It’s easy to read the last blog and walk away with a simple conclusion: rowers are good for body image, mirrors are bad. That’s not quite right, and it’s worth correcting before it becomes a rule.

Neither the rower nor the mirror is inherently good or bad for how we experience our bodies. When it comes to body image, what matters most isn’t always the activity itself, but the direction it points us in.

The psychologist Carl Rogers had a useful idea for dealing with this kind of thing. Rogers thought that life isn’t about arriving at a destination but is an ongoing process of moving in a direction—one we choose freely, when we’re able to explore who we are rather than chase who we think we should be.

The same idea applies to body image. The quality of our body image experiences—whether they’re helpful, harmful, or somewhere in between—can depend on what we’re moving our bodies towards.

When my client said, “I love how strong my legs feel rowing now”, their satisfaction wasn’t just about rowing, but discovering something about themselves through a challenge they’d chosen to pursue. They weren’t rowing to chase an ‘ideal’ body; they were discovering more of themselves through what their body could do.

The word “now” matters here. It invites comparison—not with someone else, but with who they’d once been. It signals that this wasn’t where they started, but where rowing had taken them: a journey in which becoming stronger showed them they were more capable than they’d previously believed.

The mirror worked in a similar way—but pulled them in a different direction. When my client said, “I hate the way I look,” they were evaluating themself against an ‘ideal’ body they, like many others, had internalised as the body they believed they should have.

The mirror could have invited recognition and appreciation of their body. In this moment, however, it became a tool for measuring themself against who they thought they should be.

The meaning of their body shifted from being a place for self-discovery to evidence that they were falling short. That shift in direction meant experiences of body image dissatisfaction started to land harder.

So, the goal shouldn’t be to live in the functional bits of the gym and dodge the mirrors. It’s to get sharper at noticing which direction a moment is pulling you and how it’s shaping your body image.

Many of us spend our lives trying to live up to the expectations of others. As those expectations loosen, we become freer to discover who we are rather than who we think we should be. From there, we’re better positioned to choose directions that make positive body image experiences more likely.

In the final blog, we’ll turn our attention to the next question: what now—what can we do to cultivate more helpful body image experiences when the difficult ones arise?

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This article does not constitute personalised advice or professional consultation. For personalised assistance, please consult with a relevant professional. The opinions expressed are solely my own and do not necessarily reflect any organisation’s or individual’s views.