Julia Chavez looked at herself in the mirror.

Her feet were a size six (which really meant she could squeeze into a size five sandal or pull off a six and a half boot with socks on). She always liked the idea of having small feet--it made her feel more dainty, more girl-ish, whatever that meant. She had stubby, square toes, and it pleased her how the index one was not taller than the big one so that all ten digits fanned out quite nicely. Her ankles were quite thin--thin enough for someone to close their thumb and middle finger around. She always made it a point to wear capris for this purpose. This was also the only way pants would fit her as she was built with a noticeably longer torso and shorter legs.

Her legs. Everyone always commented on her legs. Her calves were quite muscular, but not in the aesthetically toned sort of way. They were big and meaty, bulging out from the sides so that they looked like upside down bowling pins.

She had a natural hourglass figure, her waist curving in like two crescent moons. Some mornings before getting dressed she would take a moment to slide her hands up and down the arches of her waist and admire the shape she had been naturally blessed with. Her stomach lay flat for the most part, though, there was a little pouch of flab hanging off of the lower end that she could never get rid of. Sometimes it bothered her. When no one else was in the bathroom, she would lift her shirt up and turn to the side to see if the bulge had gotten any smaller, sucking her stomach in and letting it go to compare the difference. Though, most days she learned to let it go--life was too short to worry too much about a few extra pounds.

Her arms were not as large as her legs, but they were still solidly built. The upper part of them rounded out along the sides, which caused her to look absolutely terrible in tank tops. They might have been leaner and less bulky had it not been for the stubborn fat under her armpits. Her mother had called it the "Chavez Women Curse" as all of them had it. It was just something she was going to have to accept.

But as broad as her upper body was, her face was small. She had a soft jawline which gave her a noticeable double chin whenever she smiled. Her nose was rather large and rounded down at the bottom--a little too big for her face--making her small eyes appear even smaller. Her eyebrows were sparse and a bit uneven, and on the days she didn't fill them in, it was quite jarring and rather off-putting.

Simply put, Julia Chavez was short, kind of skinny in some places, kind of not in other places, oddly proportioned, and maybe had a somewhat pleasant face when you looked at it as a whole rather than its individual parts. There were parts of her body she loved, and there were parts of her body she wasn't crazy about. But as Julia Chavez looked in the mirror, she resolved to believe that, at least for today, her weight was normal, her body was perfectly fine, and that she was beautiful.