First Things First...

I have been thinking a lot about what I wanted to say for my first post on my blog about body image.  To be honest, I have been putting it off for as long as I could; not because I was procrastinating this assignment, but rather, I wanted to have some handle on what exactly I wanted the tone of this page to be.  This is the first blog that I have ever created, and I feel the need to write something that will be meaningful.  I am a 23 year old student attending BYU.  I walk the campus each day, and am surrounded by beautiful and intelligent people.  I feel very lucky to be at such a competitive and challenging school; but at the same time, being at a university filled with so many gifted and bright people, it is easy to compare yourself to others and their talents and their successes while minimizing your own. The tendency to compare oneself to another is as old as the story found in the Bible of Cain and Able, and so it is no new concept.  However, comparing ourselves to others does greatly influence our self-perception, and there can be some benefits to doing that;  but generally, it can be damaging to one's self esteem.  So with that very long introduction, my purpose is to broach the subject of body image, and hopefully shed some ideas of how we can help others, especially young woman, to love their bodies.