Every morning
A great big ball of self-consciousness and nerves.
Every morning, the pattern was the same. I woke up at some unholy hour, sun streaming mercilessly through my bedroom window, and stumbled groggily to my wardrobe. What to wear, what to wear? I embarked on my daily quest to find something, some miraculous outfit that managed to hide all my lumps and bumps from the world, show off my ‘best features’ (whatever they are) and a little bit of my outrageous personality. My inner Gok Wan was unleashed, and let me tell you – it was exhausting work.
The question: “Does this make me look fat?” haunted me every morning, and at every reflective surface I happened to wander past. Think I’m vain? No, no, vanity wasn’t my problem, friends. I was, and perhaps always will be to some extent, nothing more than a great big ball of self-consciousness and nerves, and I don’t think I’m the only one.
Magazines, TV, movies, fashion, even the people around us have warped us into legions of low self-esteem. We’re too fat, too thin, our hips our too wide, our chests are too flat. Big noses, thin lips, short fingers, flat bums – anything and everything that makes us different from your bog-standard airbrushed glamour model turns us straight to self loathing, and I’m the worst of the bunch. Yet, one day it hit me: Do I really want to live in a world where every woman is a carbon copy of Megan Fox? Or where every guy is just another Johnny Depp? (As tempting as that may sound at first, I imagine it would get old pretty quickly.)
The morning I came to the conclusion that beauty is not necessarily what we see on TV, I broke my pattern. I took my trusty paintbrush and on my wardrobe door I wrote: ‘Variety is the spice of life’, and with that, I beat my inner Trinny and Susannah into submission. So long to slimming black, vertical lines and A-line skirts, and hello to me! I’ll admit, I got a few funny looks that day, but not all of them were bad. As cheesy as it may sound, confidence really is this season’s must have accessory. I stopped trying to be your average fashion victim and started being me, and I found out something incredible: the world is ready to expect us as we are – we just have to accept ourselves first.
By: Gill Awesome!
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