Condition of the Month–April 2015

–Ariel

My insecurities are definitely different than they were a few years ago. In the later half of college I was a little bit overweight and constantly struggled with that. I was never really happy with the size I was, and preferred not to think about it. Honestly I kind of lied to myself about what size I really was. But I still had fun and was confident. I’m definitely of the mindset that you can’t let your insecurities own you, and I didn’t. But it got to a point where I realized how unhealthy of a lifestyle I had and I decided I wanted to change because my body would feel better.

Now I have lost the weight, and I do feel 100% better. It was absolutely the right choice. Now my main insecurity comes from worrying that I’ll get lazy again and gain all the weight back. This isn’t a constant, obsessive worry, but I just worked so hard and I would hate to lose all of that. Right now I’m really trying to enjoy the body I have because I know that in a few years when I have kids I’ll probably gain a whole new set of insecurities and look back on my 26 year old self in envy.

–Snow

Like everyone else, I have had my fair share of body image insecurities over the years, and, like my body, they have changed over time. In high school I was mortified by my acne (though it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been) and I wished my boobs were bigger. In college, my acne cleared up for the most part (although I still get an occasional zit at 26?!?!) and I was generally pretty pleased with how I looked, but I still couldn’t stop comparing myself to others. Whether it was my roommates, the cheerleaders at sporting events, or just other girls in my classes, I felt like I was surrounded by beautiful people and I just didn’t quite measure up.

These days I’m starting to feel some insecurity about something I’ve never much worried about: my weight. I’ve always been thin, pretty much effortlessly so, and I have relied on that to bolster my confidence when it comes to body image. But in the past few months I’ve had a very hard time exercising regularly due to working full time, traveling, getting sick, injuries, etc. And hence, I’ve started to notice my clothes fitting tighter, fat where there didn’t used to be, even the beginnings of cellulite and a few stretch marks. In reality, it’s only a few pounds that I’ve gained, and I’m sure if I commit to working out more and lay off the desserts, they’ll melt away. Perhaps a lot of people would still consider me thin, or at least nowhere near overweight, but since my body feels different to me, I still worry about it.

Even if I do lose those few pounds, I still feel like I’ve grown into a new body in my twenties. My boobs ARE bigger, and I don’t think that will change. Mother Nature (or maybe my birth control pills?) has made sure that whatever fat I do hold on to lands on my hips, resulting in curves I never had before. These aren’t bad changes, but for someone who has had a lanky, slender figure for as long as I can remember, it’s still a change that takes getting used to. But hey, as Snow says, once I have kids I will definitely long for the days when I looked like this. I guess it’s all about perspective.

–Cindy

It is really difficult not to be insecure. All of us get attacked daily from all angles – friends, parents, crushes, media, and strangers all have an opinion on what we should look like. Only a few days ago my perfectly normal sized friend told me her doctor called her overweight, saying not that there was any health issue to worry about now, but that if she gained more her health would be at risk. I was appalled when I found out a medical professional was making a statement like that, it’s one thing to say – you are unhealthy, lose weight or you’ll get heart disease, but she wasn’t saying that to my friend, she was giving an opinion. Shouldn’t the label for the place 20lbs before the health risk be the same as the place 60lbs away? Does it really help to call a person overweight when there is nothing wrong?

Its things like this that have made me work really hard to be confident about my body. I do my best not to talk about weight with friends, put myself down, or really bring up the subject in general. If I have to talk about it I focus on health, saying I want to have better lungs or hike more, and if my overall attractiveness is being questioned I straight up say I’m happy with what I look like. That being said as confident as I remind myself to be I still have plenty of insecurities, and as much as I project that they don’t matter, the one critic that is the hardest to silence is your internal one.

I used to hate being tall, hate the stretch marks on my legs that came with it, my large feet and flat chest. I have acne scars that I could do without and less than perfect teeth that I never seem to get around to whitening. And lately I’ve gone into this spiral of hating my hooded eyelids. I couldn’t sleep a few weeks back and found a youtube video explaining how to put makeup on hooded eyelids, realizing finally why winged eyeliner had always been so difficult for me to pull off. After that all I saw when I looked in the mirror were my puffy/droopy eyelids, even going so far as to look up the costs and recovery time of surgery to remove some of the skin. It was absurd how in one day I could go from looking at my face and seeing me, to looking in the mirror and only seeing something awful. The obsession has waned in the last few weeks, but now that fear will always be with me, would I be prettier if you could see more of my eyelid?

But the thing is, if those negative, tiny things were all that people saw about me, it would be an inaccurate picture. I’m also beautiful and kind, smart and strong, proud and grateful. Those insecurities are the little things, the rest of me is what matters.

–Aurora