It’s 2017, and we still have body image issues. I still have body image issues. And it’s not a bad thing. We are living in a world where magazines and social media are dominated by girls who are photoshopped to be perfect. We are told that if we aren’t this specific size, then we aren’t pretty enough. We are told that if we don’t wear our makeup a certain way or have our eyebrows completely bold and filled in that we are not beautiful, that we need to do things this way and that.
I think, as a world and a generation, we have come to believe that there is a certain look that we have to achieve to be beautiful. We have to have the dark eyebrows, the full coverage foundation, the perfect contour, the blinding highlight and so on. We have to wear the hipster clothes that make us look just edgy enough to say we are a rebellious generation. We have to fix our hair to be messy. We have people from everywhere telling us what we have to be. Screw that.
We are skinny. We are curvy. We have freckles. We have acne. We have half-bitten fingernails. We have light natural eyebrows. We have a little extra weight on us than the models on Instagram. We buy $2 tees from Goodwill. We wear that dingy old sweater that our grandmother gave us that one Christmas. We have imperfections. And that’s OK. We are women.
Ladies, it’s OK to not be or look perfect all the time. Our imperfections are what make us perfect. We don’t have to impress someone all the time. If wearing makeup is your thing, do it. If wearing your hair in that messy bun is your thing, do it. If you want to wear that oversized t-shirt, do it. Do it and own it. Do whatever makes you happiest in this world. We are women and we can own our bodies and do whatever we want with them. We are the ones living in our bodies. Do what makes you comfortable in your skin, ladies, and you will never be disappointed.
Photo courtesy of Jennifer Burk on Unsplash.