Today, we have a special guest post from a lovely woman I have had the pleasure of knowing and growing up with. She's incredible, and if you don't believe me, just read this post. It certainly reminded me of many things I should be focusing on in my own life. Her name is Niagra, now go fall madly in love with her words, just as I did.
“Omigah, You’re so Perf!”
“Omigah, You’re so Perf!”
So how do
you feel pretty in a pretty-obsessed world? I can make it simple and tell you
all of the cliché stuff Dove commercials use where they capture ‘real women’,
as if there is some forbidden land or alternate universe where ‘fake women’
live, (yeah, I know they mean actresses, but using the term ‘real women’
doesn’t make me want to buy your product). Or I can tell you the same things
those self-proclaiming, ‘liberating’ naked magazine ads do where they use those
celebrities who make you rethink eating that second serving of a good
home-cooked meal, and committing to a life where all you can consume is a cup
of green tea.
Or I can be real with you.
Feeling
pretty these days is really, really, really, hard.
Maybe even a
chore.
Is it not
our job as women to look pleasing and appealing to men? And how confusing is it
these days, honestly. At least back then all you had to do was to make sure to
not be fat. Nowadays, you can’t be skinny either. You have to have a small waist,
large hips, more ‘blessed’ attributes, and the perfect calves. Nowadays you
have to look ‘fit’, because men really dig girls with six-packs now, oh, and
thigh-gaps. And if you’re skinny, you can’t be too skinny, to the point you look ‘unhealthy’. And if your thick,
you can’t be too thick, or else
someone will mistake you for weighing over two hundred pounds. And if you’re
too much of any of these things, then don’t expect to get what you think you
deserve, because it’s your fault.
If you’re a fat girl, don’t expect to get a
fit guy, because it’s your duty to make sure your fit too. If you’re a skinny
girl....well, you’re just a big meanie-pants for being skinny, (sticks tongue
out at all the skinny girls/women in the world). It’s almost as if there is a certain
formula for being the perfect girl. Kind of like building a cake. I watch my
sister bake or make cakes all the time, and I can never perfect the art (oh,
haha, there’s that word again). If you add too much of one thing, the whole
cake is ruined. These days, being perfect, is a lot like that.
 |
| Darn you hot dog legs! |
Oh, and
there are perfect girls out there.
Social media
has taken large parts of the world by storm, but seemingly the only thing that
makes it of good use is taking selfies. Now I’m not shy to selfies, you kind of
need them to get by on social media. I learned that the hard way. The first
time I made an account to Facebook, I put a picture up of a butterfly as my
profile picture, and got a bunch of snarky comments at school. “I didn’t know
you were a butterfly.” Oh, well, I don’t have the next i-whatever to take a
decent picture, so.....
And thus,
began the rule of the selfies.
And there
are those girls who are ‘perfect’. Who get those diamond comments: I wish I were you! Omigah, you’re so perf! Perf:
shortened for ‘perfect’, isn’t that clever? And as I am feverishly typing away
on my bed, I hear my sister beside me gush about the women she follows on those
social media apps, and about them all being so ‘perfect’. She shows me them,
and my psyche gauge depletes to critical levels. Only later do I notice that
all of these women have a few things in common, things I’m sure you can figure
out.
Basically, they don’t look anything like me.
Not. One.
Bit.
 |
| The Great Deceiver (cackles manically) I have all the traits of a mystical, magical siren |
Most of you
don’t know me or what I look like. And I must admit that my profile pictures
are a bit deceiving (I make it a goal to only expose from the neck up,
sometimes not even that. Sadly, this is only about twenty percent of the body).
I am a big girl. Always have been. Have always struggled with losing weight.
Have always wistfully looked at my friends or family with much prettier
silhouettes or shapes then me. I’d like to kid myself into saying I was curvy,
but I consider myself just really....lumpy. I’m laughing as I type this now,
but it’s true. My sister sometimes says, ‘oh you’re hourglass shaped’, and
while I am proportioned on both top and bottom, why disregard my middle? If we
are talking about shapes now, I’d truthfully say I’m more, ‘cardboard-box
shaped’. Or, ‘newspaper-shaped’.
 |
| Newspaper-Shaped, which is good, because I like newspapers |
So, moving on, I also resemble my mother a
lot, who is a beauty.
Did you see that? That one little word? Resemble?
I don’t look
like her.
I resemble
her.
 |
People mistook us for twins.....(scratches beard) .
|
People
sometimes mistake us for twins if they look too quickly, but then they stand
there, and look long enough, and go, “Oh, you’re not Mrs. Campos
There are other
features to me, like my extra dry skin, or duck-feet (wide, large Hobbit feet—I
say Hobbit, because though they are pretty big for my size, I am no taller then
five feet), or my frizzy, scratchy-to-the-touch hair, but I rather not go into
that. You get the gist of it. NO ONE is convincing me from a Dove commercial
that I’m a ‘worth it’, because NO ONE from those commercials look like me.
I’ve had experiences to lift me up, and to bring me down. I’ve had countless
women gush about how beautiful I was, but have also had countless young men slide
there eyes over my head and onto my sister or mother, or flat out just say it,
“You’d be so pretty if you lost X amount of weight....and if you took out your
dreadlocks....and if you didn’t wear those boots that made your legs looks so
short, and if you....”
So I had to
learn myself. And what does learning require?
RESEARCH.
I stopped
wistfully looking into those magazine ads, and started surfing the web, for
women who looked like me. They were hidden, like rare gems, but with enough
work, enough digging, I found them. Those women who looked like me. And you
know....
They were
happy with themselves.
I also
noticed another thing. While they were beautiful, I focused more on the way
their eyes lit up when they talked about music/books/clothes/television/their
beautiful lives in general. Or the way
they laughed, which was infectious, and made me laugh too. Or the way they just
carried themselves. With a confidence
you couldn’t buy, you had to earn. And these women weren’t ever going
to be put in a Dove commercial or magazine cover/ad. Like, ever. And it didn’t
matter.
They were loved. By men. By women. By children.
But more importantly,
by themselves.
And it showed. They say that you’re your own worst critic.
Beating yourself up, torturing yourself because you don’t look or even closely
resemble ‘that perfect girl’ is going to show in your countenance over the
years. I don’t know how many times it’s been said to me—every women I come
across has said this to me—“no one is going to love you if you don’t start with
loving yourself.”
 |
| Like my sash? |
When you
whisper those things in the mirror, or when you hear those things in your mind,
think to yourself, honestly, would you say that to another girl who resembled
you? Would you say that to a younger version of you? I don’t think I’d have the
guts to look at twelve-year-old Niagra, in all her flushed-face, frizzy-haired,
pink polka-dot converse-shoed glory and say, “You’re ugly, you’re fat, and no
one will ever want you.” Young women/women expect to be treated kindly and
gently, to be forgiven of our second helpings, or the fact that our legs are
not as long as the super model on the bill board you pass everyday to work.
How can we expect anybody to treat us kindly, with love and adoration, if we
can’t show these emotions for ourselves? How can we expect anyone to love us if
we’re chastising ourselves for eating too much sweets on a cheat day? It’s a
double standard. It’s wrong. And just plain, unfair!
Through my
research (using the term ‘research’ loosely, it was mostly just surfing through
videos on Youtube), I have come to the conclusion that the laws of attraction
are not the same for everybody, and almost always never using physical
attraction as the center rule. I thought about the things that made me
attractive and/or attracted to other people. I liked listeners, people with a
talent for not saying much but always being attentive. I liked people who liked
books.
And I liked people who weren’t afraid to show who they were to other
people.
Things that people have said they liked about me: they liked my voice,
although for a long time I hated it. They liked my rough hair and the beads in
it. This one girl said my hair seemed to make a bold statement. They liked my
many expressions, and how I couldn’t make a poker face, because my cheeks were
so big and always gave it away. Things that I overlooked or despised, people
liked, some even adored, and these combinations of silly things made me stand
out from the seven billion people in the world.
And in time, I learned to love
these character traits I attained too.
We've
got this long mirror hanging over our closet that's directed towards my bed, so
every time I wake up--boom!--right in my face is my....face. I asked my sister
if we could take it down because I don't really like looking at myself ever morning
and night. Anyways, so I was typing (when am I not?), and I leaned over to grab
a sheet with some notes, and I caught myself in the mirror.
I'm in my pajamas.
It's 5:56 in the morning. I haven't even brushed my
teeth or wash my face yet; but as I ran my hands a couple times through my hair
and touched my face, I realized something. I may not be 'the prettiest flower
in the garden' or the 'the brightest crayon in the box' and I may be 'two
sandwich short of a picnic' (you like my phrases), but all in all.... I wouldn't
change a single thing about me.
Not.
A single. Thing.
