The Better 1%

Now Playing: Yellow by Coldplay (your skin and bones turn into something beautiful, and you know, you know I love you so...)

Only 1% of women think they're beautiful.

Isn't that tragic? Only 1% of women look in the mirror and like what they see. It's truly heartbreaking.

I've never been conventionally beautiful. I'm all of 5'3". I've been wrestling with acne since God-knows-when and I put on a lot of weight, growing up (which I have lost, mostly; 51kg! I haven't been this light since I was twelve years old!), and I have scars all over my arms and legs, as well as several surgical scars on my chest. I have the fuzziest eyebrows that are far too troublesome to try and pluck into submission, and there are just so many flaws and things that I wish I could change.

And yet, now I finally can look in the mirror and like what I see.

I've never been able to do that, before. I've never liked how I looked. I wanted to be perfect; I thought the only pretty people in the world were perfect. Even now, when I'm jealous of someone, I will never say that they are 'pretty' - I think that they look perfect, and I wanted to be perfect, too. 

We've confused pretty with perfect in this world. I was so disappointed that I wasn't tall and white and flawless and glamorous that I couldn't see the little unique things that made me, me - the way things curve, the colours and shades, the shapes...I even love my scars.

Having a pacemaker...the first thing that comes to mind is painful. Not a day goes by when there isn't a little nip of pain, a little twinge. And it's not the most aesthetically pleasing thing in the world - it does kind of look like my body is a host for aliens or something. But hey, it's this little computer that keeps me alive. And provides my doctors a highly amusing record of how many times my heart has skipped a beat and begun to race recently.  

My body is a diary of where life has taken me. Scars...they're battlescars, reminders of how strong I've had to be, of dark times that I pulled through alone. There's no point in being self conscious of something that is such an intrinsic part of me. I remember when I was little I saw my mother's C-section scar (I made a rather dramatic entrance into the world; emergency fetal distress) and it was the first time it hit home how much my parents have done for me, would do for me in a heartbeat. I've always been different; I've always done things a bit differently. So I guess it makes sense that I look a little different, too.     

And then we have to realize that we all have so much more to offer than our physical bodies. Kindness, intelligence, sincerity, compassion...inner beauty, beauty that age cannot decay. Why do people waste so much time and money and energy and resources trying frantically to cling on to youth and beauty when they could do some soul-searching and try to find some inner beauty? The girls who bullied me the most were the pretty ones, the ones who were never content with themselves and were only satisfied once they'd pushed me down in their attempts to pull themselves up.

What is the point with being so discontent with ourselves? Whether I like how I look or not, this is how I have to present myself to the world. It's this body that people will see, love, hate. After a lifetime of being told that I'm not good enough, never good enough, I think I'm strong enough to love myself. There's nothing wrong with feeling beautiful.  

I am not flawless, nowhere near. I will never be a model, I'll never be perfect. But I am beautiful in my own way.