What up, Body Issues?

Photo from The BULLY Project Facebook page. Follow them! Photo credit : Meg Gaiger/Harpyimages

I know I am a beautiful person from the inside out, but I sometimes struggle to feel confident even as a 30-year-old woman.  You know why?  I have been conditioned to think physical fitness and beauty equals success.  A successful life, career and even a successful marriage.

It took a lot of commercials with supermodels, movies with perfectly-toned legs, and even a few pokes and prods on the playground to instill a permanent, tiny voice that whispers in the mirror, “You’re fat.”  But most of all, I think it was the lack of confidence my own mother had when she looked in the mirror at herself.  She was then, and is now, a beautiful, average-sized woman, but she hung on to those high school jeans that were a size 3 and only looked back.

I still remember putting my feet together and feeling between my thighs to hope that their was a space when I was in the 8th grade.  I never did have skinny legs.  I have always had an athletic build, and then some.  But way back, before there was a tiny gap between my thighs for a few short years,  I had body issues.

I remember refusing to get on the scale at the doctors office when I was 11 and about to enter fifth grade.  The doctor finally convinced me to do it, and then showed me on a chart that I was not “obese”.  I, in fact, was just one box to the left.  She reassured me that I had nothing to be self conscious about.  I was just the shortest, and most round in my class.  I wish I could go to my 11-year-old self and say, “You’re perfect the way you are.”

Of course, like most kids, I was bullied and awkward through elementary and middle school.  After four years of doing my best to fit in in high school, I went to college I realized that everyone was remarkable in their own way, and that physical beauty had nothing to do with success.  I wish someone would have told me sooner.

Ethnicity, height, weight, physical and mental ability does not make you better than someone else.  The way in which you carry yourself; with confidence, and purpose, let’s others know that you love yourself, and that’s what’s attractive. Love yourself.

 

 

Advertisement