COMFORTABLE
Self Love ? DISDAIN
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d i s d ai n noun 1. the fe e li n g t h at someon e or some th i n g i s u n w o r t h y of on e’ s co ns i d e rat i o n o r respec t .
List of Players Jordan Charles....................................... 6 Ash Tse..................................................10 Scott Cruft.............................................14 Tom Cadogan.........................................22 Drew Farmer..........................................26 Corey Donovan.......................................30 Timothy Aaron........................................32 Alex Robert............................................38
Self Care - Self Love. What’s it really all about?
Real Stories Real People...
Self love in men
of all ages is rarely talked about. This is a zine centered around that question that is floating around in the back of your head. ‘Do I really love myself? ‘ Why am you afraid to say yes? no? or go against the word ‘self-love’ itself? Interviewing people in their 20s on what self-love means to them. Are they on the same path, do some have secrets or higher knowledge than others?. Whenever you hear people talking about someone loving themself it is mostly always in a negative way. Loving yourself does not have to be narcissistic, it can be contentness, happiness and acceptance. If you want to know what people in their 20s think about self-love and there journey through self-care then this is the zine for you. A journey to self love. This is Comfortable Disdain.
Jordan Charles 24, London What does self-love mean to you?
Can loving or not loving yourself affect relationships?
To me, self love is very much
I think It can affect relationships,
your individuality and just really
yourself you’re going to be a lot
knowing your value, embracing acknowledging and going with
who you are, rather than trying
to be someone different. Apart from that you’ve got to believe in everything you do and that you want to do.
only because if you dont love
more insecure about little things that could potentially happen.
They always say you have to love
yourself before someone else can love you and I believe that’s very much true.
Have you had to learn to love yourself? For me yeah, I suppose from when I was a kid I wanted to fit in more, being so different it took me a while to love my-
self...fully. I might not even be there yet but, as an adult I
began to embrace my uniqueness and who I am and I believe I’m almost there.
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Photo Courtesy of Nii Agency / @niiagency
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Jordan Charles Why do you think men are afraid to love themselves? I think the reason that men
What advice would you give to younger minds regarding selflove and self care?
are afraid to love themselves
Always love yourself, always
line between self-love and be-
don’t judge your appearance
is sometimes due to the thin ing in love with yourself, being cocky, that kinda stuff. Also because of the stereotypes and the pressures that are put on with masculinity . I feel like
some men will think it’s a very feminate thing to love yourself and to make yourself up and
to make yourself look good on the outside when self-love
really comes from the inside and outside.
belive in yourself and again,
or anythimg about yourself by anyone elses standards.
You are the only one who’s governing that for yourself and I think comparing yourself to other people can be
really damaging for a lot of young people. Also don’t
change anything! Embrace what you have.. work with
it. I think that’s important. Don’t try and be like any-
one else, celebrity or not, just be yourself.
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Has social media ever made you doubt your self-worth? Social media has not made me doubt who I am, at all. I think you should never really compare yourself to other people, especially in their journey or how many followers someone has. See, I’ve built my social media quite a lot and to be fair it does the opposite for me. I often get really nice messages from people saying I’m ‘amazing’ or ‘inspiring’ so I think it can help a lot in certain ways.
Do you believe more men need to be more in touch with themselves and their emotions? Yeah I think we definitely should get more in touch with our emotions and just being more vocal about how we are feeling in general. I think it’s cause of stereotypes and what is expected of us, which is often drrilled into us during our upbringing by our friends and even masculine figures in our life. I do feel there is more to gain with sharing your feelings and I definitely reccomend it. I’ve started to do it more recently and I’ve found it to do me the world of good.
Do you love yourself?
This is a tough question to answer without sounding like a dick to be honest *chuckles* .... I love myself and I love who I am but I try to be modest with it at the same time and I try to not be cocky or make anyone else feel bad by me loving myself but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love myself, cause i really do.
ASH TSE 21, London
What does self-love mean to you?
Self-love means to me, appreciation of oneself without validation from anyone else telling me what’s right and what’s wrong or what’s good and what’s bad. It’s about what I think about myself.
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Have you had to learn to love yourself? Hasn’t everyone? appreciation and self-love is something that is on-going, one can not just acheive at one point in their life. It’s an ongoing process. It’s something you constantly work on.
Why do you think men are afraid to love themselves? Men are afraid to love themselves because we’ve got the stigmatism of us when we’re growing up, told by other men and other people in society that we have to bottle our feelings up, we can’t say things postitive about ourselves and we can’t speak out if we have problems. I feel like that is a big problem like when you grow up as a boy you have to be strong, you have to fit into all these ‘masculine’ boxes but as we all grow up we realise all people have feelings and men are sensitive.
Has social media ever made you doubt your self worth? For our generation social media has had a big influence in terms of how we look at ourselves because we grew up where we were inttroduced to it as teenagers and we were growing up with it and since then it’s had a big part in how we look at ourselves and how we judge ourselves and how we add up to what we see online and what we see on these apps. Obviously it takes a big part in how we look at ourselves but at the end of the day these people and these “perfect” stereotypes aren’t real.
Is self-love more than just image? Self love is definitely more than just what people see, self-love is what you see in yourself and in terms of what other people see we can all admit we are accused of being fake on social media and that we put out our best selves on instagram and snapchat, we only want everyone to see the best versions of us. It’s all up to if you’re confident in yourself, don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks.
Do you think more men need to get in touch with themselves and their emotions? And if so, how? Men need to speak out; boys, men, teens... need to talk about their feelings cause we have just as many feelings as girls do. It’s the whole stigmatism of how men can’t talk about their feelings, but then statistically in 2015, 75% of all UK suicides were male. Men from 25-45 have the biggest suicide rate in the whole population and it’s that problem where men feel scared to talk out and ask people for help and talk about their feelings, why they’re sad. I think we are getting better from it, theres more awareness now than there ever has been. Hopefully from the next couple years people will be able to talk about their fears and feelings and hopefully overcome the problems they can’t sort themselves. 12
Can loving or not loving yourself What advice would you affect relationships or how you are with give to younger minds regarding self-love others? Of course, the way that you look at and self-care? yourself and the way you feel about yourself can affect the way that you treat other people in terms of romantic or platonic relationships. But also I think it’s if you’re confident in yourself and you know who you are then all else will follow. It doesn’t really affect other people. Relationships will come and go but you are with yourself forever, it’s calm, be yourself.
Do you love yourself?
......... I do love myself.
I’m in a state where I’m
content with myself now. I am happy with myself, I don’t need another person or validation from anyone else to
tell me how I should feel so yeah, I’m good. I’m like a 98 percent.
Log off, stop thinking..stop caring what other people think cause at the end of the day no one else can dictate how you feel or how you are so, be yourself, don’t care.
Scott Cruft
20, Kent
What does self-love mean to you? It’s in the name, you have to love yourself. Self-love is putting yourself before other people. It is valuing your decisions, it is respecting the things that you put inside your body. It’s just about making the right choice every day. For me self-love is waking up in the morning and getting out of bed straight away, brush your teeth, have your breakfast and go about your life. I think that people these days are too lost in other people. But to answer your question, Self-love is SELF LOVE. You love yourself and you want the right things for yourself. 14
Have you ever had to learn to love yourself? Mmhm, 100% I think everyone has to learn to love themselves. Love is a very delicate subject and a very delicate topic as a whole, everyone thinks they’re in love when they’re young but no one knows the true definition of love until you experience it. But I say yeah you do have to learn to love yourself, as there is no way you are born loving yourself... unless you’re Jaden Smith.
Can loving or not loving yourself affect relationships? 100%, If you don’t love yourself before going into a relationship you will mistake that love for the love that you have for that other person, and I think you can lose yourself to that and I think that if you’re going into a relationship, if you want a commited relationship or want to be with someone for a lengthy period of time then you have to make sure you love yourself before hand for it to work. Cause if you don’t love yourself how the hell you gon love somebody else, can I get an Amen?
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Can self love be the key to finding true love? Yes, It is the key to finding true love. I think true love is self love. Saying that your true love is another person is completely wrong. Life is your journey, you should love YOURself, that is the true love, and anyone else is just... fun *laughs*
Has social media ever made you doubt how great you are? Um, not social media, er,... is
Tinder a social media? Tinder
made me devalue myself as a human being, but then again that dating app is just a
game, I came back from that, deleted the app and it made
Why do you think men are afraid to me stronger. say they love themselves? I feel like social media can ‘Cause men have stigmas. Men are just deceptable to other peoples lies and bullshit. Men are quite weakminded when they like to think theyre strong minded. They think that showing emotion is a sign of weakness when in fact it is a sign of strength. Men are scared to speak out in fear of having people laugh at them. They don’t wanna love themselves openly because it can be seen as quite a feminite thing to do and people just don’t like that, which is quite sad ‘cause it’s 2018 ya know, you can identify as a table if you want to so why can’t you love yourself?
also play a role in making
yourself question how you
look, question things about yourself but at the end of the day it’s all about your
mindset. If youre deceptable to that stuff then of course
it’s going to affect you but if you’re not then it’s not going to affect you, plain and simple.
Do you believe more men need to be more in touch with Do you believe more men need to be more in touch with themselves and their emotions? themselves and their emotions? Yeah I think that more men do, just because it’s getting to a Yeah I think that more men do, just because it’s getting to a point where it’s getting quite dangerous. There are people out point where it’s getting quite dangerous. There are people out there who don’t vocalise their feelings and traumas they’re there who don’t vocalise their feelings and traumas they’re going through. going through. Men do need to start upping their game in reMen do need to start upping their game in regards to self-love. gards to self-love. If anything it’s something they should proIf anything it’s something they should promote. I actually think mote. I actually think many men are into self-love but they just many men are into self-love but they just don’t like being open don’t like being open about it. You get boys that go to the gym about it. You get boys that go to the gym everyday to make everyday to make sure their arms are rock solid, like that there, sure their arms are rock solid, like that there, is a form of selfis a form of self-love. There’s boys these days that get their love. There’s boys these days that get their eyebrows done eyebrows done and that was considered a very feminine thing and that was considered a very feminine thing to do about 10 to do about 10 years ago but boys now do it because it’s now years ago but boys now do it because it’s now normal. I think normal. I think self-love and care is becoming more normalised self-love and care is becoming more normalised and we need to and we need to make one final push and get loving ourselves. make one final push and get loving ourselves.
What advice would you give to What advice would you give to younger minds regarding self-love and care? younger minds regarding self-love and care? Do it, Love yourself. You are your main inspiration in Do it, Love yourself. You are your main inspiration in life. You are you. You are one of a kind, there is no life. You are you. You are one of a kind, there is no one else on this planet that has all the things inside one else on this planet that has all the things inside your body that make you so why would you sit there your body that make you so why would you sit there and doubt your life and doubt your worth when you and doubt your life and doubt your worth when you were made iconic to you. Why would you question were made iconic to you. Why would you question that? Why would you question nature? that? Why would you question nature?
Do You Love Yourself? 100%. I am perfect for me. I’m waiting until you’re able to clone yourself in the opposite gender and then I would marry myself. That sounds so egotistical but I don’t care. You’ve got to love yourself to get far in life because if you’re not confident in who you are and your ideas, people won’t resepct them and they won’t resepect you. So, love yourself and dont be afraid to do it. You should wake up every day and be like, you know what? you’re peng and you’re smart, give yourself a little kiss in the mirror. Love yourself.
Depression affects 350 million people worldwide. Yet many men are still ashamed to speak out in fear of not living up to masculinity stigma that is taught from a very young age.
Struggling is a secret that so many of us lock away, yet it is this feeling that drives us.
Tom Cadogan 21, Epsom
What does self-love mean to you? I think it is a level of respect and appreciation for yourself in a mindset that can help you achieve more.
Have you had to learn to love/appreciate yourself?
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A little bit, I mean going through adolescents that every teenager does. They go through stages of questioning who they are or what they want to be and stuff so I think everyone has battles with themselves and insecurities they don’t like but it’s just about finding a way to counteract and use that as a strength rather than a weakness and try not to get too much in your head about it and just enjoy life for what it is, rather than being caught up in little things like your appearance and shit like that
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Sel
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Why do you think some men are afraid to love themselves?
ou
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our
lf?
Because of the ridiculous stereotype behind hypermasculinity in men and certain, very powerful countries re-inforcing it in their media all the time and it’s just ridiculous, because i mean, specially being someone who’s gone through a tragic loss, it’s definitely something that if you got too emotional or have shit on your mind, you need to talk about it. You can’t bottle it all up, you’ve got to try and talk about it and get everyone on board who’s going through something similar. Help others aswell after something that you’ve found successful and gone through.
Can loving or not loving yourself affect relationships? Yes, because certain insecurities people can affect it upon their significant other I believe. So if one person has something they really don’t like about themselves they might pass that on as a way of them feeling better
about themselves. I know it’s imature but it still happens, everywhere. I feel there is a fine line between self love, confidence and arrogance/ cockiness. I suppose it depends... self love is good but it depends how you inforce it upon people is sorta dependent on how it’s scaled I reckon. I feel like if you’re both comfortable with each other in a relationship and you’re both comfortable in yourselves then I feel like it’s beneficial.
Has social media ever made you doubt your self-worth? Yeeeeyeah, when I was younger, definitely when I was younger, when I was like 14-16 I was very materialistic. I was like a fucking Tumblr kid, when tumblr was popping, when streetwear was big and no one was really wearing Supreme, and Obey was like the biggest thing in the world but I always had pictures on my dashboard of
people I knew that had 50k notes on their pictures and I was like ‘ok, ok, cool...’ I mean I had a good amount of followers myself and my images got around 26k notes on them so I was pretty confident in myself not going to lie. I went to a Tumblr meet up back in the day and this girl came over and asked if she could have a picture with me, I was 15 and I was shocked by it but it was the funniest thing. I feel like social media helped me shape my current self and style, like certain people I found out about through instagram and stuff, certain characters or people from bands, social personalities and that that I have taken inspiration from I feel as thought that is a positive. There’s positives and negatives it’s just subjective to how you use it.
What advice would you give to younger minds regarding self-love and care? Don’t care about other peoples opinions because well, depending on where you live it might feel like a small town and everyone knows everybody, everything is known by everybody and people are gonna say shit but it literally doesn’t matter. I think that if you’re gonna get
on with something you need to get your head down and actually dedicate some time and effort into it ‘cause people are too hung up nowadays on having a finished product, no one wants to work through the process so I feel as though it’s something that you need to work on. You can’t wake up one morning and be like ‘oh I love myself’ I mean sometimes you do, you can wake up feeling yourself which is calm but it’s like a gradule thing, you learn how to do it but you have to learn how to do it yourself. You can take influence from people but at the end of the day no ones going to tell you how to because no one knows you better than you do.
Do you love yourself? I feel like, yeah, there’s things I’m still working on , especially if you’re working in the fashion industry - something that I’m going on to do after I finish uni, you need to literally not care what other people look like or say because you’re going to be surrounded by
models and successful people all the time and you’re just gonna get yourself down by it and that’s not going to get you anywhere. So I feel like having a positive mentallity about who you are and what you have is the best way to go about. If you’re changing your self/image to please other people you are not being yourself. so
being yourself and being comfortable in that is a level of self love in my eyes. in my self i feel confident and i feel pretty happy. yeah.
I’m happy
Drew Farmer What does self love mean to you?
23, Brighton
I think it means being 100% content and happy within yourself and your image and with those around you, your peers and your friends. Your self isnt just a small individual, you are made up of everyone around you. So, I think you should have love for everyone around you as well and that creates a great self-love inside.
Have you ever had to learn to love yourself? Yeah, I have indeed. It’s an ongoing thing, I think for everyone it’s an ongoing thing.
Can loving or not loving yourself affect relationships? Yeah, a relationship would be impossible to be healthy if you didn’t truly love yourself first as you can project bad parts that you don’t like of yourself onto the other person and it’s unhealthy for you and your partner to endure.
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What do you do on sad days to make yourself happier? Meditate, read, go to the gym, go for a run, do yoga. A cold shower! See my friends as well.
Do you love yourself?
Yes. Can self love be the key to finding true love? Yeah it can because if you work on yourself and your journey on being true to yourself you will attract things that you want - not in a literal way but if you’re looking for it and fishing for love it’ll never work. It has come from a place of authenticity.
What advice would you give to younger minds regarding self love and self care? I think stay off social media as much as possible. The younger you are you should definitely not be on social media in a sense. And ah just don’t listen to what anyone says it’s all bullshit really and don’t read into anything in popular culture. The whole of popular ccultures take on love and beauty is all bullshit.
Do you believe more men need to be more in touch with their emotions? Yeah, 100%, I feel like on the most micro level you can just walk out and speak to a guy and within two minutes you can see his fragile masculinity in action even if it’s just little suttle things, it’s just so homogeneous and it’s really horrible. Three out of four people that kill themselves are men and that’s fucked up. It’s the biggest killer of men under 50 and we need to be more open and embrace vulnerability. Vulnerability is actually a beautiful trait and it’s percieved as the opposite.
Self Care Tips for Boys from Boys Self
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narcissistic.
Do not worry about what other men are negatively thinking. Why live in a negative shadow when you can be the best YOU. -Amie Sawyer Try to have an individual and personally developed connection with as many of the young people in your family as possible cause kids look up to and learn big man, more than you’d think. And plus it does a million favours for your sense of patience which helps when dealing with childish adults. - Alex Twisted Pennys
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I like to say I have rest days. I’m normally active and con� stantly with people but once a week I put my cellphone on airplane mode the ma� jority of the day and stay in. Kinda like hanging out with myself. - Kaanon
A lot of parents specifically from African/ Caribbean Households try to force the sons to go into some specific path in their life cause they think its more rewarding. That affects a lot because if you don’t like it, or are not doing well you start to feel like a fail� ure. You should learn how to say no to parents. It is the hardest thing but you will have peace of mind because you decided to choose your own path. Stefano A lot of my mental fortitude comes from my faith but if I were to adapt it to just anyone I’d say, 1. Do your best and leave the rest. 2. Make sure you’re honest with yourself when it comes to doing your best as it lets you have a greater semse of peace. 3. -Which is really important for me- Is that don’t compare your page 3 in a book out of 250 pages to someone elses page 99 out of 100 as it’s not fair and will only drive you insane. And also, It’s ok to feel emotional as a man just don’t let them dictate your reality. Isaac Self care for anyone; less time on apps - spend a day using your phone for texts and calls and only check the gram once, measure how happy you feel before and after ya do it, take note. But most importantly - for the boys Force through all the stupid awkward shit and just say it. Talk. - Louis
Corey Donovan 23, Bristol What does self love mean to you? Loving yourself, being comfortable and confident in your own self.
Have you ever had to learn to love yourself? A bit yeah but not a lot. Nothing drastic. Yeah to be honest I’ve always been ok with myself.
Why do you think men are afraid to love themselves? Just cause they’re meant to be manly and not show emotion, so they’ve learned from that.
Can loving or not loving yourself affect relationships? Yeah, not loving yourself can affect it more. If you’re not loving yourself it could mean you’re not fully happy which could affect the realtionship.
What qualities do you like and dislike about yourself? I like my humour and my energy, is that a qaulity? I dislike - I feel as though I can be a bit annoying, um, yeah, haha.
Has social media ever made you doubt how great you are? Ah, maybe, not as much. Instagram and twitter kinda has but I can’t pinpoint a situation.
What do you do to make yourself feel happy? Listen to music, meditate and masturbate.
Do you think more men should be more in touch with their emotions and shake their fears of being labelled as feminine? Yeah more men definitely need to be more in touch with themselves. They just should. Most people that commit suicide are men and I think that’s because they bottle their thoughts up too much and they should be more open.
Do you love yourself?
Yes! 31
Timothy Aaron
22, South London
What does self love mean to you? To me self love means being content with yourself, not trying to change yourself to fit a certain image or trying to fit in. It means to be happy within yourself. Doing what you wanna do without feeling pressured from other people.
Have you ever had to learn to love yourself? I’d say yeah I’ve had to learn to love myself. There was a time back in school where I was trying to fit in with a certain crowd, rugby lad culture, and I was doing things that today I wouldn’t do. Not necessarily bad things but just things I wasn’t comfortable with, it wasn’t anything ridiculous but you know when you’re just not feeling comfortable in situations? Like why am i here? but you wanna be there because it’s gonna be there ‘cause it’s gonna be the most talked about thing when you get back to school. I do feel that I just wasted a lot of time of my life not learning to love myself.
Is self love more than just image? Yeah, I think self love is about finding your inner peace, your serenity, It’s about ya know, being spirtual, just loving YOURself. Being in touch with your emotions kinda thing. It’s not about looking good, it’s not about that. It’s about being comfortable with who you are. I think that’s where self love comes from - not thinking about your image or external. It’s about self love - loving and being comfortable with who you are. 32
Can loving or not loving yourself affect relationships? Yeah I certainly think it can ‘cause if you don’t love yourself then the way you’re gonna treat other people is naturally gonna just be in a negative way and I definitely think not loving myself in that period like it affected realtionships with my family, my parents, I was more distant from them because I was just thinking to myself, - I’m hanging out with these people thinking like ah their situations so easy, my parents could make my situation the same as theirs but they just don’t. Not forgetting though that being Nigerian, coming from a different ethnic background, they’re always going to have a different outlook on life. It makes certain opportunities for you different. I didn’t respect that enough and just thought our struggles were the same but it just took me a year or two to realise that it’s just not the same and it’s never going to be the same.
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Why do you think men are afraid to love themselves? I think it’s just this image of masculinity. Men just aren’t in touch with their emotions as much or think they’re not allowed to be but you can be. I just think it’s this thing where men lack emotion, and it’s a thing to be like that in certain situations. You’re meant to be this strong guy that can hold the household down and that. It’s traditional views and that is why. I personally can’t say that.Most people I know know how to love themselves now because it’s developing more I guess.
Has social media ever made you doubt your self worth? Me personally, I tend to stay away from social media. I have instagram and Facebook but I don’t post on it. I had Twitter but I never went on it. I don’t really use social media. When I look at social media I just feel like people get distracted. I mean it has it’s good uses like networking and stuff like that but i feel that it’s a bit fake. Some people use it for the wrong thing. It’s not ever made me doubt my self worth though. I feel like I’d rather do things in real life. In real life I know that I have a decent personality, on social media I feel like I can’t express that so it will never make me doubt my self as a person. 34
What advice would you give to younger minds regarding self love and care? You just have to kind of, like meditatate, well not meditate but just think. Think a lot of the time, think about what you want, who you are, what you wanna be and think that no one can stop you from getting that. And then once you find that inner peace or you’re satisfied with yourself then you can really move forward as a person and you can develop that thought process at a young age, say around 14/15 is probably when you can develop those thoughts, so just start thinking and contemplating, when you’re on the train or the bus, at home when you’re trying to sleep. Have those deep thoughts and yeah, find out about yourself!
Is it easier to love yourself before anyone else? It’s harder to love yourself because loving yourself isn’t something you are taught. Loving someone else is something that’s taught from a certain age. You love your parents, in realtionships you love other people but with loving yourself no one really speaks about that. Soemtimes it might take you an even longer time to love yourself than to love someone else because you never even knew about loving yourself, really.
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Do you love yourself? I think so. I think so, I think I love myself. If I don’t love myself I’m close to loving myself because I haven’t loved myself but over the past three years I’ve developed as a person, particulary the last three uni years. I’ve grown to love myself a lot more. Now i’m more comfortable with what I’m doing, who my friends are but in the past I wasn’t that comfortable but I still pursued those parts anyway. Can’t say I love myself yet but I’m close. I’m on that journey.
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Alex Robert
21, Manchester
What does self-love mean to you? Self love means being as confident, not as confident but as real as you can to yourself. I mean, you can pretend to be self loved by buying loads of things and pretend like its material and I don’t think it is. I think a lot of people confuse materialism with self love cause it’s not all about what you wear and shit.
Is it natural to love and loathe yourself at the same time? Yeah definitely, especially when you have a lot of people that are close to you and if they believe certain things about you and because you care about them it kind of affects you. At one point a bunch of your friends could allow you to self love yourself, because I think it depends on a lot of other people not just yourself. A lot of your friends can allow you to love yourself or allow you to kind of go astray and they don’t really give a shit about it so, it does depend on how many people you’ve got around you and who you can actually consider to be a close friend, who you know is gonna stand by you I suppose, for me anyway. It sounds like I rely on other people for self-love but I think if you’ve got people close to you then that is how it happens.
Is it natural to love and loathe yourself at the same time? Yeah definitely, especially when you have a lot of people that are close to you and if they believe certain things about you and because you care about them it kind of affects you. At one point a bunch of your friends could allow you to self love yourself, because I think it depends on a lot of other people not just yourself. A lot of your friends can allow you to love yourself or allow you to kind of go astray and they don’t really give a shit about it so, it does depend on how many people you’ve got around you and who you can actually consider to be a close friend, who you know is gonna stand by you I suppose, for me anyway. It sounds like I rely on other people for self-love but I think if you’ve got people close to you then that is how it happens.
Can loving or not loving yourself affect relationships? Yeah, If you don’t love yourself I think people get confused as well that loving yourself is kinda vain and not at the same time. In order to get up and get dressed everyday you have to love yourself because of the shitty world we live in. Self-love also means looking after yourself, making yourself feel better on the inside. If you don’t love yourself and you have that kind of aura about you it can be evident, you can notice it. People have these kind of personality traits that allows it to be so visible, but it definitely affects relationship. Because I feel if you don’t love yourself then you’ve always got a secret.
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What advice would you give to younger minds regarding self-love and care? Ok, younger people at this particular moment in time don’t know much about not self-loving themselves. With them it’s night and day. I’ve met younger people, who are really driven, but at the same time society is producing stubborn and kind of egotistic people. I mean obviously there is still good people but at the same time I think young people are just kind of driven and walked through the wrong paths sometimes. Obviously there are young people who are still down and go through shit but the modern young person is often too wrapped up in themselves to care about anything else really. I definitely don’t want my nieces to grow up thinking they’re the shit. Lots of young people now are listening to Cardi B and she sings stuff like ‘I sleep with your man and don’t give two shits’ Literally! And I was in work the other day and my colleague who is 16, beautiful girl so polite and so kind, she was telling me how she sees Cardi B as like an idol and she don’t take any shit from her man and I was just like wow ok, don’t take any shit from your man but don’t give him shit either just because Cardi B said it! Promoting cheating and promoting bad behaviour, she thinks it’s cool but its not... @ Cardi B *laughs*
Why do you think men are afraid to love themselves? I don’t think men are afraid to love themselves. Like, gay men are obviously afraid to love themselves because of the stigma they get but a lot of straight men are kinda vain. I mean somewhere they probably have some deep underlining issues but I don’t think a lot of men have, well I mean, there’s a couple of men well a lot of men I suppose, that have high emotions but a lot of men don’t. A lot of men have an easy life. -Are you sure that’s not programmed into them from a young age?
Maybe, maybe. For as long as I can remember it’s always been like there has to be shivery there, but in now days you can’t just assume that a man is going to have shivery. It’s like if you go and hit a man, like if you’re a tiny woman and you go and hit a man you expect them to not hit you back just because he’s a man and you’re a woman blah blah. But if you’re going against someone you can’t expect them not to react, do you know what I mean? It’s definitely programmed in men that they have to be strong and there has to be shivery and you’re the one that is relied on and because of that you can’t really show their true personalities, unless they have some femininity in their life, help from friends but I think all men have the ability to love themselves but because of the perception of men in the media and things like that, i mean it has got better in this century thanks to Ru Paul obviously, as what Ru preaches couldn’t be anymore selflove. Men are afraid to show their true emotions really because of weird rules that aren’t real.
Do you love yourself? uhmm…I.. I respect myself. But I don’t love myself. I know it’s important to have self love but love is a term that people often don’t really understand. Just because you say ‘I love myself’ or talk about self love it doesn’t mean you’re vain and actually love love yourself. It just means you’ve got an interior contentness. Love yourself comes across as a stronger term but I think to say you respect yourself is a more realistic term.
websites, talks and movements regarding self love in women that have helped me within myself. But, I’ve always noticed there is hardly anything regarding male self care. I wanted to find out how the male gender are in themselves throughout the stigmas they are programmed to live up to.
With the boys I interviewed they were comfortable enough to open up and talk about what they’ve felt throughout their life but I know for other people it isn’t always that easy. It definitely helped being a girl as boys do see feelings as “feminine” and it’s easier for them to talk to a female figure. What needs to change is how people need to be aware and respectful of other people of all genders and races regarding their inner self and feelings. Alot of my interviewees did not like the word ‘love’. When asking ‘Do you love yourself?’ the phrase had a sharp connotation to it. I have a need to change that connotation. Do you love yourself should be an honest and good feeling question because love can be resepect and caring for yourself. Whenever I was down my mum would tell me to love myself because I am beautiful inside and out. Back then I shrugged it off but now I love loving myself and it can play a big part in your mental health. I don’t mean materialistic love either, that kind can ruin you. Self love is free feeling and genderless. Take Care and don’t be afraid to speak about your feelings. 42
Photography and words taken by Amie Sawyer (unless stated otherwise)
As a 23 year old female there are so many books,
I hope this zine encourages others to speak out and realise your friends are probably feeling the same as you. You are not alone. Never alone unless you choose to be and that’s ok too.
As time goes on many men are laughing and abandoning the stigmas surrounding self-love. Every day is a learning curve, you’ve just got to keep on grinding. -
Care for yourself because that is the real love you need.
Self Care Self Love
Self Care
evoL fleS
Self Love
Self Care
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