Sometimes, I feel fabulous

When I look in the mirror, I am pleased with what I see. I love the shape of my face, the way that my brown hair catches the light and makes it streaked with gold. I love the colors of my eyes and how they remind me of a dense forest in spring when life begins anew after a long winter. Finally, I love the shape of my body. I love it's uniqueness, how no one else has this body that I possess.

When I have days like this, I feel absolutely beautiful. I feel like no man is worthy of my heavenly beauty or vivacious personality. But, of course, not every day is perfect. Some days, the demons that live within our minds and begin pointing out every minuscule flaw that they can find.

"Look how stringy your hair is, looks like someone is beginning to go bald."

"I see that your muffin top is bulging over the side of your jeans."

"Uh oh, looks like the medium is too tight. I guess you'll have to go to an extra large."

"Your brown eyes remind me of a freshly dropped cow pie."

When we begin to hear these voices, it's hard to tune them out since they're the loudest speakers in the room. It also doesn't help when we see "conventionally" attractive people getting everything they want out of life while we "normies" are left with a sandwich and a bag of half-eaten chips. It can be hard when the world wants us to look a certain way but we don't "look" that way because we didn't win the genetic lottery. We've been told over and over again that beauty is only "skin deep" and we shouldn't judge ourselves based on the images in magazines and on TV. While that's some decent advice to go by, there comes a time that phrase becomes overused and trite. So, instead of thinking of beauty as being within, why don't we try this:

Define your own type of beauty.

Look in the mirror and turn what you perceive to be flaws into what makes you unique. Have an "ugly" scar on your lip? Turn it into your battle scar from when you fought a bear with your bare hands. Think you have too many freckles? They're just many kisses from the sun because he loves you. You feel like you're too curvy? You're the next Botticelli muse who will appear as Venus in his newest painting.

Beauty is completely made up and isn't defined by one definite answer. We perceive beauty how we want to see it. When we begin to focus on our uniqueness rather than what makes us "unattractive", we'll begin to see that we're all individual pieces of art that bring beauty and diversity to our dull world. I know it sounds absolutely cheesy, but it's the truth. Looking beautiful for the attention of others isn't important: what's important is loving yourself first and celebrating yourself.

Cheer up, gorgeous: you're doing just fine.