Isabella, I chime in to say your ears are just like you: so pretty. Your smile is great painter material!
How about me? I am physically the opposite from you.
Outside, see picture below.
Inside, I have always obsessed over my thighs, which I identified as the culprit of all my life woes. Oh, how I longed for lean chicken legs! I always found mine too voluminous. I have muscular thighs on short legs, which, in my eye, makes them look even shorter. It doesn't help that these short legs are positioned under a rather long-waisted inverted triangle body, and are forever pasty white. To add insult to the injury, these whales pour out of very narrow hips. All I wanted to be was the Sophia Laurenesque hourglass, which I could of course never be.
Meanwhile I achieved some nice things in life, intellectually, artistically... but inside, I felt incomplete because of how my body looked. I felt perpetually deformed.
I was so obsessed that for a while, I drove myself sick. I thought the problem was that there was too much of me. So I starved. I exercised. Too much. And off went the weight. Every time I'd look in the mirror, it was with the impossible hope that, miraculously, "me" would have melted away and underneath, Sophia Lauren's hip and thighs would reveal themselves. But alas,I was setting myself up for failure. Every time I looked, what I saw was me.
This obsession was eating my life away, literally. It influenced choices I made at crucial moments. It sucked my energy away. Now I look back and I know that if I had felt more confident, I would have made better career choices. I didn't completely screw up my life, but I know I didn't go as far as I could have. How come an intelligent girl like me let this complex decide for me? Well, life isn't over and now 40 is the new 20 they say.
I am fine now, I am proud to say. It took time. I know what my body looks like, thank you very much, and I appreciate it.
I still have body related insecurities sometimes, only much, much fainter, and much less often. I deal with them by focusing on taking care of my body instead of fueling destructive hatred into it. And it works. The less I hate myself, the smaller the offending issue becomes. The more I love myself, the more my body pays back with health, energy, feeling of happiness inside.
Learning to love yourself and your "offending bit" is not a passive affair. You must work at it, and find something that works for you. Taking pictures of yourself from different angles, decorating you ears with jewellery, exploring sassy haircuts such as this one http://vanessajackman.blogspot.....laine.html (link posted on alreadypretty)... and eventually learn to forget about them.
I am sorry, another long post. Couldn't help myself: your question called me.
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