Not ‘giving up’: is there another way to describe accepting how I look as I age? | Well actually

Hello ugly,

She recently spoke with a middle -aged colleague about her unhappy friend as she is single and believes that she should lose weight. With the growth of women in the tenth general in the 1980s, our greatest interest was weight and calories to control it (now we can add wrinkles, yellow teeth and strange body hair to the list).

When she (frankly?) I suggested encouraging the friend to accept her body as he is, my co -worker said, “Well, she cannot surrender!”

Surrender – this is something else we have always tried to avoid. Like looking at our mothers in Sweatpants and without makeup and thinking that they are no longer trying to be beautiful. My question: Are there other words to describe the acceptance of your appearance as it is, in any age, or is we only “surrenders”?

Acceptance of the general

One of the reasons for talking about “abandonment” leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Psychoan analyst Adam Phillips writes in his book To surrenderIt is “it is happy that this is a prediction or a reminder of the abandonment of suicide, or just a more moderate version of living in a kind of death in life.”

In other words: your workshop believes without awareness that a woman who gives up a diet may be dead.

Forgive me (and Philip – indirectly, Freud, and the father of psychoanalysis) for being dramatic. But I think it is true! Perhaps it is correct when it comes to material beauty, which has long been framing as less decorative than necessaryEspecially for women and universal sex. We often think of beauty as a self -advertisement, a way to survive, which is a sign of societal value. It increases our economic and social capabilities. It opens the doors and buying grace. Provides access and attention.

On the contrary, no less than this is the edge towards a kind of cultural erasure.

Of course, when a person appears and/or is punished like this, it begins with the same importance of life itself. Or more important. Consider a quote from The story of 2024 Washington Post On the regeneration of the tanning family, known to increase the risk of skin cancer: “I prefer to die hot from ugly life.” ((refuteIf it is permissible for me)

This confusion comes between beauty and life several times in your question, albeit in less extreme phrases. You classify weight loss and lost hair as some of your “biggest concerns”. She remembers anxiety about your mother not wearing make -up – which is only logical if make -up is a symbol of something more. (Will to continue, maybe?) Your colleague means that surrender thinness You should mean giving up Dating, Which must mean giving up love, Which, well – why does that bother you, then?

This is a little ridiculous. (The subconscious is not something if not Irrational!) “The hard association” for abandonment, Philips wrote, “It prevented us from being able to think about more moderate, more educated and more promising,” there are many of them.

Such as giving up to preserving beauty standards, for example.

The pursuit of unrealistic appearance, and is often unhealthy and constantly transformed is something of paradoxes that “make us wrong” in life, as Phillips says, even as we think about it as it is presented. more Life (or more chance). Skipping meals to lose weight can deprive the body of the nutrients it needs to work properly. Get Botox to look younger “Change the road [the] The brain explains and treats the feelings of others“.

“In order to feel life, one may have to give up, for example, the usual tactics and techniques of one to distinguish himself,” Philips writes.

In this sense, “surrender” is exactly the phrase that you are looking for, accepting the general. Surrender, you know, Hunger. Abandoning palaces vitamin. Abandoning calories, step, and mirror ascending. Abandoning the absorption of the skin in the form of Spanks. Abandoning middle -aged men who ask someone to do any of the above in exchange for happy watch applications in Applebee’s.

More Jessica Deviono Ask ugly:

If “surrender” is still not sitting properly, try to reformulate the text as restoring something: time, money, energy, brain space, and health – – life, One can say.

I do not say it is easy. Surrender can cause “very real suffering”, as Philips puts it. Quiting re -evaluation of what we appreciate, this can become painful as age. Perhaps this is why your workshop is very resistant to the idea of ​​accepting her friend to her body as it is. It may force her to ask herself: Can she do the same? He should she? If so, what does that say about how she lived so far? Do you waste her in her wild and precious presence, think about dislocating clothes in salads? Who is if she is not thin, or at least you are trying to be?

But if your workshop is not interested in reconsidering her beliefs, I will surrender to try to persuade her. Because sometimes, surrender is good.