And now after watching her show, I have a third reason. After the halfway point in the show, she goes to commercial about every two minutes. Literally.
But I watched it anyhow today, and it was about little girls, ages 3 and 4, who were already concerned about their appearance. The 3-year-old would tell her momma she hated her because she wouldn't let her wear makeup. The 4-year-old was deathly afraid of being fat, so she would refuse to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch and instead only ate the peaches.
It also featured a teen model who thinks she's just downright hideous, although she's very beautiful. She cannot even look at herself in the mirror because she thinks she's so very ugly.
I hear all the time of girls and women who suffer from major self-esteem issues because they're not pretty enough or not thin enough or whatever. Lots of people like to blame the media for showing us all kinds of airbrushed people, not even true photos, and encouraging us to believe that that's how we should be.
Somehow I have escaped all of this; I am not sure how.
The mothers on the show today told of being made fun of when they were kids, and that they never felt pretty, so they're trying now to encourage their girls to feel pretty.
I was made fun of to no end when I was a kid. Part of it I brought on myself. I was very loud, very brash, very obnoxious. I was one of those kids whose desk had to be pushed up against the wall instead of being in a group of four desks, like everyone else. I was one of those kids whose name went up on the board every day. I was one of those kids whose parents were called once a month because I was so disruptive in class.
Kids like that are almost handing their peers an open invitation to make fun of them. I'm not saying that it's right; that's just what IS. I also sucked my thumb in school through the fifth grade. I was also always at least twenty pounds heavier than my peers.
Once in the fourth grade we were learning averages, and the teacher (the only male teacher I had till I got to junior high, but he was a great teacher) decided to ask everyone's weight and average it all together. The kids in my class started chanting my name for me to reveal my weight, and it was a shock to most of them when I stated that I weighed 97 pounds. And that's when I was just ten years old.
But I was proud of being so big. I wasn't a fat kid; I know that now. I was stocky, though, and puberty wasn't exactly kind to me. I ended up at 160 pounds throughout most of high school, and I wore a size 16. My D-cup breasts didn't help me out either; gym was literally a pain. And I was very self-conscious of my breasts when I was changing in the locker room. They'd grown so quickly that I had angry red stretch marks radiating from my nipples. You could see them if I wore a revealing bra, and girls would ask me, "Eww what are those marks??"
I was also teased in elementary school for having big lips. A little brother of a friend of my sister's loved to torment me by calling me Lizard Lips. Michele told me to tell him that lizards don't have lips, but he retorted, "Well, your lips are as large as lizards!"
Also I can remember one time when I was seven or eight years old. I can't remember the situation in which she said it, but my stepmom, bless her non-tactful soul, told me, "Honey, I'm sorry to say it, but I think you'll always be a plain Jane." I don't think she meant it to be hurtful, just a statement of true facts.
So you would think that being so much larger than my peers, not being attractive, always being loud and brash, would cause me to have low self-esteem.
Funnily enough, I don't have low self-esteem. Oh sure, I weigh 185 pounds now and fit into a size 16, but instead of whining that I'd love to lose that "extra" 85 pounds and be a size 2, I am proud that in six months I lost 30 pounds and a dress size. I am now thinner than I was when I got pregnant with Gracie, and just before delivery I weighed about 235 pounds. So for me to be 185 now, I'm estatic.
Also I love the shape of my body. I am very Marilyn Monroe-esque. I'd hate to lose my hips because the largeness of my hips emphasizes the teeniness of my waist! Of course, it makes it difficult to buy jeans, but I have a nice shape.
As for my lips for which I was tormented all through elementary school (most kids teased me by saying I must be part black -- although how that's a bad thing, I don't know), I love them. Big, full lips are in -- and all these women are spending zillions of dollars on injections and special lip creams in order to get what God gave me naturally.
I love how I have the most perfect cupid's bow ever. One lady asked me at work one time how I managed to fashion such a perfect cupid's bow (or soup strainer or whatever you call the dip in your upper lip) with my lipstick every morning, and I told her that's just the way God made me. I just follow the lines He made.
That off-hand comment of Marty's when I was a kid also didn't wound me emotionally, although most people would think it would have. I took it more pragmatically because honestly I will never be a beauty queen. I don't think I'm any more attractive than the average woman out there, but I think I'm pretty enough. I love my eyes. I love my cheeks. I'm not so keen on my nose; I think it's the part of me that makes me look 15. And the only thing I think really needs some work is my brows, but that's easily fixed with a little bit of makeup.
I just don't get all these women who boo-hoo themselves and say they hate their face, they hate their hair, they hate their bodies. Sure, we have things about ourselves that we don't like, and that's fine. But why obsess about it? What kind of lessons are we teaching our kids when we talk to ourselves in the mirror and tell ourselves how fat and ugly we are? It just teaches them to look through the same skewed mirror that we're looking through.
I hope my self-confidence rubs off on Gracie. I don't want her to be like that 3-year-old that felt ugly each and every day. I want her to see how gorgeous she is, not because of her facial features or bodily characteristics, but because of who she is on the inside.
That's what's most important anyhow.