If you’ve been paying attention this year, there’s no way you missed the body positivity posts that have been shaking up Instagram, often accompanied by self-love hashtags like #effyourbeautystandards, #honormycurves, and #youareenough. While the dictionary defines ‘self-love’ as a “regard for one's own well-being and happiness (chiefly considered as a desirable rather than narcissistic characteristic),” we couldn’t quite nail down a widely accepted meaning of ‘body confidence,’ a term the Internet has possibly coined.
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Sure, ‘body image’ was present in the dictionary and was characterized as “the subjective picture or mental image of one's own body,” but whether that makes you feel positive and fearless when it comes to your own perception of your body is unclear. So, what’s the deal with these two terms?
To find out, we tapped body positivity queen and fitness influencer Iskra Lawrence. We sat down with Lawrence and asked her to explain, once and for all, self-love and body confidence.
“Self-love and body confidence go hand-in-hand,” Lawrence says. She explains that self love is more of an inward feeling of confidence and acceptance, in which you are cherishing and being grateful for who you are. Body confidence, she adds, is more about the projection or outward embodiment of self love. “It means getting up in the morning and truly accepting yourself–if that’s relationships, if that’s work, if that’s fashion choices,” says Lawrence. Since all of these factors can be dictated by insecurity and fear, body confidence is having the spirit, courage, and tenacity to go out into the world and be whoever you want to be and do exactly what you want, she explains.
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.