I HATE my . . .

Did you hear the echo of women everywhere responding with the speed of light?

Fat legs, flabby stomach, beaky nose, round eyes, thin lips, bulgy cheeks, flat breasts and on and on.

Last night I was indulging in trashy television, which I allow myself to do when my daughter isn’t home to witness it. I flipped to Dr. 90210, the reality show on E where plastic surgery patients explain what they hate about themselves and how they intend to fix it through plastic surgery.

What’s interesting to me is that most of these women are perfectly fine. There is nothing grotesque or ugly about their noses or their breasts, but they simply can not feel good about themselves until they fix their perceived flaw.

Sometimes there are really valid reasons for them to seek the surgery. Such as the 20-something girl who courageously opted to have a double mastectomy (removal of all breast tissue). She had it when she was only 18-years-old because her mother, grandmother, aunts and even some male relatives had died from breast cancer. For her, it was the only way she could look at her life and see a future that didn’t include a battle with breast cancer. Tragically, her surgeon botched the job and she was attempting another surgery to correct the fact that he stitched her two breasts together and made them two different sizes.

Diametrically opposed was Tabitha Stevens, former porn-star, who is a self-proclaimed addict to plastic surgery. You know when you touch-up some paint in a room and all the sudden you notice that really, the whole room needs painting because fixing the flaw had the effect of drawing out other flaws? Obviously, she’s an extreme case where she has had virtually every part of her body restructured and her issues are way deeper than cosmetic.

I am not opposed to women seeking surgery if that’s what they want. It’s risky though, the surgeon on last night’s Dr. 90210 said half (50%) of his surgeries are fixing the mistakes made by other surgeons. That’s an alarming statistic. Has anyone seen Meg Ryan with her new lips? This is a woman whose career is built on her cute little pixie face and her darling girl-next-door smile and she got her lips done to look sultry (at least that’s what appears to be her intent). It is not a good thing. I can’t look at her without thinking, You should demand a refund! Not that her previously pretty lips would be restored with a refund.

My real concern is the collective low self-esteem women are suffering from. Standing in front of the mirror and picking apart every perceived flaw has leaked into the collective conscience of our entire gender. It’s even leaking onto men and boys. The other day I heard a teenage boy say he had gone to the doctor for his check-up and they had congratulated him on gaining 10 pounds, as if that were a good thing, he said. The basic understanding for kids today is that it’s not a good thing to gain 10 pounds, even if they are growing in height. This kid will surely gain 50 more pounds before he completes adolescence and it really should be a good thing.

My concern with plastic surgery is that once you get it – what if you’re still stuck with your low self-esteem? I have one friend who got a boob job and she doesn’t regret it. It’s a nice job and it makes her feel good to have great boobs. Yet years afterward she still felt unattractive, though she’s stunningly beautiful and fit.

I don’t believe this is the fault of men. I believe the responsibility for women’s low self-worth rests solely with women. I’ve talked to men and really they just like breasts – big or small, whatever. They don’t even really care if they are lopsided. In my experience men, in general, are open to women looking different or carrying extra weight. They don’t really give our bodies the critical examination we do. They don’t expect us to be perfect and I don’t think they understand our need to be perfect. Think back on your experiences with significant others who have seen you naked – you may have felt fat or ugly, but it wasn’t because he said you were. (And if he did, then you should find a more accepting significant other.) It’s likely that he tried to make sure you knew that he thought you were hot.

Think back to the last time you were with a group of women. Or pay attention the next time you hang out with chicks. It’s just a massive complaint-fest. Do you have the friend who works out religiously and still won’t be seen in a swim suit because her body isn’t perfect? Do you have the friend who hates her curly hair or straight hair? Do you have the friend who can’t stand her thighs? Do you have the friend who constantly complains about her nose?

Of course you do. We all have those friends or those family members. And we look at their perceived flaw and think, really there’s nothing particularly wrong with your nose. They are looking at you and your perceived flaw in the same light.

I think the constant complaining is the source, or at least a major source, of our collective low self-esteem. When I am in a room full of women I listen to all the complaining and it tends to get more and more extreme – like a one-up-man-ship of who has the biggest flaw.

Oh you think you’re breasts are bad, mine have to be rolled into the bra after breastfeeding four kids!

At least you can fit into a size 6; I’m having trouble squeezing into the extra, extra large girdle!

There is no way I am wearing a swimsuit, I want to save everyone the embarrassment of having to look away!

It’s unhealthy! It’s funny, but I think the cost of saying bad things about your self is feelingbad about yourself. Who has time for that?

I truly believe we can change our collective low self-esteem by not indulging in self-criticism to get laughs. This really came home for me when my five-year-old daughter, Ainsley, started calling her perfectly-normal thighs fat. I realized when I started trying to lose weight after baby #2 and getting dangerously close to the dreaded 200 lbs mark that I had let my mouth run wild with self-loathing. I didn’t really feel all that terrible about my body until I started yammering on about how much pure fat I was losing by going to the gym. The more laughs I got from my hilarious descriptions about losing an inch of fat from my neck the more extreme my self-criticism became.

Obviously my incentive to stop this behavior was the fact that it was leaking into my daughter’s own body image. But, I think the same principle applies to our collective self-loathing.

I made a rule in our house that we don’t criticize our bodies. If we say something unkind about ourselves we have to write something good about ourselves and put it in a little box. It really wasn’t that difficult to stop the habit. I started trying to say something nice about myself, even where other women can hear me, where I run the risk of appearing stuck-up or conceited. The actual feelings about my self are becoming more positive as a result.

When another woman makes a self-loathing comment about herself I either simply don’t respond or I’ll say something like, I don’t have time to hate myself these days. It puts them off guard, but it stops the I’m uglier than you are war.

I’ll go first and say some nice things about myself.

I’m down to a size 12, and I don’t mean an Old Navy stretch 12, hurray for me! I’m feeling so curvy and voluptuous and healthy!

My hair transformed from straight to curly after my pregnancies. Hey, I spent the entire ‘80s trying to perm my hair to look just like this!

See how that’s different than what I would’ve said before:

I’m still a freaking huge size 12!

No one told me that my hair was going to get so freaking kinky and frizzy after I had kids.

Over the next month make an effort to try to change what you say about your body and I guarantee you will feel a lot better about it. I mean, really there are very few unfortunate people who are actually ugly and chances are you’re not one of them. If enough of us change the way we feel about ourselves it will inevitably leak into our collective conciousness.

Post from: Blisstree

I Hate My . . .