In my effort to find inspiration this morning, I did a Google search for “self-acceptance.” There are a lot of responses. As a matter of fact, The Huffington Post returned 8 pages of articles they felt were related to self-acceptance. I thought to myself “GREAT” there are others writing about self-acceptance, this should be helpful to me gaining an understanding.
I noticed two things very quickly as I scanned through pages of article titles. The first thing I noticed was that the great majority of the articles were written by women. I am not suggesting that there is a problem with this, only that there is an apparent lack of men writing on self-acceptance. Why is that? Maybe there is some deep seated gender bias regarding self-acceptance…hmm…certainly worth investigating.
The second thing I noticed was that many of the articles….I would wager a solid 65%, were about self-acceptance of our physical self. Ways to love the skin your in…or how being “fat” or “curvy” is beautiful. Again, I am not judging this, these articles are written because people care about them, so they are definitely valuable. And lets face it, in our culture there is a lot of focus on the physical aspects.
I mention these two observations to create awareness of the fact that because there is a focus on women writers with a primary focus on physical self-acceptance that, to me, it suggests that there is a perceived lack in those things that are not prevalent. A.) Male writers and B.) discussions that talk about the larger aspect of whole self-acceptance and not just physical self-acceptance.
Now, I understand that this is only one source, The Huffington Post, and it is only one search term. This is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis of current literature regarding self -acceptance, however, it does provide an additional viewpoint. If I may , I suggest that our culture is largely at fault for this divide in the literature I found.
Regarding the apparent gender bias in the articles, even with all of our cultural advances in gender equality, there is still gender bias. Men are still, at least at some culturally relevant level, expected to be the strong leader type. Stoic, unemotional (to a point), etc….you know the stereotype. Perhaps because, it is still considered counter-culture for men to acknowledge, much less write about, something that suggests that they may have weaknesses. Self-Acceptance is about acknowledging and embracing our weaknesses. I will be the first to admit that I had trouble initially (and still do) with truly accepting my weaknesses. I have always felt that I needed to be the “strong” one in my family. It was my role as patriarch to make sure I was never rattled. I know that this stereotype is an old one and it is far less pronounced today as it was even 10 years ago, but this focus in the literature may suggest that we still have a ways to go in breaking down that stereotype….at least in the area of self-acceptance.
The apparent focus on physical self-acceptance was not a big shock for me. Our culture (at least the American culture anyway) has a prevalent focus on physical self-worth. I have mentioned in the past about the medias focus on happiness being derived from physical self-worth. I will be happy if I wear this outfit….or work-out more and look like this, etc… I suggest that this physical focus creates a very shallow version of self-acceptance, if it allows for self-acceptance at all. When we focus on the physical self-acceptance, we are still ignoring the mental/emotional/social self-acceptance that is critical to a “complete” picture of self-acceptance.
To tie this back to Cheerful Acceptance. Cheerful acceptance focuses on complete self-acceptance. Step 2 asks you to acknowledge everything that is true today….not just one aspect or another. It asks you to consider all of your strengths and weaknesses. That can be very scary, but also very freeing. Also, I write about Cheerful Acceptance at some level, from the male perspective. I will be the first to admit that accepting my weaknesses is very difficult, especially since I know that my wife is reading this everyday and I do not want her to see my weaknesses. So, I am proud to say that, based on what I observed, I am challenging the norm on who is currently writing about self-acceptance and what they are writing about. I firmly believe that women need to keep writing about self-acceptance and that learning to develop physical self-acceptance is a very important topic. I am just glad that I am able to offer another perspective.
Have a GREAT day!
Cheerful Acceptance 