Have you ever felt uncomfortable in your own skin? Well, I have. It all started when I hit puberty, and all of a sudden I was overly self-conscious because my body was doing a perfectly natural thing – transforming me into a woman.
Okay, I was excited as well, but, as the time passed by, I began questioning myself – am I too curvy?, am I overweight?, what about my acne?
During my college years, I also noticed that my skin started to look a little weird. Later on, I learned that it was vitiligo – a disorder where you basically have pale patches on random body areas.
My self-confidence was shaken once again and I couldn’t accept myself like that.
But, why couldn’t I embrace and love myself, and so-perceived ‘flaws’?
As you can see, this article is dedicated to body image and self-acceptance issue – and to that end, I’ve decided to share this amazing list of 70 body positivity quotes with you!
I hope it’ll inspire and encourage you to love and accept yourself! Just read on to discover the most powerful quotes I could find on the web!
10 Most Powerful Body Positivity Quotes
It’s so easy to develop a negative self-image. All it takes is to forget that you’re unique and enough!
Anyway, here’s a list of my 10 most powerful quotes on this matter. Let’s take a look:
1. “Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.” – Emme
2. “Your body. Your diet. Your life. It isn’t perfect. It never will be. But it’s real. It’s honest. It’s beautifully flawed. And totally magical.” – Nicola Jane Hobbs
3. “Do not apologize for your sacred body. All of you is holy.” – Ashley Asti
4. “Stop trying to fix your body. It was never broken.” – Eve Ensler
5. “I love every cell of my body.” – Louise Hay
6. “We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.” – Lori Deschene
7. “My body is not my enemy. It just overreacts to things sometimes, and that’s actually OK.” – Maggy van Eijk
8. “Life is so much more beautiful and complex than a number on a scale.” – Tess Munster
9. “I’m not going to sacrifice my mental health to have the perfect body.” – Demi Lovato
10. “I’ve learned to appreciate my body, because it’s taken me all the way here and will take me to the end.” – Clémentine Desseaux
Body Image Quotes To Think About
According to online surveys conducted with YouGov in 2019, 20% of adults were ashamed of their own body in the previous year.
You know well you only live once. You only have one body on this journey, so let’s embrace it!
Keep scrolling to read a few brilliant perspectives on body image issue:
1. “I don’t have perfect teeth. I’m not stick thin. I want to be the person who feels great in her body and can say that she loves it and doesn’t want to change anything.” – Emma Watson
2. “As a child, I never heard one woman say to me, ‘I love my body’. Not my mother, my elder sister, my best friend. No one woman has ever said, ‘I am so proud of my body.’ So, I make sure to say it to my daughter because a positive physical outlook has to start at an early age.” – Kate Winslet
3. “…there are TONS of women who look like me but rarely did I see my body type represented in the media – and that lack of representation distorted the way I perceived my own beauty.” – Laura Delarato
4. “Crushing your skin in the tightest clothes possible is exactly opposite of freedom and power.” – Yet Another Tale
5. “In owning the parts of me that I so badly wanted to ignore and hide, I’ve dismantled the shame I’ve held for years, and began building self-acceptance for myself in its place.” – Lenea Sims
6. “Most females are dissatisfied with how they look and battle with countless insecurities, not realizing that you look most beautiful when you think you don’t. I wish that women and girls all over the world knew just how uniquely beautiful that we ALL are. Loving yourself for who YOU are is empowering! There’s great freedom in being unbothered by other people’s opinion of you.” – Stephanie Lahart
7. “Girls of all kinds can be beautiful – from the thin, plus-sized, short, very tall, ebony to porcelain-skinned; the quirky, clumsy, shy, outgoing and all in between. It’s not easy though because many people still put beauty into a confining, narrow box… think outside of the box.” –Tyra Banks
8. “One day I decided that I was beautiful and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl. It doesn’t have anything to do with how the world perceives you. What matters is what you see.” – Gabourey Sidibe
9. “We are a gorgeous, infinite circle of women of all shades, all styles, in all the ways we were made, inside of us everything blooms.” – Alicia Keys
See also: 70 Woman Respect Quotes That Remind About Women’s Worth
10. “If we base our self-worth on something as ever-changing as our bodies, we will forever be on the emotional roller coaster of body obsession and shame.” – Chrissy King
Eye-opening Body Shaming Quotes
Body shaming comes in many different forms. Unfortunately, it’s often our nearest that make us start believing that we’re too much of a something.
The good news is that we can simply ignore their opinions and ideas of a desired body or beauty.
This is obviously easier said than done, but, let’s check out the following body shaming quotes that are truly eye-opening:
1. “Hating our bodies is something that we learn, and it sure as hell is something that we can unlearn.” – Megan Jayne Crabbe
2. “My great hope for us as young women is to start being kinder to ourselves so that we can be kinder to each other. To stop shaming ourselves and other people: ‘too fat, too skinny, too short, too tall, too anything.’ There’s a sense that we’re all ‘too’ something, and we’re all not enough. This is life. Our bodies change. Our minds change. Our hearts change.” – Emma Stone
3. “To all the girls that think you’re fat because you’re not a size zero, you’re the beautiful one. It’s society who’s ugly.” – Marilyn Monroe
4. “You’re not a better person if you eat carrots, and you’re not a fuc*up if you eat pie.” – Jes Baker
5. “You don’t encourage people to take care of their body by telling them to hate it.” – Laci Green
6. “… women are conditioned to waste hours, days, weeks, months (although, truth be told, it’s most likely years) doubting, undermining, and ultimately hating parts, if not all, of themselves based solely on “problems” with their bodies that can be solved by buying products from an industry that invented these problems in the first place. How fuc*ing convenient. And when all is said and done, what is the prize for this self-torture? Fitting neatly within society’s destructive narrative about the female body.” – Phoebe Robinson
7. “A war on obesity that teaches people to hate themselves in the name of health is useless. Campaigning for help while ignoring the harm the campaign has inflicted on those who it’s supposedly trying to help, is senseless. And aiming to improve people’s physical health with methods that actively destroy those people’s mental health, is so obviously backwards that I have no idea how people aren’t seeing it.” – Megan Jayne Crabbe
8. “My body is not yours to critique and discuss. My body is not yours for consumption. My body is my vessel. An archive of experiences. A weapon that has fought battles only I understand. A library of love, pain, struggle, victory, and mystery. Your eyes cannot define all it has endured. Do not place value upon my body, place it upon my being.” – Sophie Lewis
9. “I like how I look, usually, but people – especially people on the internet – can be so mean when you’re fat. As if fat makes you stupid, or dirty, or irresponsible. As if fat makes you anything other than… fat.” – Amy Spalding
10. “Let’s get real about the ideal. It sucks. It doesn’t represent us, and it doesn’t even try to. It refuses to acknowledge that people of all sizes, shapes, ages, skin colors, genders and abilities exist and are worthy of being seen, heard, and valued.” – Megan Jayne Crabbe
Inspirational Body Confidence Quotes
Online surveys conducted with YouGov also show that 19% were disgusted in the previous year when it comes to perception of their own body.
Yet, one of the best feelings in the world is when you’re absolutely confident and feel good in your own skin.
Here are some inspirational body positivity quotes that’ll help you develop a positive body image and boost your confidence:
1. “Remember that our bodies are always changing, and that’s okay. What’s really unhealthy is trying to fit into an unrealistic norm of what is seen as perfect.” – Olakemi
2. “I’ve finally recognized my body for what it is: a personality-delivery system, designed expressly to carry my character from place to place, now and in the years to come.” – Anna Quindlen
3. “I am done wearing clothes to make other people feel comfortable at the expense of my womanhood.” – Brittany Gibbons
4. “Beauty is the enemy. We try to conquer not feeling beautiful all our lives. It’s a battle that can’t be won. There’s no definition of beauty. The only way to achieve beauty is to feel it from inside without breaking down into individual physical attributes.” – Miley Cyrus
5. “I keep telling myself that I’m a human being, an imperfect human being who’s not made to look like a doll.” – Emma Watson
6. “Since I don’t look like every other girl, it takes a while to be okay with that. To be different. But different is good.” – Serena Williams
See also: 130 Quotes About Being Different To Celebrate Uniqueness
7. “Touch your body without shame or embarrassment or thoughts of it needing to be something else. Give yourself a hug before bed and tell yourself that it will be okay. Touch yourself with kindness every day – you’re in this relationship for the long haul.” – Megan Crabbe
8. “Being a healthy woman isn’t about getting on a scale or measuring your waistline. We need to start focusing on what matters – on how we feel, and how we feel about ourselves.” – Michelle Obama
9. “Don’t change your body to get respect from society. Instead let’s change society to respect our bodies.” – Golda Poretsky
10. “You are imperfect, permanently, and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.” – Amy Bloom
Positive Body Image Quotes
Once you accept all your ‘flaws’ and imperfections, you enter a completely different dimension! Find more inspirational and positive body image quotes below:
1. “People often say that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder,’ and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder.” – Salma Hayek
2. “If God wanted me to be black, I’d be black. If God wanted me to be white, I’d be white. But he chose for me to be both and original. So I guess that’s the way I’m supposed to be.” – Winnie Harlow
3. “I definitely have body issues, but everybody does. When you come to the realization that everybody does that – even the people that I consider flawless – then you can start to live with the way you are.” – Taylor Swift
4. “This is it: this body is home. This is where I live and hang my hat. This is where I settle into my hips and sit easy in myself, slung together with strong muscles and bones, made gentle and forging with flesh. This body is durable, has lasted for years, hunkered down through fierce storms and allows for the peaceful erosions of age. It is like a cottage on the shore: weathered and well made, a place where a person could comfortably live. I like it here. It is my own.” – Marya Hornbacher
5. “I’ve made peace with the fact that the things I thought were weaknesses or flaws were just me. I like them.” – Sandra Bullock
6. “You’ve just got to laugh at yourself, honestly. I mean, I know when I’m having a fat day and when I’ve lost weight. I accept all of the bodies.” – Rihanna
7. “To accept your body – and I mean, truly accept your body – without attempting to break it down or pull it apart; slice and dice it to achieve perceived desirability is freedom by any other name.” – Diriye Osman
8. “Every day the world feeds you fakeness; be courageous enough to stay real.” – Allene van Oirschot
9. “I don’t want to wait until I’m 73 to embrace my body. To look back and think of my beauty: How did I miss it? Let’s not wait another moment.” – Ashley Asti
10. “You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress, simultaneously.” – Sophia Bush
11. “I stand in front of the mirror and say to Mia [my daughter], ‘We are so lucky that we’ve got a shape. We’re so lucky we’re curvy.'” – Kate Winslet
12. “Girls see enough of this body we can’t imitate, that we’ll never be able to obtain… these unrealistic expectations. It’s better to look healthy and strong.” – Jennifer Lawrence
13. “Being unkind to your body in any given moment won’t change your body in that moment. It will change the way you feel about being in your body. You can interact with your body differently. You can choose your body back. Regardless of how easy or difficult it is to live there.” – Anna Sweeney
14. “Everybody is different, and every body is different.” – Beverly Diehl
15. “Your body is your home, your vessel in life. It needs to be respected and loved.” – Iskra Lawrence
Love Your Body Quotes
As reported by YouGov, 34% of survey participants also felt low in 2018 regarding their body.
Having that in mind, here are some more wonderful body positivity quotes that stress the importance of loving your body:
1. “You have to stand up and say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with me or my shape or who I am; you’re the one with the problem!’” – Jennifer Lopez
2. “I strongly believe that our bodies give back to us whatever resonates with the thoughts we are thinking about it. If you truly love your body, are grateful and appreciative of the things it CAN do for you, and what it does for you every day without even having to ask, you will change your life.” – Crystal Gray
3. “Just because we have acne, tummy rolls, and chafing thighs doesn’t mean we need to be fixed. Period.” – Mik Zazon
4. “I’ve never wanted to look like models on the cover of magazines. I represent the majority of women and I’m very proud of that.” – Adele
5. “This body had carried me through a hard life. It looked exactly the way it was supposed to.” – Veronica Roth
6. “I don’t really care what I look like that much, and I think women out there should just be happy with the way they look. They shouldn’t really try to conform to any kind of stereotype. Just be happy and hopefully healthy.” – Rebel Wilson
7. “And I said to my body, softly, “I want to be your friend. It took a long breath and replied, “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.” – Nayyirah Waheed
8. “I glance down at my body, tempted to poke at my hips. I find it funny how every single thing in this world reminds me of art. A large canvas is still a pretty one.” – Shireen Ayache
9. “Loving your body is about being comfortable in your body, and only you get to set the parameters of that. Only you get to decide what that looks like, and only you know where the finish line is. Never let anyone make you feel ashamed about what you decide, or don’t decide, to put on your body.” – Brittany Gibbons
10. “You need to be able to create a relationship with your body. Stop thinking about how other people will judge you, or other people’s opinion, and find self-love first” – Harnaam Kaur
11. “Step away from the mean girls and say bye-bye to feeling bad about your looks. Are you ready to stop colluding with a culture that makes so many of us feel physically inadequate? Say goodbye to your inner critic, and take this pledge to be kinder to yourself and others.” – Oprah Winfrey
12. “As for the rest of you, remember this: YOU ARE WANTED. Big, small, tall, short, pretty, plain, friendly, shy. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, not even yourself. Especially yourself.” – Jennifer Niven
13. “I longed to love this frame that was projected towards me. I continued staring. This was me, my body, and it was mine.” – Malebo Sephodi
14. “The next time you start looking in the mirror at all the things you want to change, I hope you remember that when you came into this world, there were people who looked at you and thought you were the most perfectly formed human they had ever seen. There still are people who look at you and thank the universe each time for giving them such a precious gift. I hope you remember that where you see things you dislike, they see all that is good and beautiful wrapped up in laughter, and the things that make you uniquely you.” – Kirsten Robinson
15. “I wish I could tell my younger self that she was always more than a body. She always had more to offer the world than weight loss and flat abs. So much more.” – Megan Jayne Crabbe
Final Words
Sooner or later, at some point in our lives, we all may feel low or uncomfortable in our own skin.
We’re just humans and it’s often our brain that tricks us into thinking we’re not good enough. This is a perfectly normal response if you consider that we’re bombarded by ‘perfect’ bodies and faces on a daily basis.
Just open your Insta for example, and there you have it – it’s flooded with beauty filters and everyone’s absolutely stunning!
Of course, filters are just one tiny part – not to mention plastic surgeries, the power of make-up, camera tricks and posing – you name it!
However, every cloud has a silver lining – raising awareness of the importance of self-acceptance and self-love ultimately leads to a revolution in self-perception. We’ll finally start appreciating our physical features!
In my case, I embraced my femininity, my vitiligo, all my ‘flaws’, and guess what – I finally feel good about myself and I’m happy!
Dear readers, thank you for visiting us – I hope you enjoyed reading this article!
If you liked my list of 70 body positivity quotes, be sure to share it with your nearest and dearest! Sharing is caring 🙂
Read next:
130 Self-Love Affirmations To Help You Embrace Yourself
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