...reality also means that women are not much further ahead than we ever were when it comes to the pressure to conform to societal standards. No matter how we look, someone is always there to tell us that we need to improve. Nothing is EVER good enough when it comes to what our society expects from women. You’re either too fat, too thin, too busty, too flat, your hair is too thin, too frizzy, too curly, too straight. Your skin doesn’t glow enough. It glows too much. Your butt is too big? No, wait, it’s not big enough! You have too much hair on your body but you’re supposed to have a ton of hair on your head. You don’t dress well. Or, you’re too concerned about how you look! Wearing makeup means you don’t care about women’s rights. If you don’t wear makeup you don’t take care of yourself. If anything, we’ve taken a few giant steps backwards when it comes to empowering women, and judgemental women badmouthing other women who arebjust trying to cope in this ridiculously fake Instagram world we find ourselves in, is the last thing we need. So please stop judging her for being human. If you truly do care about other women, you’d be much further ahead by being kind to her about her body insecurities (that a humongous number of women have, thanks to the nonstop bombardment of messages telling us that we are in constant need of improvement.). Your judgement is the last thing she needs to hear, so keep it to yourself.

Woman here. I can understand the perspectives of both the OP and the first commenter.

As the commenter said, I do think that many women feel pressure to look a certain way from an Instagram-centric world and could do with some supportive words of "fuck it, you look awesome, girl" from other women who have thicker armour against society's beauty standards and able to see more clearly through the bullshit of it all. Female friends can be the strongest influencers of all and what we say can make or break a person's self esteem.

I have also also had conversations similar to what the OP is describing and find them to be challenging because of their obsessive quality. I've known some women who have a tendency to take up 75% of the conversation time talking about bodies, exercise, and food, and at some point it gets frustrating and I just want to talk about other things rather than being beholden to somebody's addiction. As OP says, I just want freedom from that shit and get impatient for the world to catch up with the fact that beauty can come in all kinds of packages.

i feel you. i practice the discipline of not getting into body policing. i also used to also feel bored when women got together to micro analyze men like our lives weren't interesting without pretending to be psychics. :)