This is why you’re so self-conscious

Imagine if every time you opened social media, turned on the TV or radio, or read a magazine or newspaper - there was always a section of advice on how to make your fingers all the same length.

‘I used to be so self-conscious of my hands… I kept them in my pockets at all times because I was so ashamed of how uneven my fingers were. Now, after just one month of taking dinkelberry supplements and doing finger lengthening yoga, I can’t believe the difference! I didn’t think it was possible to naturally improve my finger length, especially on the thumb and pinky finger, but all my friends have noticed a change, and now my husband can’t stop touching my hands!’

If every day you were reading testimonials about how different protocols were changing people’s finger lengths… Tight rings that constricted blood flow, daily exercises targeting the fingers, filler injections to extend the length of the fingertip, repeating affirmations in the mirror ‘I am SO GRATEFUL to have such even length fingers!’. 

You started noticing that on social media and television everyone’s fingers started looking even in length… 

Brands would use mostly images of even-fingered models in their marketing, with the occasional uneven-fingered model for *diversity* (even though statistically speaking, uneven-fingers were far more common)... 

On TV, uneven-fingered people were rarely lead characters, but more likely to be the ‘goofy, unfortunate but well-intentioned supporting role’. 

We had to have influencers remind us how easy it was to edit photos to change the length of our fingers, and how people were flying overseas to get finger surgery… 

These ‘finger positivity’ influencers would try to make us feel better about being too poor to afford finger surgery and to love our fingers the way they are…

We even had finger-positive musicians write songs about bringing back stubby thumbs.

Wouldn’t all of this make you hyper-aware of your fingers anyway and think you needed to change them?

Wouldn’t the ‘finger positivity’ movement still draw attention to your fingers because you had to try to convince yourself you loved them, even though the rest of society very clearly favoured even-fingered folk?

Before all this, you didn’t even pay a single thought to how your fingers looked. When you were a child, fingers were just… fingers. You used them to do stuff all the time, and that was great. Why would how they looked need to matter if they did their job just fine?

But now as an adult, half of your thoughts are spent comparing your fingers to other people’s, how to get your fingers to look even, hating the fact you were born with uneven fingers and wishing your parents got you doing finger-lengthening exercises when you were young and malleable. 

I think you can probably see the parallel I’m trying to draw with how the media plays a role in body image. 

Being unhappy with your appearance and hyper-fixating on changing the way you look is a symptom of how external forces block us from ever finding contentment within ourselves.

When you think about it, it’s no wonder so many of us are constantly thinking about our bodies, how to change them and get closer to whatever gold standard is being marketed to us.

And then in contrast to that, if the alternative is to try and ‘love our bodies’ when society clearly favours bodies that look a certain way… Doesn’t that kind of feel disingenuous? 

It would be telling somebody with clinical depression ‘have you tried just not being sad?’.

Loving our bodies, whilst great in theory - isn’t something you can just choose to do when society has a very clear bias towards a specific kind of body.

What I propose as an alternative, is learning to be ‘ok’ with your body.

Just like when you were a child, you didn’t necessarily ‘love’ your body, but I’m sure you were at least ok with it (up until a point, right?). 

When you’re ‘ok’ with your body, you accept that you might not fit into the clothes you used to wear, but that doesn’t mean you’ll stop looking after your body.

When you’re ‘ok’ with your body, you accept that you’re not gonna love every photo taken of you, but that doesn’t mean that the people close to you don’t see your unique beauty. 

When you’re ‘ok’ with your body, you’re more likely to stick to your health and fitness goals - because you’re not desperately trying to change yourself, you’re doing things out of respect for your well-being. 

Not ‘loving’ your body doesn’t mean that you have to hate it. In fact, for most of us, loving our bodies might be unrealistic, but I also don’t think it’s completely necessary. 

If we can at least be ‘ok’ with our bodies, the same way (I’d hope) you’re ‘ok’ with your finger length… I think we’ll be able to find a lot more peace in our minds and happiness in our lives.