Radical Self Love - Gala Darling at TEDxCMU

On Valentine's Day in 2010, Gala Darling, a style blogger, started a movement called “Radical Self Love” because of her thinking that a lot of women have too less self-esteem and don't know how to enjoy their lives. By telling her own story, she encourages them not to make the same mistakes as she did and finally recommend five things on how to start their own radical self-love movement.

Only 4% of women
would call themselves beautiful

and that’s a stunningly small statistic.

So basically, if this entire room was somehow
magically transformed into women

that would mean then less than two of you

would say that you thought you were beautiful
if you were asked.

Young girls are more afraid of being fat

than they are of getting cancer,
nuclear war

or of losing both their parents.

And there are so many statistics
that support all of these things.

A recent study in the UK said
that 6 out of 10 girls thought

they would be happier
if they were skinnier.

A study of 455 college women said…
80% of them said that

they had been told negative things
about their body from ––

not their friends or society ––
but from their parents and siblings.

Low self esteem is a major problem
and especially through women.

Women with low self esteem are more likely
to stay in abusive relationships.

They are less likely to start their own businesses.

They are more introverted
and they also earn less money

than their more confident counterparts.

I believe in the power of women.

I think women are so amazing.

I think they are sacred neon-pink sparkly amazing.
(Laughter)

They are subversive and wild,
they are fierce and strong.

We can really do anything
that we want to do but so few of us do it.

We all feel like we're been held back
by an invisible hand

but the truth is that we're the only ones
holding ourselves back.

Even though we're told all kind of things
by society and by the media,

once you realize that all of that is total nonsense

and most savvy women realize this
by the time they are about 14 years old.

Once you realize that, you’re really free to do
whatever you want to do.

I mean, okay, so they are quite beautiful
but there's no diversity ––

even the women who are not white
are extremely pale.

They all have the same waist size,
they're all the same height,

they're all gussied up to be sexy for a man

and I mean, that’s not really all there is to it.

So all of this stuff kind of converged
and came to a head for me

on Valentine’s Day in 2010.

So, I’ve been writing online for about 5 years ––

and actually I have been writing online
for about 13 years,

but let’s forget about that.
(Laughter)

So I’ve had my blog for 5 years

and I started off
writing about fashion and style

but as I kept writing I realized that
what women really wanted wasn’t like,

“What’s the perfect dress for my body type?”

They really wanted to know
how to be happy in themselves

If a woman would write to me and say,

“Well, what should I wear
to disguise my chubby thighs?”,

I don’t think the answer is,
“A 350 dollar pair of jeans.”

I think the answer is,
“You need a major dose of self-love

and you need to focus on your assets
and not obsess over your flaws.”

So, Valentine’s Day is this ridiculous anomaly

where all women no matter how brilliant or genius,
become these blubbering messes

because some dude didn’t spend all his money
on an overpriced bouquet of flowers.

It’s like, this is the only thing that matters,
“You have no value in our society

if someone didn’t buy you some chocolates
on the 14th February.”

And it’s so tragic.

And I would see these incredibly brilliant
genius women on Facebook,

complaining, like, “My life has no meaning.”
(Laughter)

And it’s like, “Come on, you have to get over it.”

So, I decided that on Valentine’s Day,
I was gonna start this movement.

The thing with Valentine’s Day is ––
even if you have a partner

and you’re desperately in love,
it doesn’t necessarily make your life any better

and it doesn’t necessarily make you any happier.

If you don’t feel comfortable within yourself

your relationships are gonna turn to custard

because you’re not comfortable saying
who you are and what you want.

You probably won’t be able to tell your lover
what you want in bed

and, you know,
it’s just not gonna go very well.

There is an amazing quote by RuPaul.

At the end of every episode of RuPaul’s
drag race she says,

“If you can’t love yourself,
how in the hell are you gonna love anybody else?”

And it’s totally true.

We need to stop looking for validation,
acceptance, outside of ourselves

and realize that it’s all within us.

And, by the way, isn’t that so amazing,
it’s an assemblage art piece

and you can see, like,
there is a bottle of Nair in there.

I love it, I think it’s so brilliant.

There is another brilliant quote
by Buddha and he said,

“You can search throughout
the entire universe for someone

who is more deserving of your love and affection
than you are yourself,

and that person is not to be found anywhere.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe
deserve your love and affection.”

And again, it all comes from within.

If you don’t have that,
then life becomes very difficult.

So, I decided in February of 2010
to start this radical self-love movement

and I figured that I would start writing
about my journey

in loving myself and getting comfortable
with who I am.

And I put it online.

And if women want to join in,
then, that would be fantastic.

And I hope that they would learn something
from my mistakes.

And radical self-love has been this amazing thing.

It’s still going. It’s brilliant.

Women have used it.
And they’ve emailed me

and through their own discoveries
they have left abusive relationships.

They’ve started their own businesses.

They’ve traveled the world.
They’ve gotten over eating disorders.

And most of all, they’ve learnt to be
really comfortable with who they are

and I think that’s the most important thing.

It’s all I ever really wanted.

My story is not a really pretty one, actually.

The reason I feel like
I can talk about radical self-love

because I’d been on the other side of the coin,

which I like to call “radical self-loathing.”

Although it’s not that radical, mostly, it just sucks.
(Laughter)

So, I grew up in New Zealand, hence, the accent

and I had a pretty idyllic childhood.

I was very lucky, but of course,
you don’t realize that until much, much later.

And… but somehow when I became a teenager,

it was like I transformed over night
and I became this horrible person.

I was really, really miserable.

But mostly I was just really angry.

And I didn’t really know what I was angry at,
I just knew I was really angry.

And I didn’t know how to deal with it at all.

And I was a teenage goth, it’s true.

I would wear like all black,
and I bought this dog collar from the supermarket

with spikes on it,
and I would wear like every day.

Stripey stockings and combat boots,
and it was like the whole thing.

And even though, I make kind of fun of that now,
I think a lot of that was

because I was looking for people
who were outsiders as well.

I always felt very different to everyone

and I was looking for people
who could kind of empathize with that.

So, my rage was really bad and I just felt...

I kind of felt like I was on the verge
of a mental breakdown all the time,

and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

So, I’m not really sure where I got the idea

but I started self-mutilating
when I was 13 years old.

And it was the only way
that I knew to deal with my emotions.

And after I had done it, I would feel calm
and I would feel peaceful again.

And it was… it felt like something
that was worth doing

even though I knew
it was really weird and kind of wrong.

So, I did that for about 5 years,
and when I was 18, I had a bit of an accident.

I was doing my usual thing
and I didn’t realize how sharp the blade I was using was

and I cut myself really deeply,
and it bled a lot

and I thought that I could've done myself
some real damage.

So, that kind of stops everything,
but somehow I didn’t realize like,

“Oh, this is really stupid,
you should do something else.”

So I stopped doing that
but 6 months later

I moved away from my parents’ home,
and was living by myself,

and I swiftly developed an eating disorder.

Really fun. Awesome.
Don’t recommend.

I would basically subsist on a coffee
and a little piece of sushi every day

and I was really miserable.

And the thing with being miserable
and being depressed which I clearly was,

is when you’re not eating
it’s even more difficult to feel any better like this.

There is absolutely no hope.
Depression is bad enough.

Depression and starvation
is absolutely catastrophic.

And I just... I felt like my life was pretty much over,

and it was really terrible.

So, I was very lucky when I met a man
who wouldn’t take any of my nonsense

and basically said, “If we’re gonna be together,
you have to get over all this crap.”

So he was into a lot of alternative
healing modalities,

and I used this thing called “EFT”,
which stands for “Emotional Freedom Technique.”

It’s basically like acupuncture but no needles.

And I used that to get rid of my eating disorder

and it basically left my system over night,
which is amazing.

And these days I can eat like a whole box of donuts
and I’m so happy.

(Laughter)

So, that is… that is my story.

So, I have a lot of people come to me
on my blog and online and they say,

“I want to get into this radical self-love thing.
Where do I begin? What should I do?”

So, behind me you can see,
these are a selection of radical self-love bibles.

So, when people want to start,
I say that they should get a big blank book or a journal

and fill it with everything
that’s good about themselves.

So, you have a thing that you can look at
when you’re feeling stinky or ugly

or you’re having a bad day
and you can immediately feel better.

So, these are some of the books
that people have made that read my site.

And they’re all super cute and really different.

So, that’s the first thing that I recommend.

The second thing I recommend
is that you basically write down every compliment

that you receive over the next like,
I don’t know, five years.

And the reason for this is that it is so easy
to focus on the terrible things

people have said to us or about us,
and forget the positive things, like I face it to you

what’s the last awful thing someone said to you,
you could probably recall it.

But if you were asked about
the most recent compliment you were given,

you might not be so sure.

So having a list of these compliments
is a great way

to just remember that you’re actually pretty rad.

The other thing that has been really
instrumental for me in radical self-love,

and just in keeping myself positive in general,
is the practice of gratitude.

So, I started doing this thing on my blog,
like five years ago,

called “Things I love Thursdays”
and basically every Thursday

I’d write a list of things
that were making me really happy,

and it could be anything from, like,
sparkly nail polish to rescuing a dog, or whatever it is.

And that has really spread
through the internet like wildfire.

There are hundreds of women
who do this every week.

They make their own lists.
They make their own...

This is a collage that somebody made on Flickr

and these were all just pictures
that made her really happy that week.

And even if you can come up
with a small section of things,

it’s so much better than sitting around
and dwelling on the things that suck about our lives,

because it’s really important to count our blessings
and not our problems.

So, the other thing that I really recommend is

that you stop reading tabloids
and gossip websites.

(Laughter)

Just from looking at that,
you can’t really deduce anything positive from it.

It all looks pretty bleak.

So, I think that tabloids are really destructive,

they’re very negative,
they encourage being judgmental and critical.

And when you’re judging Angelina Jolie

who is probably one of the most stereotypically
beautiful women in our society,

you can’t possibly feel like
you're going to measure up positively against her.

It’s never gonna happen.

So, stopping looking at tabloids
and reading gossip websites has been huge for me

and makes me feel so much better about my life.

And it’s not that celebrities are bad people

it’s just that tabloids really bring out
the worst in people.

It’s very competitive, it’s very judgmental.

And leaving those behind
has been quite amazing for me.

And these days when I see, like,
an “Us Weekly” or whatever in the supermarket

it looks like it came from another planet.

It’s so weird to me.
I can barely even comprehend it.

The other thing that I recommend is that
we really need to start

coming up with our own visions
of what beauty looks like,

what success looks like,
what a relationship looks like.

And coming up with those and really putting them
into play in our own lives.

I think that we… very often inherit those values
from our parents or our friends or our family,

and they’re not necessarily true, you know,
your parents might be biased

against people from another culture
or they might think that

success is only what’s in your wallet.

And the truth is that
the world is a lot bigger than that.

And as we start to research these things

we can really expand our vision
of what life could be like

and it makes us more well-rounded,
diverse and certainly more happy.

I’m gonna finish by reading you
the Radical Self Love Manifesto,

which is something I wrote last year.

I was in New Zealand on a press trip
and I was with all these other journalists

we were having an amazing time,
I mean, it’s the most beautiful country on earth, clearly.

(Laughter)

We were all having a great time, but even so,
a lot of them were complaining and they were unhappy

and they had grizzles about this or that
and it kind of made me crazy.

I started writing this in my head
as I was walking around with them.

So this is what I said,
“Strive to always be thankful and optimistic.

Focus your gaze on what is good and positive;
never dwell on the negative.

Do not allow life to make you cynical or closed off.

Remaining open and true to yourself
is a lifelong adventure,

and the only one worth having.

Choose to see the best in people.
Strike up conversations with strangers.

Never be afraid to ask
for what you really, really want

(that’s a big one, by the way)

To love, purely and fiercely, without agenda,
is the most terrifying and rewarding thing you’ll ever do.

Travel is essential to the spirit.

A pair of great shoes means nothing
if you have an ugly heart.

Try your hardest not to judge anyone else;
it never leads anywhere good.

Always avoid tabloids and gossip;
they destroy the soul.

Be kind and loyal.

Many things in this world
are more important than money.

Always trust your intuition, always.

Rescue animals, it will strengthen your heart.

Never delight in anyone else’s misery.

Trust in others.
You are your own best investment.

Believe in the magic of a new day and a fresh start.

Follow your bliss.
Do more of what you love.

Always do the best you can.

Create your own family
and care for them ferociously.

When people offer you opportunities
that scare you, say yes: it’s the very best way to grow.

You are never as stuck as you think.

Stay eager.
Love yourself.

And say yes to the adventure of life.”

Thanks very much.

[Slide: Smile, you’re beautiful.]
(Applause)