You Are Beautiful

Recently while spending time with my girlfriends the topic of body image came up.  A friend who I look up to and whom I find gorgeous commented on her desire to lose a little here and there.  Which led me to express my feelings in that I don't think no matter how I look I'll ever be satisfied with my body.  She looked at me surprised and said, "Even now, you're not happy with how you look?" I was a little taken aback that she would assume that I'm happy, because seriously, I sometimes cry when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror pre-clothing.  Even when I was the most fit and at my skinniest I was terribly sad that I didn't look like the girls in the magazines.  Now that I've had a baby with breastfeeding and stretchmarks my body is definitely not what it used to be.  I find myself apologizing to my husband for the way I look and lovingly he reminds me that I'm beautiful and that my mommy badge is so much more appealing than anything else.

I couldn't stop thinking about this conversation with my girls and tried to think back to when I started to hate the way I look, because certainly I didn't always feel this way.  My thoughts led me back to high school when all my friends had cute bubble butts and straight hips and I had huge hips and a womanly figure.  In fact my nickname was "hips".  I remember one instance when I was jumping on the trampoline with my two best friends and one of them said, "It's really weird because you're so skinny but you have so much cellulite."  I went home that night devastated and after dinner decided to inspect this cellulite anomaly.  When, in the mirror, I saw the dimples my friends had referred to I panicked and resolved to run it off.  I ran and ran and ran but it didn't seem to make a difference.  I was doomed to have cellulite on my thighs.  (Oh the injustice! ;))

Looking back on this story as a woman I feel a little foolish.  Of course I have cellulite on my thighs, I'm a woman.  Don't most women have cellulite on their thighs?  I wish I could make that teenage girl (me) realize that she was beautiful and that she didn't need to worry that she looked like a woman and not a young girl.  I wish I could go back and reverse the damage that has led me to struggle with the way I look.  Because seriously such a dumb little incident has negatively impacted my self image in a huge way over the years.

So....what's my point right?  You are beautiful!  No matter how bad you think you look there is someone else out there who looks at you and thinks, "man that lady is beautiful".  As bad as I think I look I have friends that have told me they think I look great not to mention my husband who reassures me every day that I'm beautiful.  Let the little nitpicks go and stop living for, "someday I'll be beautiful".  My resolve is to stop telling myself that if I just work out I'll be okay, or if I just put makeup on everyday I won't feel so unattractive or whatever nagging feeling I get when I feel not good enough.  Instead I'm working today and tomorrow and the next day to tell myself that it's okay that my bewbies don't look like they used to because I fed my baby for 10 months with them and isn't that so much more beautiful that having them perky? ;)

Ladies, let's be gentle with ourselves.  It's bad enough that we have a world telling us that we aren't beautiful enough, let's not also be the ones telling ourselves this.  Because seriously we ARE beautiful.  And you know what's the most beautiful thing of all?  I used my body (cellulite and all) to grow this sweet little baby girl.  This eternal spirit gets to be here on Earth to learn and progress because my body was able to change and grow in order to bring her here.  How cool is that?