Scrapbook : August 17th, 2020
Rainy clouds and rainy days are sometimes not always so enjoyable. Today, my rainy day involved the one and only, insecurity.
I’ve always been pretty insecure about myself, I could name a few typical insecurities that anyone could list about themselves or that anyone has heard plenty times before.
What kind of hurts the most and I know that there’s someone reading this who could read this and just relate and that...that kinda hurts more. Like, when you put it into perspective, you think these insecurities hurt you and then your mind wanders off about how many other men and women, who also suffers from that insecurity. And it almost hurts more.
Growing I've always been bullied and shamed for being a bigger girl, or for not speaking English correctly because it wasn’t my first language. Or for being a completely different skin color, or having a different hair texture than other girls.
And it only solidified itself when going out and about, maybe the grocery store, or at the nail salon, the hair salon, the waiting room of the doctor’s office. There were magazines with these beautiful slim, tall, blonde and blue-eyed woman or even brown hair and brown-eyed woman. And I thought they were always beautiful, don’t get me wrong I still think they are and I respect those women a lot.
But it always made me feel more insecure about myself because I never saw one woman on the cover of a magazine, growing up, that never resembled me. There were no thicker women, there were no women of color of the covers of the magazines, and there were no women who showed imperfections. Like acne.
It was then, from a young age that I became familiar with the ideal of “One size fits all” and that only a select few of woman could be the “ideal” beauty standard. And of course that was
The list just got bigger and longer as time went on, it soon became and internalized hate for just the simple pure existence of myself. I hated myself.
I didn’t want to be me anymore.
As time progressed much of this was in simple terms, challenged. And soon thicker, plus-sized woman were able to become models and be on the front cover of magazines.
Again, don’t get me wrong I am very, very happy about seeing those women on the cover of magazines but it just seems that after so long. It just doesn’t feel right.
I’ve always been a bigger girl, and thicker girl and all of sudden it becomes something the majority is into. It’s become a trend. And I don’t know how to feel, because all my life I've been silenced and judged for something that now everyone wants to be.
- Colored skin (through tanning or other means)
Some how now after years of internalized hate and judgement from my peers I’m all of sudden supposed to wake up and feel so great about myself and show what I was gifted with and be confident. But I can’t because, you were also the same people who judged me, silenced me, made me cry for hours in my bed into my pillow because I was choking on my silent screams of hatred.
So when you see me, don’t ask me to smile. Don’t ask me why I am not confident in myself. Don’t say to me “I wish I looked like you”.
I am still yet to learn how to truly 100% love myself and be confident in what I was gifted with. And you should too, boy, girl, man or woman. Learn how to love yourself because you are a beauty standard, somewhere out there there is a young girl or boy, or even the 20 some college student you passed by at the grocery store the other day consciously or unconsciously felt some type of happiness to see that there is someone else that looked how they did.
2020 and beyond are times of various beauty standards. We are the beauty standard.
annaxmalina
kianamaiart
kaledo-art
titsay
vaporwave
izzy806
germansingergirl
