How do you see yourself?

This is my second post about body image. It's an important subject to me because as a teenager I felt very self-conscious and did not feel very confident about myself. Some bad experiences led to my self image being totally destroyed so I reacted by wanting to change how I looked. I felt I was fat. This was really stupid I realise now, because I weighed about 51 kilos at the time, and I'm just under 5ft4 (1.63 and a half cm) and that's pretty thin. But I felt like it wasn't enough. Luckily thanks to my very worried mom who watched me like a hawk,I managed to get over that irrational fat idea.

It's still stuck in my head a bit though. I love to nibble and lately with the long commute and having to wait so long to get home and have dinner, I nibble a lot more and then late night dinner, made me gain a kilo or two. So 52 kg now, and it's driving me a bit mad. I've weighed 49 kg for ages, so these two extra are making me conscious of every cookie I eat now. I know it's stupid! Slap some sense in me people.

I read the paper online the other day, and I read an article about a Belgian pagant girl, my age, who wants to be a model in America, but according to the agencies there she's not thin enough. She's 1m75, model tall, and weighs currently 55 kilos. That's three kilos more than me and she is 11cm taller! On her picture she looks perfectly thin, but they want her to weigh 50-52 kilos or she won't get booked. This just pisses me off. She looks perfect, not emaciated but still flat belly as an ironboard. Why does she need to weigh even less? Models are treated like clothes hangers, and it's things like that that influence young girls and get it into their heads that to be beautiful you need to be underweight and preferably be busty too. Or no man will find you attractive or sexy.

Even some men nowadays are starting to feel the pressure of needing to be muscular and fit, and are developing the same 'I'm faaaat' issues as us women.
The idea of beauty is so warped nowadays, if you don't fit perfectly in that box, you need to do something about it, diets, botox, plastic surgery and whatnot. Just look at the celebrities for extreme examples, I just read Amanda Seyfried, who's 25, is being pushed by Hollywood people to start using botox so she looks perfect on the screen. 25!! If she starts using that stuff now, she'll look like an expressionless wax doll in ten years. How stupid! What ever happened to aging gracefull? Now it's preferable to show no signs of aging at all. But it's probably hard for them, paparazzi everywhere, magazines judging everything you wear and how you look..

I just hope people will start realising that unless you're unhealthy (meaning really thin or obese) stop freaking out, you will not be unloved or undesired, and that extra pound will not make you look like the Loch Ness monster.

I love the commercials for Dove soap, just like the picture above and below, all different body shapes and all beautiful.

Small is normal!

If you're a woman (or heck even if you're a man!) you'll know what it feels like to stand in front of the mirror naked and think I'm not sexy naked or I look like crap.

This usually happens to me in locker rooms when shopping, especially in lingerie stories, they have the worst lighting. I always seem to look red and blotchy and misshapen, making me want to run out of there screaming. If you don't have perfect busty curves you'll know how much it sucks to go bra-shopping, even when you love frilly lacy lingerie like me. I always felt a bit unhappy about having ended up rather in the back of the line in God's boobqueue. When all you see is busty people on tv and magazines and read that the average bra-size is a D-cup (!!!!), you feel like you must be the only person in the world who has just gotten a handful, instead of five handfuls.

For a while I thought, maybe I should just get a boobjob later and then I'll feel more womanly. But now that I'm older, I'm thinking, so what! So they're kinda small, do I need giant balloons to be a real woman? So my cleavage needs a push-up bra to get some good cleavage action going, it shouldn't matter. Stupid media makes us small-breasted girls think that everyone in the world is busty, and if you're not you better do something about unless you're a giant emaciated model, then you're allowed.
I was really sad when Kate Hudson caved to the Hollywood big boob pressure. She's really beautiful, but had very little bustyness, and she didn't seem to care at all. Clearly she did, because she suddenly went from A to probably a C, which is a shame. I probably will always feel a little self-conscious about them, but as long as there is a guy who says small but perky is just as amazing, I can be happy enough!

I can understand why some people choose for plastic surgery though, low self esteem can really get you down. Some people exaggerate though, there's girls with a perfectly big enough B cup, who still feel like there's nothing there and decide to get enormous really unnatural looking balloons. That's just stupid, you'll regret it eventually. Now, I read a story about a girl with nothing at all and she did it to have something, not big, just something, and I can totally understand that. I would do the same, how can you feel womanly and sexy, if you don't even get enough to fill a bra, and you feel like an eternal child. It can totally ruin your sexuality, and then it is totally justified. But it's still an operation and is often not considered a risk, which it is.

So unless you're an extreme case, be happy with small and perky, it's just as beautiful. Even if you haven't really 'got' much of it, flaunt it anyway. You'll be surprised how many guys don't care. Don't cut open your body just to fit the ideal image of a woman. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not the fashion industry.