Embracing My Outer Self

I grew up in and around the entertainment industry so to say I've been appearance conscious all my life is an understatement... for all the good it did. An effect of this awareness was to be familiar with all the beauty treatments and diets that have come and gone for thirty years and then some. The current trend of plastic and bone thin people disturbs me more than anything else I've ever seen. What happened to pure natural beauty? Why don't we appreciate that anymore? It makes me very sad to see so many people and som many youngpeople running to their plastic surgeon's office to fix a perfectly lovely face and body.

Same stands true for diets. The things we do to our bodies to achieve some ideal of what is beautiful is so disgraceful. We dishonor ourselves when we mutilate and starve our physical bodies. While I personally believe your physical body is merely the outermost shell of who you are, and the thing that will indeed someday die away, I do think it should be appreciated and cared for in the manner of which it was given you. That is however a rather new thing for me as I've felt truly uncomfortable most of my life with...

my looks and my natural weight.

I've never been a yo-yo dieter, something inside me knew that was a bad choice and after my second child was born, I made a conscious decision to forget about weight unless, or until, I could give it the focus and attention it required to take it off and keep it off. In other words, until I had the bandwidth to deal with an entire life change. That time is now for me.

I had one other successful attempt at weight loss about five years ago and in that time I learned how to eat, even unhealthily, and still lose weight. This time around however, its about more than simply a number on a scale, I'm looking for something very specific from my body. I want it to look a certain way and feel a certain way and I have come to realize that the only way to get what I want from my body, is to give it what it needs, at least 90% of the time.

I'm a smart woman and the needs of my body are simple, but as I was coming up with this list, I took it a step further than simply weight loss, lets just call this my vanity list. Earlier today on my life blog I posted an update to the big Florida move and there are 24 weeks until my first trip down there to apartment hunt. After that I have this gut feeling that things are going to move rather quickly so I'll be moving into a different phase of life than I'm in now so this feels like my opportunity to fine tune the things I've over looked the last few decades....and lets face it, I have a definite vane streak. When you grow up a pretty blonde girl with blue eyes in southern California, the attention you get for your looks does become a part of who you are.

The strange thing for me is that, along with things like my ability to write, sing, dance, garden and cook that I feel somehow guilty over because those around me don't have those abilities, I've also felt guilty for being what the typical American culture during the years of my growing up called pretty. As I'm trying to move into my own spotlight in the next act of my life, becoming comfortable with my appearance is a must.

Here's where I go freaky Samantha on you... I am completely comfortable with my current appearance, because I've dulled it down so it doesn't stand out. I'm very overweight, I dress down oftentimes to match my surroundings. I often let my hair just grow long and straight and I rarely wear make-up. What I'm not as comfortable with, is the idea of being thin again, dressing the way I prefer which is sexy and flirty and extremely feminine. Having my hair and nails done and letting myself wear lipstick again. I've sold myself short for a whole lot of years out of some level of discomfort with being "pretty" and I'm not going to do it any longer.

Lets face it, the idea of beauty changes within our culture all the time.

Those are the women I grew up with as the ideal of beauty.

Today there's been a lovely shift and there is a wider range of beauty being appreciated...

 And I guess with age, as they say, comes wisdom and I'm merely at a place in my life where I want to embrace my beauty, inside and out and make the most of it. A definitely plus in our time is how many amazingly gorgeous older women there are in the media who still make quite an impression and give women like myself something to aspire to.

The fact is, beauty comes in as many packages as there are women.

We are a culture obsessed with beauty and the fact is there will always be someone younger and hotter around the next bend. At the end of the day, physical beauty is never going to bring you any real happiness, but as a woman who's run from her physical appearance all her life, its time to stop and embrace who I am on the outside. My life is on a path to find the answer to who I really am? What can I really be? How bright can I truly shine? If I don't embrace it all, I'll never truly know.

Body image, and physical appearance is such a stumbling block for us as women especially, though I know many men who struggle with it as well, but no one should dictate to you what beauty is but you. I think if you could take one thing away from this ramble of mine, is that its most important to be beautiful on the outside, but if you have a handle on that part, take a self check, how do youhonestly feel about your outside? You don't have to share it with anyone, but if the answer is anything less than "stellar" maybe its something to think about. ;-)