I suppose the seeds of thought for this blog post came about when I was looking for an image to put on my ‘About Me’ page. While searching the photo folders on my computer when I stopped at this image:

I’m perfectly comfortable with my personality, with who I am ‘deep-down’ inside but often I am disappointed that the outward appearance doesn’t reflect who I feel I am, and that tends to make me highly critical of every little physical flaw I have.

Now, usually, I’ll run screaming from any picture of me without make-up on but this one gave me pause for thought.

“Do I really look like that?

Usually I can’t see past my nose and chin (both of which I have a bit of a complex about) but when I looked at this photograph I saw my face as a whole and I came to the conclusion that perhaps I couldn’t give Joseph Merrick a run for his money, after all. I mean, I know I’ll never be a great beauty (I don’t have ‘classically beautiful’ features and I’m too strong featured to be truly ‘pretty’) but I’m striking in a good way, I think; a way that could be considered beautiful.

For the first time in a long while I didn’t feel as hideous as a leper and it have me hope and courage.

This post IS NOT going to be me rabbiting on about the aspects of my appearance that I do/don’t like and it IS NOT an attempt to fish for compliments. Rather, what I want to say is that maybe if we looked, truly looked, at ourselves as a whole rather than all the separate aspects (let’s face it, we will fixate on negatives more than positives) and without any tricks and shadows to hide the truth then perhaps we might be pleasantly surprised by what we’d see.

In the end, I think we need to love ourselves a little bit more.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t do our hair, wear nice clothes, wear make-up etc (heaven forbid! I love my cosmetics too much LOL) but that we should use them to enhance the beauty that is already there rather than using them as masks to hide ourselves.

Anyone brave enough to join in?