Do You Ever Feel Weird About Receiving Body Compliments?

Last week I posted a picture of leggings I made on my other sewing blog. I got a lot of comments along the lines of  “You have the beautiful legs”  and “You have the perfect butt to wear these”. I quickly scrolled past the comments and looked away. I was sort of embarrassed and I laughed nervously to myself, “Yeah right! Maybe you haven’t seen very many legs or butts?”

My initial reaction was to toss off the compliment as something completely absurd (maybe they were reading my post on teeny tiny screens?) and let myself dispute it by checking off the list of negative things I have stored up about my butt.

I know random comments from fellow bloggers are nothing to focus on (or internalize), but it made me think—why was I so weird at receiving those compliments, regardless of where it was coming from? I know plenty of women and cultures that take random compliments like that with a grain of salt, but can also let it add positively to their self-concept (or just keeping it neutral), as opposed to creating more negativity.

Aside from it perhaps coming off as disrespectful talking about someone else’s body without their permission, I could have just smiled and thought, “Oh, that’s nice. I’m glad you admire my legs.” It made me feel sad that I had such difficulty with accepting a compliment about my body.

As background, my butt is the part of my body that most of my negative body energy goes to. Its the body part that I dwell on. Its always been “too small, too flat, too this and that…” When I try to practice body love, I try to give it the most (I’ve been far too mean to it in the past).

Instead of gracefully accepting the compliments, the attention to them made me self-conscious and woke up the body-bashing monster inside. It’s almost as if  I was uncomfortable with the idea of breaking the cycle of negativity towards my butt, perhaps because I’ve gotten so used to telling myself the story that my butt is the part of me that is never going to be good enough.

I wonder what I would tell myself if this weren’t the case? Not that I should need someone else’s outside validation that they like my butt (that needs to come from inside myself), but maybe this random person’s perception of me could teach me something about how I keep my own self stuck in a place where negativity prevails.

Have you ever found it hard to take a compliment, whether it was about your looks or something else?

Please share in the comments below and lets help each other end this cycle of negativity! – HilaAWW