If, like me, you're the sometimes-proud owner of a corporeal vessel, let's engage a certain topic. Regardless of how you classify yourself or your body, there's no denying everybody's preoccupation with it. Bodies, for one reason or another, have become a very large part of personal identity. Possibly because they are a medium through which we outwardly express; possibly because the sex, skin color, and features we are born with seem to predetermine a lot for us in this world. But perhaps these are merely symptoms of a society that places such a monumental significance on the body -- from policing it to exploiting it to things as simple as how it looks.

I guess when the matter degenerates into how one's "supposed" to look, or "allowed" to look, then it's still policing and exploitation. "Good looks" are a manipulated social construct inherently built upon the opinions of others, and then used against us. As if we had any reason to be ashamed of our looks in the first place! Luckily, there has been a big surge of intersectional body positivity movements teaching us to love ourselves and find our bodies beautiful. But what if you just aren't there yet?

What do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror? When you strip away makeup, muss your hair, take off that outfit? How do you feel without any crutches supporting you?

There's nothing wrong with giving yourself a morale boost when it comes to feeling good -- in fact, I'm all for it. You can do it for you, you can do it for others -- as long as it's your choice (well, as much of a choice as it can be) and you're happy with the results. But at the end of the day, clothes and foundation are not the body you have to work with. (To all the dysphoric transgender humans out there, you can throw most of this paragraph out the window. Except the being happy part.)

I'm rarely "happy" when I look in the mirror. I don't like my body and I don't think I'm beautiful. But I also don't dislike what's going on, per se -- and I'm definitely not motivated enough to change. I've got enough indifference to just shrug and move on.

What's important to me is what I can accomplish with this body. I have so much respect and appreciation for how my body performs -- like a car that you don't change the oil or tires on regularly and the paint job's kind of shoddy, but the car never breaks down and the weird chips and gouges add character. Like, my body impresses me regularly by not completely shutting down due to my brazen carelessness. I don't need to think my body is beautiful if I can look at it and know it's strong and tenacious.

And I don't think we need to be in love with our bodies to have respect for them. I don't think we need to "be" beautiful (which, by the way, is something that doesn't really exist) to "feel" a sort of beautiful. You just need to find your own synonyms for it and move forward from there.