Ornella, I've heard the "Wear Sunscreen" essay before; the class valedictorian used it one year at the high school where I used to teach. It's fantastic advice and I've never forgotten it. I searched for and printed out the essay shortly after hearing that valedictory speech.
I had some struggles with body image as a young woman. I thought I was somewhat pretty, but not beautiful; I thought I was slender, but not slender enough; I was a perfectionist and a high academic achiever; I was good at most things I turned my hand to, and had come to expect instant success and gratification -- in short, it was the perfect formula for anorexia nervosa. Then I started university, where it seemed that everybody else was as clever as me, and it also seemed so much more important to do well, since "real life" was at the end of it all. The pressure was on. I then had two very rough years, probably because one way to avoid dealing with all the scary stuff about growing up was to distract myself by bullying my body into matching my idea of perfection. But the more I strove for perfection, the uglier I felt.
Anyway, long story short, I eventually got to the point where I thought, this is stupid, I weigh 85 lbs and my life is falling apart -- clearly I can't keep this up forever! So I moved on. Part of that was accepting that neither my mind nor my body is perfect, but what I have is just fine.
Interestingly, years later, in my late twenties, something happened that made me realize that, in terms of how attractive you are to others, looks have little to do with it -- it's mostly just confidence and, weirdly, word-of-mouth! Having built up confidence after achieving some measure of success in school, work, and just life in general, I was feeling pretty happy in my own skin. I still didn't feel particularly beautiful, but at that point I had self-assurance and style. Well, that year at school, another teacher told me that I was the new "hot teacher" (you know how there is always one) -- he'd heard some boys talking about it in class, and thought it was funny. I didn't look or act any different than I had the year before, but word went around (as it does in high schools) and suddenly other staff members were complimenting me on my face and figure. I realized that just the IDEA that someone is attractive is contagious. No one had ever said I was pretty before, but now that a group of teenaged boys had decided that I was appealing, everybody else jumped on the bandwagon as well. It was very much the mentality of "well, everybody else thinks she's attractive, so she must be attractive". It was very weird, but eye-opening.
Later that year the valedictorian used that Baz Luhrmann speech, and it consolidated a lot of nebulous feelings about life that I'd already formed at that point. It really hit home.
Sorry, I sort of wrote a novel here. I haven't talked about this in a long time, so it feels good to share.
