depending how smart one is with their privacy...

Typically well adjusted people don't talk about themselves that way. They don't even really think about their body or themselves in terms of gaining attention. So most likely they would not post pictures of themselves.

When I compare my friends on Facebook the ones with a healthy self confidence tend to post about their family and activities on the occasional basis and if an important event in their life is taking place.

The ones I consider to have bad self confidence post a lot of pictures of themselves ALL the time. A selfie at least once a day! And they all range from skinny to fat. They also post like every single meal they eat and always post weird random thoughts like "I hate when my ice coffee melts." Which everyone hates so why post it?

I agree that we women have GOT to stop being so super critical of each other and ourselves. My husband's aunt, now 67 was and is beautiful. She STILL can wear a bikini and look great in it. She looks/looked a lot like Helen Miran (Sp)

Anyway, when she was visiting up 16 years ago I found that she didn't turn the light on in the bathroom while using it or washing hands. There was no window in that bathroom. She wanted to avoid the mirror. She hated seeing herself. Hated looking so old.

I thought... my god. She's 50 or so years old and looks FANTASTIC and is in great shape, and SHE doesn't like to see herself in the mirror. I would have loved to look that good at 25 as she did at 50. But for her, she saw a faded version of herself. How sad is that? She should have been celebrating her CURRENT her.

That was me...

The moment I grow up is the moment I get old.

I never wanna grow up! :dance:

kaplods :love:

Do you mean privacy settings? :?: Because on most social media platforms they are a joke. Plus, technically Facebook and other platforms can save, keep and monitor your information. No one really has any idea what that really means or what they can do with the information because no one has litigated against Facebook which would be almost impossible because you agreed to the terms of service.

And one of your Facebook friends could always swipe a picture off your page and do what they will with it. Which you also can't control. I mean look at that revenge porn website that was up and running. Yeah, that guy is going to jail but not after serious damage was done to those girls.

PatLib I guess I am being naive. My FB is very small, I trust my friends would never betray me. Kinda like in a real life.... No I don't have 800 friends, only people who are part of my life and I feel would never betray me and my privacy.

...and since they are all my real life friends, if they betrayed me, they would have to face me.

I guess I am "smart" in a way. I only let people in that I trust. -- Quality over quantity.

I don't have 800 friends either but, sorry, it's really not "smart" to trust Facebook or any social media site because they would not have a problem betraying you for their bottom line. Plus, we just went through the HeartBleed bug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbleed) and people hack into people's account all the time.

Sorry, I am stickler for people protecting themselves. Our students at school have gotten themselves into a lot of trouble with that sort of stuff!

Yeah, PatLib is right to encourage caution. Don't ever assume that anything will remain private, no matter what your settings. And definitely don't think that anything ever disappears from the Internet - as ArcticMama mentioned, that stuff will stay around forever.

You seriously need to weed your FB friends.

I only have 50 and half of them are family. I think I'm good! :p

:) That is good. I don't feel paranoid about my friends, I trust them all.

Just as an FYI, Facebook frequently changes/updates it's privacy settings. What this means to you is the settings you had before no longer apply.

Facebook is better served if you aren't locked down, and this is one of the ways they work around it. Also, anything published on Facebook no longer is owned by you. Facebook is licensed to do X number of things with any content published on the site. Which includes allowing other businesses to scrape your information from Facebook.

It isn't just a matter of trusting friends.

i don't think it's ABOUT whether the gal in question is hot or is not hot, poses in a bikini or nearly naked in underwear, whether she's fat, skinny, or otherwise, whether she's insecure or full of herself. It's the endless ad nauseum of self promotion that is (specifically) "selfies" that most if not all would get really tired of seeing every single day. Enough already!

You don't have to be paranoid about your friends but you should have healthy paranoia ;) for a corporate entity (Facebook) which monitors and stores all your movements and information. Perhaps, I have read 1984 one too many times but I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg (:devil:) or Facebook one bit!

I am so picky ReillyJ. I don't have any friends in real life or online, like FB, who would shelf promote. If they did, they would have a real good reason and they would get the "like" button from me. That is my character and those are my friends.

YES.... My children read the 1984... they trust no one.... next question...do we trust this government??? Rep or Dem?? :lol3: I have MANY opinions :)

I think that for most of us, the biggest risk is that the public can view our stuff - due to a privacy glitch, or FB sells stuff like who we searched for, or one day there's a glitch and all is revealed about who we stalked or sites we visited if we logged in through FB on that site - however, these are such common problems and at worst will only reveal us as semi-stalkers (which pretty much most people are). I doubt any of us are like, dealing drugs through Facebook or something. Plus none of us are D-list celebs or something that most people would be like "WOW did you see who soandso stalked?! She really went down the drain!" At worst we'd just look as lame as anyone else if that stuff is revealed lol. If someone finds out that all the bad stuff I do on the internet - watch free movies, download music, look at clothes I can't afford and look at people I went to highschool with to see if they gained/lost, ehhh then so be it! =P

Nope. My husband, among his many talents, administrated a mail server and two personal servers. It is absolutely shocking the tracks any email or post leaves, and even ''secure" and private settings are rarely so. True encryption is a pai in the butt and it only takes one unsecured data transfer or site to skim pertinent data. Photos are inherently unsecured though they can be hosted securely depending on the protocol on the back end.

And Facebook, which has made multiple public statements about owning ALL data on its site and subsidiaries and viewing its users as merchandise? There's a very, very good reason I'm not on there, and any online dealings I tend to do transparently, in a way I have no shame in having attached to my name for the rest of my life (because effectively it is).

It's a total aside, but my mother in law is a senator and we have helped on multiple other campaigns at all levels of government from school district to statewide and federal elections. Nothing will assure you of how utterly exposed one is with ANY online dealings than watching someone pay a team to dig up your entire life and acquaintances, just to kneecap your career.


Yeah.

*ahem* privacy rant over.

Not naive, it is great to have intimate friends you can trust. I have the same mindset in dealing with people online in the same way I'd do so in person, and not saying anything I wouldn't be comfortable saying to my grandmother. Websites aren't secure, so being my own best filter and dealing carefully and forthrightly online and elsewhere is the very best bet.

Having trustworthy friends whom you confide in, even electronically, is excellent. But even then very sensitive data is still best done in a format like iMessage (fully encrypted throughout the transmission and never stored anywhere but locally on the devices sending and receiving) or over the phone/in person. Typed or otherwise recorded transmission of that data is dicey as a rule :)

I think so too, I see that a lot on instagram.
I don't know if it is insecurity really or just showing off, but its definetly a lack of attention to me.

I know I went off on a tangent about underwear vs. bathing suits, but anyway, I completely agree with this.

I can see why it can be annoying, but they can also do as they please - its not harmful to anyone either, so I just remove those people from FB or delete altogether and the people who do like to see those pics can keep them on their Friend's list/FB feed. Easy! :)

Absolutely, that's what I do (I love the option to remove people from your news feed without deleting them as a friend!). But I can still whine :P

To me it might be a mixture of both. She's smart enough to know her body is pretty, but she's emotionally insecure and needs the validation.

^This.

Well said, Arctic Mama, I deal with email and web servers everyday as part of my job. I tell everyone not to post or email anything that they would not want in the local paper.

I will take it a step further. After having had to help settle the estates of some family members, do not have pictures or objects that you would not want your grandmother, mother, sister, child, or grandchild to find. Also, don't commit anything to paper that you would not want someone to read. After you are gone, someone is going to find that diary and read it!

time2lose I still stand by my opinion; if I had a body to die for, I would not care who were to see it now or in the future. -- Beauty fades, it would be nice to let the future generations know that mom/grandma/great granny was H-O-T ;)

If I was so lucky as to have an enviable bod, and display it; I guess I am also lucky that I 1) don't work 2) My mom nor grandma knows how to use a "puter".

But I do get your point, though. Yes, we should absolutely watch what we say and do online. - But hot images of oneself should not be anybody's business..... it is not like that she is selling p0rn :eek:

I do not think it is a sign of insecurity. I have worked for a women's travel company and swimming nude/ taking pics nude/ posting them was a voluntary but common practice. It was about celebrating womanhood and yes we had clients of all shapes and sizes who participated. I personally do not want nearly nude photos of myself so I did not partake but I certainly did not see it as a weakness on the part of other women who chose to do this.

What an interesting conversation! To be fair, I think we're giving Dazegypsy a bit of a hard time. She merely wanted to start a conversation about the mental process, not be told she's being judgmental when she kept this person identity so anonymous she could have made it up. I think she honestly just wants to understand and have a conversation and learn something, which is why she asked what are thoughts were. But rant over.

I'm really glad someone brought up the internet security thing, because for me, I think that's the biggest issue with these kinds of posters. I think we all know one or two people like that, and while it is no crime to be proud of your body and wanting to show it off, posting half naked selfies doesn't automatically make it the best way to do that. People can change their minds. There are so many creeps out there. What you may not mind showing today, you could regret tomorrow.

Even though we should live in a world where everyone is accepted, loved and shown as beautiful, we don't live in it yet. I wouldn't send my baby sister to walk to school alone at six years old, even though we should live in a world where it should be safe for her to do that. And, sending her out alone isn't going to contribute to the solution to make that world happen. I think of half-naked easily accessible internet selfies the same way. Just because you should be able to post it and it be safe and uplifting, doesn't mean we live in that world yet. And I don't think adding slightly provocative pictures to show how confident you are in yourself is going to help in the solution. Because our culture is so overly sexualized, most people, especially the media culture, look at those photos and see sex. They don't see the brave, confident acceptance you're trying to portray. It gets used wrong.

I also think that some selfies can be misleading in their attempt to show "confidence" in ones self, and I think some people miss the point of what confidence means (I'm talking mostly about younger girls that I see do this). Angling yourself in the absolute perfect way, adding on the right make-up, choosing the right lens filter, wearing the right colours, heals, sucking in your gut and making sure no one can see that stretch mark, scar or birth mark or whatever you have it, then adding the caption "so confident in myself" is in fact, the exact opposite. Really self confidence, real self acceptance would be posting a close up off that scar on your arm you got on your wedding day cutting the cake. Its posting that picture of you in the kiddie pool bent over so your fat rolls over and makes you look bigger than you are.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have some photos where we doll up, look our best and pose. I think selfies like that can be good for you, and others, and just uplifting. I want some more of those on my Facebook album!!! But, when thats all someone's posting -half-naked posed selfies- once a day or more and claiming bravery and confidence, I think its misplaced. It doesn't say "confidence" it says to me "confident only in this condition, where you can see my media-accwpted perfect".

I'm also not trying to say these people are seriously messed up and we need to judge them. We are all messed up in some way, and they are no more messed up then me! Its just what the topic was, and so those are some of thoughts on this particular subject. I don't think these people are intentionally rude, attention seeking, etc. Its just part of the deeper psychology of how we perceive ourselves. Do I think it's unhealthy? Depending on how it's being done, yes, I do think it's unhealthy. But, like I said before, we all do things. I am unhealthy conscious of other people's bodies and really get down on myself to the point where I'd take any body over mine. Its what I'm slowly working on and doesn't make me any better than someone who over posts naked selfies. I could benefit from people at the other end of confidence, I'm sure!!

These women exist. I should know since I've been one.

I think it's interesting that I never had body image issues growing up. I was really pleased with my shape and height, and weight (5'10 180 lbs, perfect height and weight for racing laser sailboats, which I did) and instead of specific things I disliked about myself, I had specific things I liked. I liked the square pad of fat on my tummy. I liked my thick thighs, and my waist that went in. I didn't feel any need to share them at school or anything, but I liked them for myself.

I think a lot of body image issues in women stem from cultural priorities. I was a bit of a social outcast, so I never got involved in the hair/makeup/boys stuff that seems to become the sun girl's worlds revolve around at that age. I liked school, and I liked projects (building things, organizing things, writing), and my body was a useful tool for doing those things and other activities. So when I got a chance to stop and look at it, I guess I realized I was a human, and a relatively in-shape and good-feeling one to boot.

As an adult, I think it's more difficult for me to avoid standards of beauty/expectations. I'm expected to wear certain types of clothing to work, and when I manage to find things in my size, they don't seem to look like they should to meet the dress code I see in my mind, either because my belly sticks out too much or my giant nipples show through the fabric, or something else. Sure, I don't judge myself against catwalk models and airbrushed photos in magazines, but I'm still judging myself against someone else, and it's given me an expectation for how I should look to fit in.

I still like most of me, but if I walk past the mirror naked, I have a tendency to grab my belly pooch now and frown at it disapprovingly. I don't like feeling this way about my body. My body takes care of me.

We can all have that feeling I used to have, I think. We just have to figure out how to change our perspective so we're not trying to fit ourselves into a group. And that's the tough part.

(As an aside, I don't put myself in the pro-fat movement or anything. But I really don't think fatter people are more insecure. I think people who compare themselves against others are more insecure, and everyone gets their comparison opportunity from a different source. I didn't run into this in high school because I wasn't conventionally pretty enough to be drafted into the "in" crowd. I kind of feel sorry for those who were...)