But what we're really trapped by is perceptions. You think you need to lose weight for someone to love you. I think if I gain weight, no one will love me. What we really need is to just stop thinking of ourselves as bodies and start thinking of ourselves as people.
Interpretation
We often struggle with self-image and believe that our worth is tied to our appearance; we should focus on our humanity instead.
In this quote, Jennifer Weiner highlights the detrimental effects of societal perceptions on self-worth and love. She reflects on how people may feel that their physical appearance defines their value or ability to be loved, suggesting that true acceptance comes from recognizing our inherent humanity beyond mere bodies. It is a call to shift our perspective from superficial judgments to an appreciation of ourselves and others as whole beings deserving of love.
In practice
In a motivational speech about self-acceptance and body positivity.
I think it's a very old and deep-seated double standard that holds that when a man writes about family and feelings, it's literature with a capital L, but when a woman considers the same topics, it's romance, or a beach book - in short, it's something unworthy of a serious critic's attention.
My story starts at sea... a perilous voyage to an unknown land... a shipwreck... The wild waters roar and heave... The brave vessel is dashed all to pieces, and all the helpless souls within her drowned... all save one... a lady... whose soul is greater than the ocean... and her spirit stronger than the sea's embrace... Not for her a watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore. It will be a love story... for she will be my heroine for all time. And her name will be... Viola.
A nun of winter's sisterhood kisses not more religiously; the very ice of chastity is in them.
Even a god finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time. -Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur
He, too, stood looking at her for a moment - and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting after an absence, but the look of someone who had thought of her every day of that year. She could not be certain, it was only an instant, so brief that just as she caught it, he was turning.
It’s not what you do, but how much love you put into it that matters.
Time is how you spend your love.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.