I am a mom. I can't help but being a mom. I mom everyone. I always have, even years before I was ever really a mom to my own kid. So sometimes I tend to mom people without even really thinking about it. Chatting with a girlfriend of mine the other day I realized that I was completely momming her about her self image and realized that I should be momming myself.
She is 16 and lovely in the way that those of us who are no longer 16 spend a fortune on cosmetics to recapture. Shiny hair, beautiful youthful skin and a natural beauty that just glows from her. But being 16 she looks at the same pictures I do and points out all of the "flaws" that she sees. I told her that when she looks back on those shots she will realize how beautiful she is and regret wasting her time trying to fix those "flaws".
But you know what? I do the exact same thing. And I know better. Looking back at pictures of myself from high school I can see that I was really pretty cute in my own girl next door way. But what I wanted to be was tall and thin and not have brown hair and brown eyes. I felt like I was pretty plain and oh how I hated my smile. But I look back now and see that shiny hair and youthful skin and cute little figure and wish I had realized at the time that I was great the way I was, and that smile I hated? I wish now I had shown it in more pictures because I look so mad in all of them!
There is a picture of me in my early 20s that my mother took of me. I am goofing off, lifting my shirt to show my belly and sticking out my tongue. I look at that picture and can remember at the time wishing I was 5 pounds thinner and tan. But looking at it, I was healthy and muscular from time on the beach. What was I thinking?
So you would think that by now I would realize that I am going to look back on pictures of me now and wish that I had appreciated them more instead of picking them apart. But I pick. I wish I didn't look so tired. I wish my skin looked better, oh how I wish that. I had flawless skin in high school (wish I had appreciated it then) but in my mid 30s adult onset acne hit. And hit hard. So now I have scarring and discoloration that drives me nuts. I will see only that in any photo of my face that you show me. I can cover it up in natural lighting fairly well but you add a flash or bright sun and I can draw a line connecting every scar. But you know what other people see? My smile, my eyes, my hair, my neck...what ever feature they think is great and they will point it out. I will say thanks but...
Thanks but...what a horrible thing to do to myself! So after chatting with my girlfriend and realizing I needed to be chatting to myself I took out my trusty camera and did a series of pictures of myself. Me in my day that day. I took a couple shots in my living room. A couple shots on auto timer in the car driving. A couple shots of my shadow. A few shots of my reflection in a store window and in my car window. A completely posed shot of how I must look most days from the viewpoint of the car in front of me. And then I looked at those pictures and found positive things to say about each one of them. And not...I like the light in this picture either, but positive things about me. I figure it's a small step and it will take a lot of those to be able to really appreciate pictures of me when I see them, but I am willing to give it a try. The entire album is on my facebook account.
Sometimes you just have to suck it up and take your own advice. Yes, Mom...I hear you. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment