Learning to Love the Girl in the Mirror by Helena Grace Donald – Book Promo

Today on the blog we welcome Helena Grace Donald with an extract from her new book, ‘Learning to Love the Girl in the Mirror: A Teenage Girl’s Guide to Living a Happy and Healthy Life‘.

Learning to Love the Girl in the Mirror
A Teenage Girl’s Guide to Living a Happy and Healthy Life

Author – Helena Grace Donald
Publisher – Torch Flame Media
Pages – 184
Release Date – 13th April 2017
ISBN 13 – 978-0998816104
Format – ebook, paperback
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This book is for every girl who has ever looked in the mirror and criticized her own reflection; for every girl who has ever compared herself negatively to others; for every girl who has ever thought of dieting; and for every girl who is already struggling with negative body image issues and unhealthy eating habits.

Learning to Love the Girl in the Mirror is a “must read” for any teenage girl. It’s packed full of self-empowering and self-loving tools that will leave you feeling Supergirl confident.

In a world where advertising, celebrity culture and social media reign, it’s becoming more and more common for young girls to have some form of negative body issue or eating disorder. This is not only harmful and dangerous on a personal level, it’s also destructive and disempowering for womanhood as a whole, and it’s got to STOP now!

This is Helena’s brutally honest story of how she overcame the battle with her own body and went from miserable and self-hating to absolutely loving the skin she’s in! Still in her early twenties, Helena completely relates to her fellow young women in the most loving and supportive way. Helena’s mission is to inspire young women that it is possible to love and appreciate your body in a completely healthy way. This book is packed full of the tools that will help any young girl to do exactly that.

Excerpt – Learning to Love the Girl in the Mirror

Have you ever made jelly? To make it, you have to pour hot liquid into a mould so that, when it sets, it’ll hold a specific shape. I look at the so-called “ideal body shapes” that so many people strive for today as jelly moulds that we’re all trying to set ourselves into. Can you imagine what it would be like if every female on the planet was made from the same mould? There would be nothing unique about any of us.

Instead of an abundant variety of shapes, colours, and personalities, the world would be filled with identical, wibblywobbly jelly blobs. How boring would that be? But, as well as being boring, it’s also completely unachievable! The “ideal” body shape that many girls try to fit themselves into is changing all the time. It changes from century to century, decade to decade, and now it even seems to be changing every four to five years.

What we think is attractive now definitely wasn’t the way girls and women wanted to look even just a few years ago, and probably won’t be the way they want to look in a few years’ time. As I write this book, big booties are in, but if fashion follows the trend of the last 100 years, they will not be in for long. In just one century, the number of different “ideal” female shapes there have been is actually hilarious. Take a look at this:

1910s: small bust and waist with big hips

1920s: straight up and down with no curves

1930s: shapeless was out and curvier was in

1940s: tall, angular look with broad shoulders and long legs

1950s: a more petite, curvy hourglass shape like Marilyn Monroe

1960s: curves were out and the beanpole or “twig” look was in

1970s: skinny was out and lean-but-curvy was in

1980s: the athletic, muscular look was all the rage

1990s: the gaunt “heroin chic” look became fashionable

2000s: the fit, athletic look was back with visible abs and airbrushed tans

Now: in this decade, curves and booties are back!

Hello, how is anyone meant to keep up with that? What’s next? A woman with long lean legs but a Kim Kardashian butt, Caucasian blue eyes but caramel sun-kissed skin, full Spanish lips but a cute button nose, rock hard female body-builder abs but a tiny waist, Michelle Obama arms and little perky breasts? Um, I’m sorry, but this woman doesn’t actually exist. It’s just a combination of all the things that marketing companies and the media decide to focus on at a particular time to sell their products. It’s completely subjective and constantly changing. What’s in one minute is out the next, and that’s largely controlled by a group of editors and fashion journalists sitting around a table deciding what to put on the front cover of their next magazine.

We are bombarded with these images of so-called “perfection” every day—gorgeous-looking girls all over the front covers of magazines, on TV, on our social media sites, and peering down at us like angelic creatures from massive billboards. The worst part? It’s so easy to feel insecure in comparison.

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Growing up and navigating my way through my school years was not always easy for me. In fact, it was a rocky road. (And not the delicious Ben & Jerry’s kind!)

I put so much pressure on myself to be ‘perfect’ and resented myself when I thought I wasn’t.

I often found it hard to show my true light to the girls in my class because I was scared of how they’d judge me.

I became so overwhelmed with pressures, both external and internal, that I became bulimic. Not a happy time, but guess what? I wouldn’t change a single thing!

Every experience I had gave me an opportunity to learn something really valuable about myself and who I am in the world. I can look back now with compassion for my 14 year- old self, hiding under her covers eating chocolate and crying because she felt so alone and so misunderstood. I’m grateful to her for experiencing that pain so that I can now share with you what I have learnt along the way.

Author Links

www.girlunfiltered.com
@Helena_G_Donald
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