Empyreal Blue

The BSU Fashion Show was last night and they dedicated a whole walk to us and our Real Beauty Campaign here on campus. We were able to get up on stage and talk about our project, then strut our stuff along with several other women who were dressed in whatever made them feel most comfortable/beautiful. I even ended up doing just about everyone’s make up as well. Which, I admit, was a bit tiresome, but it was still completely amazing.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience, and I cannot wait to see what else comes from this project.

Room to myself tonight. Time to get stoned and be vain.

Yes, I remember wanting to be that thin.

And I remember how much I had to hate myself in order to want that.

I remember how rapidly I began to drown in self-loathing.

I remember being content with hating myself because people would congratulate me for it.

“You’ve lost so much weight!” “You look great!” “I knew you would just blossom after you lost those extra pounds.”

It was confusing, and different, because I had never been congratulated for the cuts on my body or the drugs I had snorted or the alcohol I ingested. Those were all poignantly bad. This… this was a masked form of self-destruction. Let us paint it gold because it is somehow more appealing than the rest.

I remember how difficult it was to shut those voices out and be aware of what I was actually feeling.

And I know how difficult it is to remain in this mindset… how difficult it is to love oneself when all everyone else is doing is telling you to feel otherwise.

But my weight/my lack of a boney figure/my jiggling cellulite/how many times someone has been disgusted with my fat/my appearance and how it affects others… does not directly correlate with my value as a human being.

It never has, and it never will.

I just noticed not too long ago that I have these really light stretch marks on my upper thighs. It’s almost like they connect my legs to my hips. And they’re so pretty. They sort of glisten in the light and I love their texture.

Man, if I ever find someone who could appreciate the stupid little quirks of my body as much as I do, I would be so smitten.

I think people are just too afraid to like these things that have been deemed so ugly. But I think if they just really took the time to study them and connect them to the actual human being, they wouldn’t be so scary after all. 

I think the objectification of a woman’s body (or any body, for that matter) has a lot to do with this. When you separate a body part from the actual person, it’s easy to blatantly dislike it or shamelessly gawk over it.

But when you make that connection and feel the life within another person’s body, I think it’s be easy as fuck to fully love and appreciate that person and their body as a whole.