Okay, there are, approximately, ten hundred thousand trillion majillion things to hate about yourself. Here, for instance, let's talk about some things I can hate about myself:
But, we're not going to go through ALL OF THE THINGS that I COULD hate about myself, instead, we're going to talk about why I don't hate myself.
"Whaaa?" You may ask. It's a good question. I mean, it could be a good question if you could get out the rest of the non "whaaa" part of the question, but obviously you are dumbstruck by the fact that a raging-bitch pudding-person with a poorly-cleaned-up-acid-spill scar would love themselves. Now, once again, I could give you a list of reasons why I love myself (I mean, my humor is on point, I have a GIANT, POTATO NOSE which is pretty cool, and did you see how good I am at makeup? Plus I have the hair of an 80's Sci-Fi Alien Princess.) But, I'm not going to give you a list. Instead, I'm going to... who knows? I haven't really thought this blog post all the way through.
First, it's important to note that I didn't always love myself, and there are some pretty shitty days where I still don't love myself. I wrote something on my Tumblr not too long ago (you can read it
here) that was similar--about not always relating to my appearance, and then not always feeling like other people could like it, and other stuff. Anyway. Sometimes people make it seem like: either you are confident, or you are insecure, and there is no in between. Either you like yourself, or you don't. But I don't think that's true. Sure, there are some people who are totally comfortable with themselves, they are completely confident, and they just genuinely like themselves. ("I don't believe that's true," you shout from the peanut gallery. Well, "Shut up in the peanut gallery," I snarl back, 'cause who knows, you know?) And sure: there are people who just don't like anything about themselves and they are entirely self-conscious and insecure. But I think most of us are floating about in the middle.
I am... large? There's not really a delicate and appropriate way to put it. "I'm fat" prompts a shower of assurances that I'm not. "I'm pleasantly plump" is, quite frankly, as ridiculous as most alliterations are and makes me sound a bit more like a Christmas ham than living, breathing person. "I'm voluptuous" sounds like I'm in denial about not being a luscious curvy lady like Marilyn Monroe or Jennifer Love Hewitt.
I'm also pear-shaped. I saw this cartoon where someone was criticizing the terms "pear" "apple" and "hourglass" to refer to figures where the artist sketched a pear and then attached a woman's head, arms, and legs to it. It was meant to point out the absurdity of the terms, but... well... "pear shaped" is a pretty decent term for me. Here, look:
See? You see.
(Side note, here: As I was graffetti-ing an otherwise nice picture of myself with a giant pear, it occurred to me that people can't do a whole lot to hurt my feelings. I mean, honestly, I'm both funny and mean. Plus, I have a self-deprecating sense of humor. There are very few means of mocking me that I haven't already exploited.)
(Another side note: my self-deprecating humor doesn't mean that I don't love myself and think I'm spectacular. I mean, I've met myself. I live with myself 24/7. I think I'm the shit.)
So, the thing about my size, is that have pretty sizable thighs. In a culture flooded with "get that thigh gap" propaganda, it isn't easy to walk around, well aware of how well the phrase "pounding the pavement" describes your feet on the road, to hear the thunderous thuds of your footsteps, and feel the reverberations trembling up your legs.
I have felt uncomfortable wearing shorts and skirts with bare legs. I have, on several occasions, covered my legs with blankets while sitting in groups. I have watched, embarrassingly, the ripples along my legs while doing jumping jacks. I had a shitty friend scoff at the size of my jeans when I was in seventh grade.
And I would love to give you the exact recipe I used to transform my body-hatred to body-love, but, quite frankly, I don't know it.
But let me just say this: I started looking in the mirror. And I started taking pictures of myself.
I think one thing that makes it easy to hate bits of yourself is that... you don't see yourself a whole lot. You would probably never call your mother, your sister, your best friend, your cousin, your brother, your dog, or your grandmother "fat" or "ugly." Because you see them all the time. So, let's say your father has giant ears. You probably don't look at him and think, "Man those are huge, disgusting ears." You see them all the time, and they're part of someone you love. So, you probably either don't think twice about his ears, or you might even think them a handsome feature. By contrast, if you have large ears, you might look in the mirror every day and think, "Damn those are some massive, awful ears." Because you don't see yourself all that much (probably no more than an hour each day, right?) and, more importantly, you most frequently see yourself in fragments. Hands, face, thighs, feet, stomach, face, hips... Fragments.
On top of that, we're bombarded with magazine photos.
But, maybe start to change the way you see yourself. And how frequently you see yourself. Okay, so, I started a totally fake fashion blog. For over a year I've been taking pictures of myself, editing them, and uploading them. That, along with my vlogs, makes me look at myself a lot. Plus, I started to really look at myself in the mirror. Anyway, the point is, I think through excessive amounts of photographs, I started to like myself--especially the little bits of myself I used to not like. See, look:
I've got a really pretty pear shape, don't you think?
