Jelena Dokic's powerful message to followers: 'Don't fall for or be pressured'

Jelena Dokic has shared a powerful message with her followers about beauty standards and the "myth of perfection."The tennis great, who has faced online bullying about her changing body, began her post by asking: "What is beauty????""Beauty is not what is on the outside. Beauty is not the number on the scale or having a pretty face. Beauty is having a beautiful mind, a beautiful heart and a beautiful soul. Beauty is being kind, empathetic, hard working and a good person," she wrote.Watch the video above.READ MORE: Oscar winner delays filming after two bouts of illness"Beauty is being comfortable in your own skin," Dokic, 41, continued. "Beauty is about knowing who you are and accepting and embracing that."What you have on the inside is what beauty is, not the outside. Beauty is not the face or body but the light and goodness in your heart."She added, "True beauty is reflected in the soul."READ MORE: Kate's parents make first public appearance since diagnosis"It is the care, love and kindness that you give. It is being a good and selfless person. That's what really matters and what true beauty is."Dokic ended her post with an empowering message for her followers. "Don't fall for or be pressured into the myth of perfection and mean and shaming ways of some people and certain parts of society that make us feel like the only thing that matters is what is on the outside and that your face, body, size and age defines who you are, your worth and your value," she wrote."Beauty is actually very simple. It's having a beautiful heart and soul. Be kind and a good person at your core."She signed off with: "Love, Jelena xoxo."Dokic has spent the past few years on the receiving end of online abuse about her changing body, and addressed her recent weight loss in an earlier social media post.READ MORE: The scientific reason airplane food tastes so 'bad'In it, she shared two photos and explained she felt "happy and proud in both pics regardless of my weight" and her recent weight loss is about "HEALTH and not SIZE."Speaking on Today, Dokic said scrutiny isn't just about size and people left feeling like "nothing is good enough and you feel like you're damned if you do and if you don't.""Just like this time around I've gone on a health journey and I've lost some weight and all of a sudden that's not good enough either, because people felt like ... I don't stand up now for people that are maybe a size 20," she said."So that's why I said, you kind of feel like 'damned if you do, damned if you don't'."Of her most recent posts, Dokic said she was aiming to have "that open conversation" to "remove all the shame and stigma around it and we normalise it.""I have always been very open, whether I'm a size four or whether I'm a size 20, and I've always said I will walk with my head held high regardless, no matter what," she said."It's very easy to be behind a keyboard and write something mean and nasty, it's become the norm where we don't actually mean people. We meet people we probably wouldn't tell them to their face, but we do behind a keyboard. "So the message is, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."Dokic made her name as an Australian tennis player, winning tournaments including Wimbledon in 1999.She now works as a sports reporter for the Nine Network and has written two books , Unbreakable and Fearless, in which she chronicled the abuse she endured from her father Damir as a child, her heartbreak over the end of her 19-year relationship with partner Tin Bikic and her health struggles.More recently she has become an advocate against online bullying and body positivity.She told Today she wants to continue to call out online bullying."We need to continue calling it out because unfortunately, there will always be bullies. There will always be people that abuse you online. So we need to continue. We need to continue to talk about it," she said.FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.