This is definitely one of those subjects that is a deeper conversation for many of us about marketing and how women are targeted to feel “less than.” Sigh. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, mostly because Connor is going to be eight soon, and that’s when I first started feeling like I needed to change my appearance.
That summer, I was running through the sprinklers in the backyard with my best friend, Karrie, who was a skinny string bean. (Side note, do kids still run through the sprinklers? Hmmm.)
In retrospect, I was a thin child, too, but at the time I remember wondering if my tummy was sticking out; suddenly, the rainbow one-piece swimsuit that I spent days running around in felt like it wasn’t doing me any favors. It was the very first time I felt like something was wrong with my body, which is why it sticks out so vividly in my mind.
I wish I could go back in time and give that little eight-year-old Karen a hug! She really didn’t know any better, and she could’ve used a gentle talk about how all bodies are shaped differently and how hers was beautiful.
Anywho, how old were you when you first felt this way? And if you’d like to write that version of you a kind note, please feel free to do that, too.
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
P.S. TGIF. I hope you have a great day!
I was about 8 or 9 too. I was on the short-side and never had a flat tummy (plus other things that made me different) and kids started picking on me. Middle school and high school were tough times. I think, for me, it just sorted out who were the kind kids who would be my friends and those that I should just avoid.
Loving your throwback pics!
You surely turned out better than most earthlings!
Hope you got that wonderful lemon tree replanted . . .
At that age we are so affected by how we think others view us. I remember a very awkward stage when I was in junior high. I had braces, thick glasses, the worse haircut ever, and I was flat chested and super skinny. I remember this one boy I liked wrote “Alpo”, like the dog food, across my face in our yearbook with a sharpie. I was crushed. 8 years later I had filled out, got rid of the glasses and braces, and was doing some professional modeling (to help put myself through graduate school) and I sent him a photo from one of my shoots for a big skiwear company and said “who’s “ALPO” now?”
I felt MUCH better. My granddaughters know they are beautiful for what they are inside, what they can do, and their talents, not how they look, because that, always changes.
I was 15 and sitting on the school playing field with friends when one of them said, “You’ve got a little pot belly going on there..!” I must have weighed all of 100 lbs at the time. I was horrified and from there it just snowballed and a year later I was a full-blown anorexic of 84 lbs.