The modern age, full of the children of Instagram, has birthed two dual attitudes – those who care about what people think of them, and those who ‘don’t.’ In the era of selfies, nudes, Snapchat and sexting, everyone is a model, everyone is a judge.
We care about what people think about us because we have been socialised to. No matter who we are, we are all subjected to whether we are ‘enough’ – are we good looking enough? Are we sexy enough? Are we slim enough? Are we thick enough? Is our make-up blended right, does our hair suit us, are we loveable enough? Society has forced us and forced us to adhere to some set of standards, to conform to our place in the ‘attractiveness’ ranking.
This kind of constant evaluation and judgement leads to some of the most damaging mind-sets this generation has ever seen – eating disorders, body dysmorphia, anxiety and depression concerning how other people see us, loneliness and isolation because we think nobody will ever find us perfect unless we look like a certain person.
This kind of mindset is the unhealthiest. We do not need to labour to be enough, we ARE enough for someone out there. Constantly responding to endless critics concerning us is exhausting, and leads us nowhere but to tears and deep self-loathing, because we can never please anybody if we don’t spend time learning to please ourselves. We must understand that not every criticism is a criticism that deserves our time being spent on it.
However, I do have to ask – is it always such a bad thing to be conscientious of what others think of us? As much as caring about the opinions of others can be extremely damaging, we often care about what people think of us because other people are a more accurate reflection of ourselves. If somebody thinks I’m beautiful, they’ve seen my face and a reflection of the way I look has produced in them the feeling that that I am beautiful. Other people appreciating our beauty can make us feel empowered and come to realise it ourselves, because we can look at ourselves through the lens of others and be separated from our pre-conceptions of ourselves. In this sense, sometimes it’s empowering and constructive to care what others think because they can teach us to love ourselves better than we can just on our own.
Caring about what people think is also sometimes good when it comes to personality attributes. I know that I care whether someone thinks I’m a pleasant, friendly person or not, and I can’t distinguish whether I am one or not without caring about how I am perceived by others. If I am being perceived as a horrible, rude and insensitive person because of a way I have behaved, then caring bout being perceived in this way will help me amend my behaviour and become the kind of person I want to be.
How do we learn to care less about things that don’t matter (like the damaging opinions of others) and more about things that do, like our happiness and body positivity? Chidera Eggerue, a.k.a. The Slumflower, is a prominent blogger who is an outstanding spokeswoman for self-love, owning your own beauty and finding peace with the things you cannot change about yourself. She’s especially risen to notoriety recently for her movement, “#saggyboobsmatter”, which takes one of the most critiqued features of a woman’s body and raises it up to be admired and celebrated as something that is beautiful and shouldn’t have to be changed.
Chidera’s Twitter and Instagram reach out to everyone who has ever experienced self-hatred, and is one of the main reasons I am trying to love and accept myself more every single day. She focuses on happiness as our main goal, not trying to be perfect in the eyes of everyone but rather to be perfect in the eyes of ourselves. Whilst I believe that we should be cautious of what others think about us, I do share her view that what is most important is how we view ourselves, and whether we are doing our best to make ourselves happy. I know that we all have a long road to travel before we see everyone do this, but it’s a road I’m ready to travel down.
photo credit: www.theslumflower.com