Feeling beautiful

Everybody wants to feel attractive. In our culture we learn to measure ourselves against a model of “perfection”, and any place where we don’t measure up is a “flaw” that we should either correct or spend our lives wishing we could. We have lost sight of the simple fact that there is no ideal body. Every body is unique and individual. As long as you are healthy and your body can meet all the demands you place on it, then it is exactly as it aught to be.

I find it fascinating that some of the more alluring women in history have not been “perfect”. Even the French, fabled paragons of beauty and allurement, tend to have roman noses and frankly, they aren’t that naturally beautiful. To me it shouts out the fact that a woman’s beauty is not in the shapes of her features or the size of her hips or whether or not her legs touch in the right places. A woman’s beauty is in the aura she projects.

As long as you hate your body for this or that “flaw”, you will need somebody else to provide you constant shots to your self esteem. You will always be dependant on an emotional “fix” to keep you going.

My oldest child has a birthmark across her forehead. When she was very little I used to make sure her bangs were arranged to hide that birthmark. I planned her haircuts around family photos so that the mark wouldn’t show in the photo if her trim was a bit too short. This went on for a couple years before I suddenly realized what I was doing! When it hit me, I just wanted bury my face and cry! I was programming this beautiful little child from her earliest memories to see herself as flawed! Can you imagine a worse legacy to give a child? She can’t change her birthmark, she didn’t commit some crime that put it there, so how is it a flaw?

So what if you have some mark on your face! So does Cindy Crawford. So what if your breasts are “too small” or “too large”. That’s not even physically possible since they were custom made for your body. Every part of you was custom made and individually tailored to match every other part of you.

Take time to really get to know your body and learn to love it. It’s the only one you are ever going to get, so relish it. When you love your own beautiful unique body for all its quirks (rather than despite them) you won’t need the compliments. You will act beautiful because you feel than way. The funny thing is that the less you need to be told you are beautiful, the more you will hear it.

Find your own beauty and then everybody else will discover it too.