when we make the decision to turn our eyes away from the mirror and instead to what truly matters.
“Self-love” will not be attained by inventing and rectifying endless flaws in our reflection. It will not be handed to us in exchange for the money we fork over for cosmetics and “self-care” products. For those who can spend all day analyzing every imperfection in their body, self-love will only be found in the time we spend away from the mirror, when we actively decide to not think or care about our insecurities at all. It will be found in the people we see who have the same features as us but who love that which we thought could only be hated. We will walk with confidence when we can spot our reflection in passing at a window, take in that bump on our nose, the slant of our lips or the uneven shape of our face, and think, Oh, that’s me. And that will be that.
MiC Columnist Leila Kassem can be reached at lkassem@umich.edu.
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