Size 4 Jeans

Let me ask you something: Are you ever really “you”? Do you ever really show your true face to the world, I mean your deep down, “this is the uncensored me,” raw and open you? Does anybody?

I think the answer everyone would like to give is yes, but the honest one is no. Are there times when you’d like to say or do something, but don’t for fear of how others will react? I think that everyone has moments like that, and that means you’re not giving out the real you. I’m not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing, just pointing out that I’m not sure anyone in today’s world really shows their true self all the time.

If you show your raw and uncensored self to the world, you have to be prepared for the reactions you get, and not let them affect you. I only know one person who claims that she is like this and that’s my mother, and she’s one of the most unhappy people I’ve ever known. I don’t know if her unhappiness stems from a complete inability to connect with anyone or whether the inability to connect is because she’s extremely critical of the world and just about everything in it, from my father on outward, but there it is. And I’m not sure she really operates that way all the time anyway, no matter what she says. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s rare that I pick up a fashion/beauty magazine these days. I just don’t have the time for it, and don’t get much out of them anymore anyway. Once in a while (like once a year) I’ll pick up something like Elle if I’m traveling by plane and just want some fluff to read on the way. I used to read them all the time; Seventeen, Cosmo, Bazaar, Vogue, Vanity Fair. They all found their way into my mailbox at one time or another when I was younger.

I remember feeling like I wasn’t pretty when I was younger, and I had really poor self esteem from the time I was a teenager until I was in my early thirties. I have to say that I think the media and magazines contributed to the problem. Looking at all those perpetually beautiful people in magazines and movies and on TV, I thought I’d never measure up. My mother never understood what the problem was, and never tried to as far as I could tell then or now.

I don’t remember ever having the kind of conversations with my mother that I have with my own daughter about why the magazines and movies and TV aren’t real, and how those people don’t really look like that off the camera, because the photos are all airbrushed and Photoshopped to make perfection seem real. Frankly, I think my mother was jealous of me because I was thin and she wasn’t, and she never wanted to have children anyway (so she’s repeatedly told me), so maybe that was part of the reason for her attitude.

I never thought I was fat when I was younger though, not even when I looked at all the models in the magazines. I was at least sensible enough to realize that “fat” just wasn’t anything close to what I was. In fact, I wished for more curves, because “sexy” to me was a Victoria’s Secret model, and I had bones, not curves and no breasts to speak of at all. I was a stick until I had kids, and I didn’t have any breasts until I could afford to fix that problem with a trip to the plastic surgeon when I was 30. Read the rest of this entry »