Warning. Rant below. Enter at your own risk.

This morning, I tweeted about Kim K’s “waist trainer.” There was an article that published a recent selfie of her in her waist trainer and it praised her for looking “sexy” and “skinny” and for having achieved the “perfect hourglass shape.” When I saw the picture of her, I physically hurt for her and I also emotionally hurt for her.

Why? Well, for starters, the waist trainer is a literal corset. You tighten the strings every day and eventually your insides get squished enough that you appear to have lost weight. Wrong. You’re just physically altering and contouring your body in ways that it wasn’t meant to be altered. Ouch! Second, it breaks my heart that in this day and age she feels that she has to go to such extreme measures to be “beautiful” or whatever the heck that means. Because in all honesty, what REALLY does being beautiful mean? I don’t think there is one true definition. 

I am the first person to admit that I have always struggled with my self image. Even before I got sick, it was an issue. I’m a girl, hello, body image is one of the top anxieties in my day. Every day. All the time. I don’t mean for it to be, but it just is. In the wintertime, it’s not as bad because I can hide my anxieties under pants and layers of clothes. But once the warm spring and summer months roll around, I can’t hide behind pants anymore. I’m forced to face my anxiety that is wearing shorts and exposing my leg braces for the entire world to see so I end up overcompensating in other areas of my life.

It may seem like a silly anxiety, but for me, it is an every day battle. I think it all relates back to the fact that I have this underlying fear that I won’t be accepted/loved/enter-what-you-want-here because I look different than everyone else. Let me give you an example: The other night, I was walking to my sorority’s weekly chapter meeting on campus. It was a formal meeting, so I was in dress (a rather cute one if I do say so myself) that hit just above the knee and my converse. Braces exposed.  However, I didn’t think this would be an issue because I’ve been in my sorority for going on four years, I love these girls, they accept me for who I am. What I wasn’t planning on however, was the two guys I would pass on my way there. I was walking one way and two guys were coming the other direction, chatting about something. They were cute, my age, someone I would date. I could hear them talking but as we got closer to each other, they quieted down. As I passed them, one turned to the other and said, “Yeah I saw her legs. It’s a shame because she’d be hot otherwise.” People say things like this around me, at me, even to me, all the time.

I’ll admit, I’ve become hardened to comments like these. They don’t sting as much as they used to and I can brush them off a lot easier now than I could eight years ago. I’ve become hardened to those negative comments as a defense mechanism. As a result though, I’ve become hardened to positive comments too.

I said I overcompensate for my appearance in other aspects of my life? Let me just break it down for you. Because I have zero control over my legs, I obsess over my weight. I have to have the “perfect” hair and make-up before going out to dinner or going to a party. When someone gives me a compliment, my subconscious immediately searches for the underlying meaning because there is absolutely NO WAY that someone can be nice, just to be nice.

Having that^ mindset though, is exhausting. And so draining.

I finally decided, literally this morning, that “it” (whatever it is) doesn’t matter as much as I think it does. It doesn’t matter that I have leg braces. It doesn’t matter that I rolled out of bed ten minutes before class and didn’t brush my hair or put on make-up. It doesn’t matter that I currently weigh 152 pounds.

None of that matters and none of that defines what is or is not beautiful. What matters right now are: God, my family/friends, my schooling, Frank my fish, that I watered my plants today, that I took my medicine, and that I am getting adequate meals and sleep.

If I am able to focus on those things that matter to me and filter out the rest, that is my definition of beautiful. Next week it will probably be something else. And something different the next. And that is ok. 

I guess what I’m trying to say here is this: Just because you may not think you look perfect or be perfect according to society or WHATEVER, it doesn’t mean you aren’t beautiful. God has made you PERFECT IN HIS IMAGE. Never forget that. EVER.

 

Rant over. *drops mic*