talyalee:

I’ve been randomly grabbing pics of inspiration that I find and in doing so, had a huge epiphany about why I’ve been feeling so confident lately, so I’d like to share it with you:

 Freida Pinto

Karrueche Tran (Ignore that fact that she’s dating Chris Brown for now…)

You see - it’s all about shifting your perspective. I used to idolize thin, light haired and green eyed models (albeit, gorgeous women) and the style of bloggers and celebrities whose bodies were not relate able to me. Time and time again, I’d try to recreate their looks and then wonder why the shit I looked so.. OFF…so i shifted my aesthetic a bit and looked at girls with similar bodies, hair colour and type, skin tone and attitudes and suddenly, I feel a lot less envious of women with unattainable style or beauty.

Sofia Vergara

I don’t like to promote looking up to celebrities at all, but the reality is, we are all modelling ourselves after someone in some way…that’s what inspiration IS! So ladies, here is my advice. If you’re a thick, brown skinned chick with black hair…you’re never going to look like Blake Lively, Victoria Beckham or Emma Watson. These ladies have an immense amount of style and beauty, but you’re going to feel worse about yourself if you look to them for inspiration all of the time. 

Amber Rose

My suggestion, find a rad chick or a few rad chicks who have similar physical qualities to you, whether they be bloggers, celebrities, that girl at the MAC counter or even a classmate and find things you like about them. Don’t copy them directly, just find ways to work elements of their style into yours and then find what works for you. Just because something is trendy, doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you immediately either - seriously, I took 5+ years to get on the leggings trend because I just could NOT see them working in my wardrobe until this last year. 

Kat Dennings

Understand what works for YOUR body and YOUR skin tone. Colour schemes and ratios are all incredibly important. That dress looks sweet on your gorgeous, tiny friend…but does that mean you should get one in your size too?…maybe..maybe not. 

This has been working for me very well and I’ve been revamping my entire wardrobe slowly for the last year.To be honest (and as humble as this statement could possibly allow me to sound) I’ve never felt better about myself. 

Happy Saturday!

xx- Talya

Ps. I’ve got a bunch of really cool comments and questions in my inbox which I will get to this evening! School and a new job have got a hold of this girl and I haven’t had a tonne of blogging time… but thank you for your amazing words! I will be responding!

TOTALLY. You want to be inspired by someone’s look, or even just feel a little more comfortable in your own skin? Look for people that look like you. There are more around than the media might lead you to believe, even if finding them takes a little more effort than picking up a magazine at the grocery store checkout line. 

chasingidentity:

I am having a really great body image day so I am just going to take a moment to share the physical things I love about myself. Here we go:

-The way my skinny jeans fit fresh out of the dryer. Eventually I get butt sag but even that I am learning to love nowadays.

-My recent weight loss towards a healthy, realistic weight. I have always, always struggled with my weight but I just lost 20 pounds by eating proper meals and biking everywhere so I am a lot more confident in the shape of my belly and the curve of my hips. My hips aren’t going away anytime soon so for now I’m learning ways to love them.

-My voice. Yes, it can be feminine when I get really excited about things or when I laugh casually but I just really love my voice, which is a rare thing to love. I say laugh causally because if you know me, you know I have a seriously ridiculous laugh.

-My hair. I am so in love with my new haircut. I cannot stop smiling. In fact, I have moved my mirror to right next to my desk so I can just glance over and see these beautiful tufts anytime I want. I have always had a multitude of hair styles growing up. Anywhere from just above my shoulders, over half-way down my back, to a sahweet mullet on Christmas morning when I was three or four. Now that I have chopped it all the way down I cannot stop loving it.

-My eyes. I have always loved my eyes. They are the most beautiful blue eyes and I love them. This has always been something I have learned to focus on when I am having a really bad body image day. Instead of pointing out the bad, I turn my full-length mirror to face the wall and I take a picture of my eyes and post it up online and I keep coming back to it instead of the mirror. This might be the reason you see a lot of random close-ups of my face on Tumblr. Just a little fun fact.

I’m just going to leave this here and challenge all of you to list the things you love about yourself and leave it up on your blog to come back to on the bad days. You are all such beautiful people and if you need help coming up with beautiful things about yourself, as sometimes we all do, hit me up. I would love to share the things I see right off that bat and if I know you a little better I will share a lot. :]