What comes to mind when asked if you like your body? Do you think you like your eyes, you like your smile? Or is it you hate your ‘gut’, you hate your thighs, you hate that small freckle at the end of your nose?

Media definitely portrays perfect women. We know it – we see it; we are very aware that women are being manipulated into thinking they have to live up to the women they see in magazines and pasted on giant billboards, which is ridiculous because nobody can be 20 feet tall or not have any pores at all.

Does it bother anybody that women now identify whether or not they like their bodies from the parts that are usually focused on in the media? They either like the parts of their bodies that they don’t normally perceive as sexual, or hate the parts of their body that don’t live up to the media’s expectations. We like our ‘smile’. We like the way our eyes wrinkle. Very rarely do our stomachs live up to expectations. There are women who generally like their bodies but might find some other thing to pick out about themselves.

It is truly shocking when the statistics come out – 80 to 90 percent of women dislike their bodies. Not concerned with other aspects of health, like cholesterol or blood pressure, just weight gain and loss. Not concerned with skin cancer, just the tan. Not concerned with negative aspects of the surgery, just getting the plastic under the skin.

Men suffer from negative images of women as well. When women don’t feel positive about themselves, a woman will always be fearful of attractiveness. If a woman is constantly bombarded with things she should be, she’s not going to feel like she is fitting a relationship’s standards. She will constantly struggle with anxiety; she might be jealous or ‘clingy’. All negatives lead to more negatives – a constant vicious circle that needs to stop.

If you feel bad about your body, it’s hard to know that it is completely unwarranted. But it is. Try the hokey things – putting a letter up that reminds you how good you look, telling yourself OUT LOUD, smiling in the mirror. Or, let others know – put letters on their mirrors. One smile can be reflected to millions of other people; start a chain. Have fun with it; stick post-its in books, magazines, and your friend’s notebook. Let everyone know how ridiculously good-looking they are.