I Feel Pretty

So oddly, I have noticed something in the past year or so…

When I look at pictures of me, I actually like them.

There was a time in my life…  a loooooong time… when I simply could not take a compliment without insulting something about me.

If the SB said something about me being pretty, I would smile, but in my head, I would know he didn’t mean it… or that he meant, I was pretty to him, because he loved me.

But over the past few years, as I have gotten older and more comfortable in my own skin, I really have started to think… “Hey, there… I am one cute chickie!”

I am not some stereotypical hottie.  And I don’t need to be.  I like this face the way it is.  And yeah, I have some not so perfect things… but you know what that makes me?  Not “ugly”, which is how I used to think.  It makes me “human”… an actual person who has gone through life and has some wear and tear to show for it.

But that’s OK…  we are ALL OF US human.

I also notice that I have become far more cognizant of other people also being beautiful.

I look at pictures of normal, every day, not super model women.  And so many people are soooo  beautiful!

But when they look at themselves, they do not see it.

I think what really strikes me in how I have changed my own thinking is how my sister views herself.

She really is a beautiful woman.

But she hates herself.  She looks at even the most lovely picture and sees only the slight wrinkles around her eyes.  Only the scar on her chin from a long ago car accident, only how she is DIFFERENT than the pictures of the air brushed models in the magazines.

She is not capable of thinking of herself as pretty.

And I think that’s sad.

And, although it only just occurred to me that my own thinking has changed… I am glad it has.  I guess being immersed in all that activism DOES have an impact eventually 🙂

It’s so much nicer to be able to look at a picture and think…  “wow!  what a nice picture!” and feel happy,  than it is to look at a nice picture and think “ugh, my eyes have dark circles… I hate myself”, and be sad.

So many BEAUTIFUL people in the world, and so few of them actually believe it of themselves.