The way I perceive my body makes me feel like I'll never have a partner

[Grace peanut]

I'm a chubby girl. I'm 5 foot something, shorter than my friends and I weigh 75kg. I always think I'm ugly or too fat to be attractive and no matter how hard I try I can't shift the weight. My torso is chubby but I don't have a double chin anymore and my thighs and upper arms are quite thick. My friend says she likes the way I look and that she can't imagine me looking nice if I was thinner and that one day someone will definitely love me but I don't believe her. I also have weirdly shaped boobs, I think they might be tuberous but when I look up medical diagrams of what that condition looks like mines are always larger and slightly rounder so I don't know what's going on there. My weight combined with my boobs just makes me feel horrible, I know it's silly but If I do ever get a boyfriend of girlfriend I would be reluctant to let them see me without clothes or in a bikini/underwear because I think it would put them off.

I know there's no solution to this but I really needed to get it off my chest.

[amber]

Hi Grace peanut,

I am sorry that you've been feeling these hard feelings about yourself. I do want to say that it is not helpful to look at your body through numbers or 'labels'. Your body is not meant to fit into a certain box or ideal.

The truth is that your body will change a lot throughout your life - just as every body does. Our culture makes it so almost no one is happy about their body. It is helpful for lots of folks to take away the 'value' we put on our bodies. Instead, we can focus on traits about ourselves that we can control. What hobbies do you enjoy doing? What is something (even if its small) that you are the best at?

As for feeling comfortable in a future partner, it may be helpful to think about how you see other people. Do you worry about the way other people's bodies look or do you connect with people based off of things you have in common?

[Heather]

On top of what amber offered, I also wanted to pop in and ask what kinds of bodies you're generally exposed to on a daily basis and how diverse those bodies are.

If we are only or mostly looking at people through a million filters, or at celebrities, rather than seeing real people who look like real people -- and ideally who don't all look like us, who have different ethnicities, ages, life phases, life experiences and abilities -- it's a lot easier to give ourselves the idea that our normal looking bodies are a problem.

What kinds of people and bodies are you exposed to every day? When you look at them, can you see how we all look different and there's no better or worse ways of looking, only variation? Can you see that your body is as normal and acceptable as other people's bodies?