I have recently snagged a new job (that I'll talk about later), but there is one thing about this job that is unavoidable. Self-consciousness. I'm not going to lie and say that I'm completely comfortable with my body all the time or that I think I'm a walking Adonis. Truth be told, I feel as if everyone at one point in their lives looks at themselves and thinks, "Hey, I wish that were just a little different..." I know that I have on occasion. Body image problems are something that run rampant in our culture. Whether a person is too tall, too short, too thin, too fat, has man-shoulders, huge pores, or has bad breath in the morning...ew,* we've all had that moment in the mirror.
Instead of moping and griping about what I wish was different about myself, I'm going to take a different route. At least to me, I think it's important for everyone once in awhile to sit down and tell themselves what they love about themselves. What makes them feel confident strutting down the street. The things that they've grown to love. It helps me focus on looking at the bright side and combating the cultural pressure placed upon us.
Here are some things (most of which I used to hate ) that I love about my body and myself:
- In 7th grade, I despised my feet. They were ginormous clown feet glued to my little legs. Clomping down the halls of my Junior High, I wished I could have grown taller first, or that my feet weren't like small concrete blocks. The funny thing is about my feet's growth spurt though is that they they were the first to bloom. I told myself that they were different sizes for years, but realized now by trying on shoes from my teenage years that they haven't grown since 7th grade. Despite that my feet are larger than the average male, I've also realized in recent years that they aren't as large as a tall man's feet usually are. Usually people I meet that are my height have a size or two larger than me. Also, even though my feet are skinny and have long toes, my toes all go in the right direction. By this I mean that my big toe is the longest toe on my foot, and the others just follow suit like an AT&T commercial (is that the phone company?). I love that my feet don't have a strange arrangement of toe lengths and I love that my feet are perfectly sized for my body now that I've grown into them. I love my feet.**
My creepy Gollum hands:
- Now, I never knew if I had larger hands or not before I started playing the piano, so that's what I mostly blame my hands on. Being a 6'2 man, I feel that my hands are an appropriate size, but what used to bother me when I was younger was my skinny fingers. More than once I've heard my hands compared to Gollum, the fantasy creature from LOTR that had a ring fetish. They're long, bony, and skinny. To me, they remind me of an old man. Younger me I thought that I looked like I was wearing derranged oven mitts on my little forearms. The thing I have grown to love about them though is their dexterity which I attribute from years of piano playing. They learned to move quickly up and down rows of beautiful keys making music that I can interpret in a number of ways. It's almost a different language. My little skinny fingers can maneuver things that I don't think would be possible if they were larger. I can type the little buttons on my phone, twiddle knitting needles (my scarf was beautiful...ly hideous), and make magic with chopsticks. I love my hands.
My height:
- The first thing I always noticed about growing up was...growing up. I sprouted at a young age which made it easy to pick me out of a crowd (literally) and to stand above the rest (see what I did there?). I don't have to tell you that feeling different at a young age usually doesn't improve self-esteem. I didn't gain weight easily and ended up looking like a brown, mop-haired stick figure. Fortunately for me, I stopped growing eventually and this tall thing isn't so bad. If I want to, I can wear capri pants and get away with it, I can wear skinny jeans 'cause my legs just keep going, my body is stretched enough that I can keep a good waist size most of the time, and I can put things up where people can't eat them. I love being tall.
My lips:
- I just like them. Always have, always will.
My back:
- Thanks to learning to swim competitively in high school, I consider my back my best feature most of the time. I like that it's big and kind of stronger than my other muscles. I also love that it gives me better posture than I used to have--picture an Auschwitz victim...about accurate.
My hair:
- I've always been happy with my hair. It covers my head when I'm cold, it covers my head when I'm hot...it covers my head all the time. I've been able to grow it to a nice shag and chop it off when I feel like it. Once it turned orange from swimming too much and I still loved the hot mess that it was. A million times better than being bald.
- Possibly the thing I'm most grateful for is my teeth and smile. As fate would have it, no braces were ever put on my chompers and they stayed straight. They're always there at 2am when I'm downing oreos and stressing over a test or flashing themselves at people. I've even once had the wonderful compliment that I had a "James Franco" smile. What's better than a "James Franco" smile? Maybe a Ryan Gosling face, but I'll live with what I have and flash it everywhere.
My glasses wearing face:
- I'm not completely sure why, but I've always been able to wear the glasses I want. This is mostly from trusting my friends saying that I look good in the glasses I try on or wear, but it's something I've heard a lot so I'm going to put it down. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. I like wearing glasses and I'm glad I can get away with it.
Throughout the years, I've come to embrace my body in a completely different way than I used to view myself as a student in the public school system. I've learned that every little thing about me makes myself who I am, whether I like it or not. My tastes change as does my body and I learn to appreciate its weird quirks and random markings (like that strange freckly birth-mark on my back).
I can always do what my Biology professor taught me last semester to remind us what amazing beings we are. Our bodies are doing amazing things all the time that we can't see and the things that we can see can be embraced instead of turned into self-loathing. An even better thing, we can find all the things we love in others.
I know that this does sound a little sappy, but I just need to remind myself right now how to be confident with my own body.
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
*Anyone get the reference? eh eh? Mean Girls, comes on
**This doesn't mean I have a foot fetish. I love my feet, not other peoples.
