Beauty and Basketball

Basketball has been taking over my life lately. This years' tournament has been an especially exciting one because the underdogs keep winning. I don't know what it is inside me that loves seeing the underdog win. Maybe it's the beating the odds or doing what people don't think you can do or feeling like that can translate to my life. Whatever it is, all I know is it is fun. Just watched VCU beat the odds and beat Kansas; previously I did not care at all about VCU but I found myself cheering out loud for them to win.
Anyway...
We watched this documentary from Netflix last night called America the Beautiful (thanks Kitchen for the rec). It is a documentary basically about self image in the United States. They cover issues such as eating disorders, the media and advertising, airbrushing/non reality of what is actually in magazines and billboards, models, plastic surgery, cosmetics and what women put on their bodies to be" beautiful". Anyway, very interesting. One of the interesting things they talked about was a study done in Fiji, which is a society that values larger sized individuals because it is a sign of wealth. When television and access to media came to the island within three years they saw a shift in these beliefs in the younger generations..suddenly girls were concerned about their weight and how they looked. Girls were contemplating starving themselves to meet an image whereas before they never thought that way. It is sad that we live in a society that is constantly plaguing us with images of what beauty is instead of applauding individuality and the unique beauty that each person possesses.
Do you think you are beautiful? I know I struggle with this because I think beautiful is being thin or having perfect hair and perfect clothes and wearing make up. It is even hard to think beauty reaches to the inside and is not only what we see. It got me thinking a lot about my own ideas of beauty and how I spend a lot of time thinking about myself and others and these unrealistic values I place on appearance. I hope to shake some of my ingrained ideas about beauty and start believing in the beauty that is in others and myself.