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Jul. 25th, 2013 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluecastleI've been thinking a lot about beauty lately. That Making Space class I took last month has a private facebook group and there was a post from one of the women about trying to love her legs, so she'd taken a picture. Lots of people joined in. Then there were belly pictures from women learning to love that bit of them. Then a bunch of boob pictures. And I just kept reading the discussions, and looking at all these brave real women, and thinking about how I don't really think I've ever actually felt beautiful in my whole life.
The best I can manage on a good day when looking in the mirror is "pretty okay" or "kinda cute." And wow isn't that sad.
I always come back to the story of how when my teacher mother woulld tell me her students asked "is your daughter pretty?" (and lets unpack why they even cared...) she would say "she's ok."
So yeah, I never got the "your beautiful" message from anyone else, and certainly I never learned to see it in the mirror.
But I'm trying. One thing I did recently was to use one of my private boards on Pinterest to pin up pictures that make me feel what I think feeling beautiful feels like. And at this point in my journey, I'm challenging myself to include lots of pictures of plush curvy women. Beauty as a concept is such a nebulous thing, and its hard to really figure out what it is about these pictures I'm assembling that does it for me. But its nice to have a collection of lovely juicy images to get my brain going in some sort of positive direction.
More work to do. Lots of self portraits to explore. Hairdos to explore (hey I got out my flat iron last night and tried to do a little something with my hair this morning... ). But it can't hurt to give myself a little shot of inspiration, right?
The best I can manage on a good day when looking in the mirror is "pretty okay" or "kinda cute." And wow isn't that sad.
I always come back to the story of how when my teacher mother woulld tell me her students asked "is your daughter pretty?" (and lets unpack why they even cared...) she would say "she's ok."
So yeah, I never got the "your beautiful" message from anyone else, and certainly I never learned to see it in the mirror.
But I'm trying. One thing I did recently was to use one of my private boards on Pinterest to pin up pictures that make me feel what I think feeling beautiful feels like. And at this point in my journey, I'm challenging myself to include lots of pictures of plush curvy women. Beauty as a concept is such a nebulous thing, and its hard to really figure out what it is about these pictures I'm assembling that does it for me. But its nice to have a collection of lovely juicy images to get my brain going in some sort of positive direction.
More work to do. Lots of self portraits to explore. Hairdos to explore (hey I got out my flat iron last night and tried to do a little something with my hair this morning... ). But it can't hurt to give myself a little shot of inspiration, right?
