This Is MY Body, Deal With It

Four years ago I saw the picture of this young woman and her words inspired me to stop being quite so ashamed of my body. Posing in my underwear or a bikini was not something I would ever do in a million years, but I so admired her for her courage to not only take the picture, but to share it online where it went viral. She gave me the courage to stop being quite so uptight about my looks. I still refused to wear shorts or tank tops and I hated leaving the house without my hair or makeup done, but I stopped stressing about it quite so much. Four years later, I'm still overweight, probably weighing more than I did back then but as I type this I'm sitting out in public wearing shorts, a tank top, no makeup and my hair is in a messy ponytail. I finally learned to stop giving a crap what people think of me, I learned to stop letting other people dictate what I should wear, what I should be comfortable wearing. I don't wear makeup anymore except for when I got to class generally. I've started wearing shorts to the gym and sometimes I even go to the store to do my shopping after a hard workout. I realized that I was never going to please everyone, it's simply not possible, so instead of focusing on pleasing complete strangers that I didn't know or really care about, I decided it was time to start pleasing myself, wearing clothes that I thought were cute and comfortable regardless of whether or not society agreed with my opinion. The way I thought of myself was more important than the way others did. And wonder of wonders, I don't hate my body anymore. I can't say that I love it all the time, I still want to lose weight, I still want to be healthier, but when I look in the mirror I don't automatically notice the flaws. I learned to see things in a new light. Yes, I have stretch marks and scars, I don't have the perfect, flawless skin that most women seek, but those marks tell my story. They show my struggles with weight, the battle I'm fighting now, the scars on my arms and legs show that despite everything I have been through, I am a survivor. I refuse to believe that I am less of a person because I don't have flawless skin or a perfect body. I AM beautiful, fat, scars, stretch marks and all. Whether anyone else believes that doesn't matter as long as I know it and I can remind myself of that because I am worth it. I'm not perfect, but I don't want to be. My size, nobody's size defines them. We are each beautiful in our own, unique way. Sometimes we just need somebody to remind us of that.

To Those Who Judge

Last night as I lay in bed trying to sleep but actually flipping through my Facebook newsfeed, I came across an article.  The title caught my attention immediately:  A Call to Action: Your Fat Friend Is Going It Alone.  It was an interesting and very relatable piece for me.  It got me to thinking about how society views and treats fat people.  It brought to mind things I don't really focus on anymore; the little comments I sometimes hear or the criticizing eyes as I walk about minding my own business, all because I'm fat.  I've learned to brush those things off, to not focus so much on the negative, but some days it can be hard to ignore it.

I don't think people always realize just how damaging, how lasting the comments they make are.  I can still remember shortly before my ex and I broke up, asking him something along the lines of did he wish I was thinner or was he proud of the way I looked and him responding, "I wish you were thinner so I could show you off to my friends."  Six years and I have never been able to forgot those words.  They didn't just hurt me, they devastated me.  Many times I wish I had told him how much damage those words caused.  My already fragile self-esteem shattered and it has taken me years to build it back up.  I relied so much on him and others when it came to my self-image.  If my own boyfriend didn't seem to think I was good enough, then clearly I was a hideous creature.  Now I know better than to put such stock in other's words, but that doesn't always make it any easier when I hear the snide remarks people sometimes make.

I Am Not A Wallflower!

As some of you all may know. every semester UNM does four shows with the theatre department.  In the one year that I attended UNM previously, I only saw one of those shows and I never even considered trying to audition.  This semester though, with starting back at school, one of the things that I determined is that I didn't want to be a wallflower anymore which is something I've been pretty much since I started college.  I would sit at the very back of the classroom, and despite, usually, keeping up with reading and homework and what not, I never really participated in the class.  The biggest part of my issue was because I am overweight, I didn't want to bring any further attention to myself.  I felt if anyone noticed me, they would judge me and possibly make fun of me which was the last thing I wanted.  So I did my best to make myself invisible.  I didn't make a whole lot of effort with my appearance or clothing choices and I think I did succeed fairly well with just blending in.

Try

So, I'm back!!  I realize I've been AWOL for a good while so my apologies for that.  Life's been a bit crazy lately working to get some stuff figured out but hopefully I'll start posting on a more regular basis now.  Yay!

Earlier this month Colbie Caillat released a song called Try that created quite a buzz.  Instead of a song telling girls that the key to being pretty is to be thin, or wear a lot of makeup, or be rich, or have a ton of clothes, the song says that you're pretty just the way you are.  And instead of being one of those songs that says all the right things like that and then shows only girls who are pencil thin and photoshopped gorgeous without any makeup on, there are real girls in the video and not just teens, but you have middle aged and older women as well.  I also loved the fact that, being a big girl myself, there was one big girl included in the video as well.

Taking a Chance

Anybody who knows me knows that I'm overweight.  Okay, actually, I'll just be honest, I'm fat.  And it sucks.  But I'm not going to bore you with a really long sob story or anything, because I'm actually pretty excited.  As of two days ago, I am in the running to be on the Biggest Loser.  My parents and friends think I'm pretty much crazy, but I'm really excited and pretty darned determined to do this.  Remember, I'm stubborn.

Pre-registration is done, my application is over half filled out, and my mom and I are flying out to Phoenix on the 20th for some much needed girl time as well as for my audition.  So this was pretty short, but I just wanted to share because I am so super excited to take advantage of this opportunity!

This post was originally published on Thursday, June 7 2012.

Just Dance

I love to dance, always have.  As a little kid I was always dancing around the house, making up dance routines and performing for my parents, making my dad dance with me to a song I liked on the radio or at the end of a movie, jamming with my mom in the kitchen, etc.  When I reached high school I started going swing dancing every Tuesday night with a group of friends.  We went for close to five years and I got pretty good at it.  At my senior prom they had a swing dance competition and my boyfriend and I, who had been my main dance partner since I'd started dancing, ended up getting second place.  Once we broke up though, I found myself without a dance partner or a group to go dancing with.  I finally started going with one of my guy friends which was a blast, but eventually he had to quit due to other commitments on Tuesday nights.  So I stopped going for a while until I managed to convince a few of my girl friends to go out several times.  However, it was much harder to find any guy friends and if you don't have at least one guy friend along who will for sure dance with you or if you're not drop dead gorgeous, chances are you're going to be sitting on the sidelines for most of the night.  That fizzled out pretty quick and when they stopped wanting to go, I stopped going as well.

The Beauty Within

One of the things I have struggled with for many years now is my perception of beauty. My heart knows that beauty comes from within and I can see that beauty in others. But when I look at myself, I judge myself by outward appearance. I'm the girl who has to look perfect, who refuses to go anywhere without makeup because I think I'm so unattractive. I'm the girl who looks in the mirror and hates what she sees cause I'm not stick thin, my hair's not perfect, there's a small gap in my teeth, etc. I notice every single little flaw.

I Chose This

(Brief warning: This is my kind of defying the world speech, just so you know.)

More and more I'm discovering that the career I've chosen is probably one of the toughest out there.  Not necessarily physically or mentally or anything like that, but emotionally.  When you work so hard to try to get that part in that play or movie that you really want and you feel like you've done a good job and then you find that it was all for nothing, it's crushing.  You feel like a failure.  Or, at least I do.  But what if that's what you love, if that's your passion?  You keep going.  You cry those tears and then you pick yourself up and keep going, keep trying, hoping that in the end all your hard work will eventually pay off.  I've known that this was going to be a hard road, filled with a lot of disappointment and pain.  I've always considered myself to be a fairly strong person, able to push back the pain, the tears and put that smile on my face even when I felt like I was falling to pieces.  My choice of career is going to test that.  Am I going to be strong enough to suffer disappointment after disappointment and still be able to pick myself up and keep going?  Is my determination enough to get me through?  And with that, do I have the strength and will to finally begin the seemingly impossible task of losing all the weight I have to lose to try to fit in to the skinny world of Hollywood.  I've had people tell me that I'm choosing the easy career, that it doesn't really take any kind of effort to act.  But it does.  It's already tested me in so many ways.  So many people don't understand what it's like to get inside the head of a character, to become someone you're not.  I can do this and I will.  I'm going to prove to the world that I am strong enough to do this.  I can become one of those skinny Hollywood girls and I will.  Just watch me!

This post was originally published on Sunday, December 11, 2011.

The Voice of Courage

When you think of the word courage, generally certain images jump to the forefront of your mind that define that word for you:  soldiers most often, people standing up for what they believe in, sacrifice, doing something no one else has, and the list goes on.  A lot of the time when people think courage, they think about big events, big people who define that word for them.  But what about those smaller events, those ordinary people?  Courage isn't always big, sometimes its small.  The quote in the picture above is one of my favorites because it shows that courage doesn't have to be big for it to make a difference.  In fact, I've found most often that courage is fairly small, small but powerful.  Courage, to me, is a voice, that little voice that whispers that you can do it, that encourages you to step outside of your comfort zone, to do great things.  But its something that you have to listen for because it can be so small.  It can be easy to ignore, to push back and to give into fear and doubt.

More Beautiful You

So I know this is going to be my second blog on the whole self-image topic, but it's something I've struggled with a lot so I talk about it some. In any case, I got thinking about it again today, or yesterday rather, when one of my Facebook friends posted this song, More Beautiful You by Jonny Diaz, as his Facebook status. This is probably my favorite song of all time and it's one that I listen to pretty much every day or at least once or twice a week.

Mirror, Mirror

So I was on my way home from work today and I was listening to my MP3 player when it switched to a Barlow Girl song called Mirror, Mirror. The song is basically just about how when we look in the mirror we kind of ask it if we're living up to the standards of the world. Do we look like the world wants us to look. As the song goes on it says that the mirror doesn't define us, the world's standards don't define us. We were made in the perfect image of God and that's what matters.