Summer 'Outing'

Suck it up; stomach in and chest out! Move your body a little so your stretch marks wouldn’t be seen.

Summer comes in a process and it usually starts with: a plan.

Then the plan turns into a date and time, then eventually it becomes today. Following that come the countless inevitable photos that you must take and wherever you are, taking pictures is now deemed necessary. Then there’s the part where you decide which pictures are “Instagram-worthy” enough, followed by a witty statement pair along with it. And whether or not ‘Vitamin Sea’ has been a much used caption, it is still serves as a perfect partner to go along with the picture of the beach.

Then as you sweep through more of your photos, you find that one photo of you in a bikini, or a two piece, or a simple swim suit. And a thought crosses your mind, whether or not you should post the photo or not; knowing completely well that if you do so, people would analyze your whole body and form conclusions in their heads.

“Ugh, she’s fat, I mean look at that belly flab! She should’ve just hid that in her camera roll

–laughing emoji-“And all the tormenting thoughts never stop, not until you decide to silence them by pressing the delete button on your phone and give a sigh of relief knowing you’re complete past all that.

Though it is defined as a trip that people in groups do for fun, I think we should take the word outing to a different understanding. It’s a sad thought that some girls hesitate to post their photo, because they’re completely aware of the ‘opinions’ of their friends and followers that’s ready to catapult their post. The mere fact that it’s still a struggle for some girls to even wear a two piece or a swimsuit to a resort is already such a downer, what with the anxiety of thinking about the possible jokes people could make up about their body.

With the mindset that those with fair, flawless and “coke-bottle” bodies are the only ones who are entitled to wear a bikini, no wonder many girls are afraid to turn from rash guards to swim suits! In a world where social media reigns supreme and the amount of likes and comments indicate your position in the social hierarchy, we’ve been living with the mentality that we need the positive validation of the people who would see our photos before posting them.

Suck it up; stomach in and chest out! Move your body a little so your stretch marks wouldn’t be seen.

It’s always a massive struggle for just one photo to upload on your Facebook account, in the hope that if you got away with sucking in to a flat stomach, you’d be able to receive a thread of “you’re so sexy” comments. It’s almost as if we don’t post for ourselves anymore but for others. With this way of thinking, the mental ability of one person to love herself or himself levels down; that without other people saying it, you wouldn’t be so convinced yourself.

But loving yourself isn’t always in the means of having the courage to post a one-of-a-kind photo of you in a site where many people can see it and more than having the strength to go out and wear something you never thought you would’ve worn in the next ten years of your life. It’s accepting everything you have and everything that makes up all of you. It is knowing that the scars you keep are the marks of your strength of having overcome them and your stretch marks that prove you’re a normal human being.

And it’s convincing yourself over and over without a question mark at the end of the sentence that you are beautiful. That your “flaws” shouldn’t keep you from achieving the love for yourself that you need and that the validation of others is redundant to the process of becoming whole with yourself.

I think that every woman should be able to feel comfortable in her own skin, without having to worry what people would say about her body; as it is immensely terrifying for someone to have her flaws pointed out. Most of all, I think every girl should have the chance to be proud of her body without anyone shaming her for doing it. In addition to this, I also think we shouldn't view these other girls, who would post photos in their beach attire/bikinis, to be a competition or a target of insecurity and shame, but rather a mirror that we could take a cue from and to trigger the voice inside our heads to say: "if she can, I can too!"

We must give ourselves the satisfactory of having an ‘outing’; a moment of genuine pride and happiness that is rooted from telling yourself that you are more than a number of likes underneath your picture in your social media accounts with the line of comments that agree along with it and revealing to people that you are not ashamed of your body because you are proud of the temple that you’ve been maintaining and caring.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to show off that you’re happy! Don’t make yourself a dartboard of all the frustrations in your head.

Stop saying things like you’re not worthy of having a grand moment to yourself because you are not as skinny or as white or as stunning as the other girl. Stop thinking that these are assets that you lack and that these are the assets that you are 'required' to have just to fit in to the list of examples of people’s definition for beautiful.

As a matter of fact, don’t wait for other people to tell you that. Be the very first person to convince yourself that you are beautiful and if you want to post that picture online? By all means, do so! And right after that just clap your back, put your phone to rest and your mind at ease. Go out and make summer yours.