What Makes You Different from Others: Embracing Yourself

Recognizing Our Different Beauty 

Beautiful me, I hope that you read this and believe me… Your stretch marks do not make you ugly. Your height does not make you unattractive. I know that you have been hard on yourself. The way you speak about yourself is not something you would repeat out loud for people to hear. Your body loves you and you need to love it back. Your curves are where they are meant to be and there is nothing shameful about you. Keep trying every single day to love yourself. It starts with trusting YOU, loving YOU and being YOU. This is a reminder that you deserve a life without hating yourself. Love from the person who will always love and believe in you,

Me. Back fat, I see you peeping out over my bra today, but do not worry. I’m going to choose to love you. And to my thick thighs, you are just so sexy, you cannot stop touching each other. That’s alright. I’m going to keep you and embrace you. Oh, and cellulite, I have not forgotten about you either. I’m going to choose to adore you even though you want to take over my whole bottom half, but you are a part of me and I love you no matter what. I felt a sense of freedom once I realized I was never going to fit the narrow mold that society wanted me to fit in. I am different and I am okay with this fact. Rolls, curves, cellulite, all of it. I love every part of me.

Embracing What Makes You Different

I constantly put myself down when I could rather pick myself up and make myself feel amazing which I should be doing. Just like in the Dove Real Beauty Sketches short film women had the opportunity to describe themselves to a sketch artist in any way they wanted and yet they all chose to find the flaws of their faces. However, when a complete stranger describes them they only describe the beauty on their faces. The outcome of the two sketches is completely different. The sketch that was drawn when the women described herself turned out to be hideous and it looked nothing like her. The sketch that was drawn by the stranger? Well, it described the women as beautiful and looked almost exactly like her.

I did this same experiment. I wrote down how I would describe myself if I had to describe my appearance to a sketch artist. I have a round face and small eyes. My nose looks flattened and it is not big but not small. I have thick square eyebrows, long eyelashes and my chin protrudes outwards. I have very distinct cheek bones, my top lip is small but my bottom lip is big. I absolutely hate my smile because it is skew and my teeth are small and my face is always red.

I asked a stranger to describe me and I did not tell them why. They said I have big brown honey eyes that are beautifully shaped with long eyelashes. I have a symmetrically tanned face with bright rosy cheeks and perfectly shaped eyebrows. I have long thick black hair that curls in perfect spring ringlets. By doing this it made me realize how much I put myself down and how I find all the bad that has something to do with my appearance but I do not look at myself in a positive light.

Both women and men do not realize how beautiful they truly are. Each and every single one of us are beautiful in one way or another and we need to start realizing that. We need to start embracing the glorious messes that we are and not try change ourselves.

Loving Myself First

I am at the point in my life where I realize that I need to love myself first before anyone else can love me. I have stopped allowing the negativity of other people to overcome me. I am taking control of my life and whatever is holding me back from loving myself like my lack of self-confidence and my insecurities towards my body. Too often I look for validation from society before I validate myself and in the past I have allowed society to determine how I should look, feel and dress, however, now I take control of myself and stop looking for validation from people around me. I am more grateful about my natural beauty because I realize how it impacts my entire life. It impacts everything. It is critical to my happiness. I spent too much time analyzing and trying to fix the things that are not quite right and not enough time appreciating the things that I do love about myself and that truly make me beautiful like my height and long curly hair. I am going to start treating my body like it belongs to someone I love and not to someone I hate.

I am beautiful, but not like girls in a magazine who have the perfect face and body. I am beautiful for the way I think. I am beautiful for the way I speak. I am beautiful for the way I light up when I talk about something I love. I am beautiful for my ability to make everyone else smile even when I feel sad. I am beautiful for the way I blush when I see the person I like. No, I am not beautiful because of something as temporary as my looks. I am beautiful because I am me.

Take a look at your body and see the beauty of it. Look at your hands: they have dried so many of your tears. Look at your eyes: they have seen so many beautiful people. Look at your mouth: it has told so many people you love them. Your body has been there for you since the beginning so love it, because it loves you.

Works Cited

1. Dove. 'Dove Real Beauty Sketches.' YouTube, uploaded by Dove US, 14 April 2013, www.youtube.com/watch?v=litXW91UauE.
2. Neff, Kristin D. and Elizabeth P. Shoda. 'Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualization of a Healthy Attitude Toward Oneself.' Self and Identity, vol. 2, no. 2, 2003, pp. 85-101.