Do you know your value?

How do you figure out your worth?

There are so many ways to calculate how we add up. From earnings and savings to career and job title and even further to marital status and children. Where do you even begin?

Knowing Your Value, a book by Mika Brzezinski, got me thinking about my value but more precisely how women determine their value. From a young age, girls are taught to work well together while boys are taught to win. This has caused all sorts of adult issues in the workplace and beyond. Without quoting the entire book (and I would, it was really that good), the overall premise is how women perceive themselves and aren't fighting for what is rightfully theirs. We're not winning. We're losing... badly.

As I read this book I thought of how differently I was raised and how my career has gone very differently. The biggest thing I realized was my utter lack of knowledge for how women normally act in work & life situations. My sister & I have a mother who never planted dreams of a husband and babies in our heads but instead made sure we knew how important education and a career would be to our futures. She showed us how to value ourselves and made sure we had the skills to excel. There was never talk of women vs men or how women were any different. It was just the way it was.

In college, when asked what I planned to be when I grew up, I only had a picture of myself walking through an office being greeted by my receptionist with a "Good morning, boss. Here's your coffee." while I carried a black briefcase and wore a black power suit. That was my plan - to be the head of a company & have a fantastic staff working for me. I never thought of myself as a woman doing something extraordinary, I was just headstrong and driven and knew I would be someone more than a workerbee.

In Knowing Your Value, Mika talks about how few women will stand up for themselves when a boss or colleague is holding them back. While heading toward my career goals, I worked myself out of sales positions by doing more than those in senior positions, then asked for a raise or promotion. More than once I was told I was doing too well at my job to leave it for another one. I'm not saying I was held back due to a 'you're a woman' slight but as a woman, I could have easily just agreed and continued working in that position. Instead I would find another job and, too late, my boss would try to keep me by offering me what I had asked for. Knowing my value was key in these situations. If I didn't know my value, I wouldn't have been able to ask & be willing to leave if I didn't get what I wanted.

While out to drinks with a girlfriend recently, she shared her job discomfort as the head of a department she had singlehandedly built and how she had no power. I asked what it would take for her to keep her job and it all boiled down to not making enough money for the time she put in. Along with that, she didn't have seniority enough to help implement the changes she saw needed to happen. Her Senior Vice President colleagues were at the same level as she but were 20 years her senior and making at least 4x what she did and were able to make decisions without having to go through numerous levels. Because her department focuses on digital and because digital doesn't come with 20+ years of experience, she felt she had put in the hours and years to make the decisions that affected a lot of the company's revenue.

My response: Ask for the title and a bonus.
Her first response: There's no way they would do that. I should just keep looking for another job.
Me: You have the experience in your field AND you work just as hard if not harder.
Her: I do work really hard. I do deserve more than I'm getting.
Me: What's the worst that can happen? They say no? You're looking for a new job anyway.
Her: You're right! I would be happy in my job with more power and more money.
Me: Remember, present just the facts. This is not an emotional thing, this is all business. If they don't see it after this, they don't deserve you.

One of the biggest things many women do wrong is work their butts off hoping someone sees how hard they work & gives them a promotion or raise. What really happens is we become the person who can take on any project and our plates get so overloaded we burn out. Men keep a list of all the things they have accomplished and why they deserve a raise. Women, take note. You need to be doing that too. You're probably working harder than your male counterparts and making less money or not getting the title you truly deserve.

If you know how much you're worth and you value yourself, so will your colleagues and boss. When was the last time you looked at your job title & position? Are you where you want to be? Are you working too hard to be noticed?
 

Have you ever given a compliment to a friend and they humbly declined it? Do you ever get one and shake your head at it? Have you ever turned red when someone tells you you're beautiful? What about when someone tells you how great a job you did on something?

Many of us have a hard time accepting compliments. It's not socially acceptable to think you're something special, even after our mothers have drilled it into our heads. If we work out too much, post too many pictures of ourselves, or take compliments with a smile, we're automatically put into 'that' category. The one where people believe we're vain. It's not a category anyone wants to be in.

When did loving yourself become vain?

This Sunday, PostSecret.com added Valentines they got from all over the world. The one that stuck out the most is posted to the right.

We're told our whole lives we'll never find someone until we love ourselves but we're also told we shouldn't think too highly of ourselves.

It's time we all stood up and finally believed in ourselves.

It's time we tell ourselves we're beautiful and make sure others know we know this just by how we hold our heads up high.

It's time we know the difference between vanity and confidence.

It's time to show the world how incredible we can be once we allow ourselves.

The key to all of this: we have to allow ourselves to be our best and share it with others. If we can't love ourselves, we can't truly love others. Embrace yourself, take yourself on a date, and find out just how fun you are and PLEASE share it with everyone else. We are a community because we need each other and our incredible qualities.

Then follow #takecaretuesday, post what you'll do for yourself today. Reward yourself for being so amazing and knowing it.

Have you ever seen The Holiday where Arthur Abbott tells Iris Simpkins that she has to be the leading lady of her own life, not the best friend? When he said that, he meant that we have to be confident in who we are because the best friend never gets the guy or the glory.

As girls, we've been programmed that sexy is really skinny bodies, long silky hair, flawless skin, and always looking our best. Many of us grew up believing that we would get a man by being sexy. My mom was the type to combat those things and although she never leaves the house without her hair and makeup done (and would never leave in her pajamas like so many of us do), she taught my sister and I that although we were beautiful, a smart, confident, sassy woman was the type to attract a man. For many reasons, my view changed and to me, being sexy was the only way to get a man.

I've always had a hard time with attracting a man who didn't need fixing. Either he was broke, or broken, or just didn't have his life together. I asked my mom what she thought I should do. I was shocked at her response. "Dress to the nines every day & you'll find one who has a better job and a better life in front of him." If you know me, you know that I don't 'dress to the nines' and never will. I look presentable but wearing heels and a skirt doesn't seem like an appropriate way for me to attract a man and it doesn't fit my personality at all.

Over the last 3 months I've changed my look twice. I had long blond hair halfway down my back for what seems like forever until... my aunt (a hairstylist from LA) cut it into a long pixie cut. Then I got a wild hair that I should cut it shorter and color it dark brown and did that right before the new year. There's a story here.

Previously, all of my boyfriends loved long blonde hair. They made sure to comment on it and said that I looked sexy with it. I've cut my hair a few times over the years and one of my exes saw me with short hair and wondered out loud if I had switched teams. I liked having long hair but the reasoning was wrong. Guys thought it was sexy. Which meant they thought I was sexy. I placed how I felt about myself in their hands. Their undeserving hands. The problem was... very few of my boyfriends gave me enough credit for being anything more than a pretty face with pretty hair. Not one of them believed I had the strength and confidence to run my own business. As I said before, a lot of events caused me to have so little confidence in myself and I came to realize that if I didn't have confidence in myself, why would anyone else?

As I grew my hair out, I got complacent. I stopped caring about how I wore it. I even started making jeans and a t-shirt more of a staple instead of bothering to put a little time into how I looked. Many people thought I was in my early to mid-20's when I really wanted them to believe I was a successful 'old enough' business owner. The last straw was when two different people at the same conference asked me if I was there doing a college paper. My aunt cut my hair off the following weekend.

Taking a big chance and finding that I loved it, I was told by a friend that I went from cute to hot in one haircut. She hadn't realized how much I had just looked cute and young until I cut it all off. I had put a lot of my sexiness in my hair and found out that it was my confidence that made me sexy, not my hair.

When I realized that short hair changed where I had my confidence, I decided to go a step further and cut it shorter and go dark. Although everyone said they liked it, I was really nervous. Getting rid of something that felt like a security blanket and going dark (which was the opposite of what every guy told me they liked), I had to pull my confidence out of somewhere else.

Shortly after both haircuts, a guy friend of mine let me know that as much as he loved both of my new hairstyles, he loved the fact that I had the confidence to take the leap. His words: Most women hold onto their hair because they don't like change or are worried it won't look good. You doing this shows that you have the guts to do anything.

After only 10 days of being a short-haired brunette, I feel like it's time for me to be a leader and that I've finally got the look to make that happen. My friend Lisa Helfert, a fantastic photographer, loved my vintage look and asked if she could do some photos of me with vintage lighting. The picture seen to the left is what she ended up with. A friend called it vintage glam. This one picture showed me that my personality can come through with serious confidence and an air of leadership without hiding behind my hair. It shows me that I'm a leader and that I have to walk into 2012 with that leadership quality. It's time.

I'm 31, a successful entrepreneur, and I'm taking the world by storm... with short, dark brown hair. Now I'm not sure if the world is ready for me.

I'm not a big resolutions girl.

In 2006, my mom said "Instead of trying to work out or eat healthier this year, let's get our passports. That will be our goal for the year." Two months later, I found tickets to London & a hotel near Hyde Park for 10 days for $800/pp. My mom thought we were just getting our passports that year but I thought bigger. We booked it and got our passports. That September, we had an incredible vacation together.

Being a new year, it's always a time for people to say "I'm going to be a better person by_____." It's a nice thought but most people end up forgetting their resolutions after a few weeks (or days). Many have no idea why they decided to do it in the first place. Most of these resolutions are about eating healthier, taking care of our bodies, exercising more, doing things on a daily basis... but those should be things we make habits, not resolutions.

With 2011 being my year of intentionality (at Sisarina AND in my personal life), I've made 2012 a year of leadership for Sisarina and a year of habit-forming for my personal life. Throughout December, I started making new habits of exercising at least 30-minutes a day, spending more time praying and giving myself some quiet time. This showed me that determination will get me everywhere and what I succeeded most at was the exercising (I know, shocker). So, it's time for me to create more new habits and to pound in the ones I've recently created.

GOALS FOR 2012:
BODY:
    - Run 1200 miles
    - Run 150 of those miles completely barefoot
    - Bike 300 miles outdoors
NUTRITION:
    - detox Jan 1-28 (no sugar, dairy, alcohol, coffee)
    - give self one cheat day a week Feb 1-Dec 31
    - eat only whole foods (nothing processed)
VACATION:
    - take two out-of-town vacations
    - no computer, no phone, no TV
OFFLINE:
     - spend 24 straight hours per week offline
     - no computer, no phone, no TV

This seems feasible and attainable albeit a little hardcore. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be Melanie. I'm ready to take 2012 one step at a time.

Instead of resolutions, what have you decided to make your new habits?
 

Intentionality was the goal for 2011.

First, I applied this to Sisarina. At work, I stopped worrying about where money was coming, I blogged more, I focused on networking and bringing in more business, I hired better. My staff even supported this intentionality. Our intentionality became habit and we'll be taking it into our next year. (2012 is about leadership!)

Halfway through the year, I wondered why I wasn't feeling more intentional about my personal life. My work life was fantastic and everything was moving along perfectly but there was such discord outside of that. I started looking at being more intentional with the rest of my life and was impressed to find out that when you are intentional about everything, you get so much more joy out of life.

A month ago, I set a goal to pray more, exercise more and be more diligent about my quiet time.

MY GOALS:
4-WEEK NEW HABITS CHALLENGE:
MIND:
- commit to praying every morning & every evening
- commit to 15-min of quiet time for just reflection every day
- commit to being in bed by 11pm & waking up by 6am every day
- commit to tracking thoughts on paper daily
BODY:
- commit to 30-60min of exercise every day
- commit to eating & drinking only healthy
- commit to stretching every morning
- commit to tracking exercise on DailyMile.com daily

MIND:
PRAYER: Joshua, the incredible man I'm dating, has helped me keep this one for the month. We've been praying every morning and every evening over the phone, on Skype or in person as we can. Some days we aren't able to and I send up a little prayer but most days we pray together. It's such a blessing to have a man in my life who will pray with me and help me keep this up. It's now hard to start the day or end it without prayer. With this, Teresa and I have taken more time to sit and pray about Sisarina.

QUIET TIME: I definitely have not done this. My runs tend to be my quiet time if I don't have a running buddy. Being quiet is not easy for me but I plan to continue to focus on it. Since I haven't done this, I also haven't had the quiet time to track thoughts on paper. I hope to learn how to get my thoughts out and really listen to what God is saying through writing and quiet time in the new year.

BEDTIME: This is something I've learned to be very clear about. With all the running, I've definitely been up by 6am every day and because I've worn myself out with exercise and work, I'm typically in bed between 10-11pm. It's been so incredible getting solid nights of sleep.

BODY:
EXERCISE: As you'll see from my DailyMile.com profile, I've been very intentional about my 30-min per day. In 4 weeks, I only missed 4 days whereas I was only doing about exercise about 4 days a week. Being more intentional with a goal allowed me to begin a habit that I now plan to continue into 2012. My new goal with exercise is to run 1200 miles. That translates into about 25 miles per week. Excited to make that happen!

INTAKE: The eating & drinking only healthy didn't end up as healthy as I'd like. Because of this, I've also included being careful of what I drink in 2012. My plan is to drink only water so that I can keep my body hydrated for all the running I'll be doing. Drinking rum to combat stress has become a bit of a habit I'd like to break. Joshua & I are starting off the year with the same 4-week detox (minus wheat) that I did a few months ago. 

STRETCHING: Over the course of the month, I became more intentional about my stretching. It became habit after a run to stretch but stretching every morning? Nope. I've recently had a girlfriend convince me to start doing Bikram Yoga and another tell me she'd meet me at my office to do yoga with me. I think this will be something I need a buddy to help me with.

It's been quite an incredible month of intentionality completing my year of intentionality. Huge thanks to running & exercise buddies, David Heyman, Sam Young, and Jessica Menk. Huge love to Joshua Rennie & Teresa Thomas for praying with me. Thank you to all who encouraged me this month. Excited about more growth in 2012.
 

Running is healing. It helps me grow, pushes my boundaries, gives me goals, and allows me to sweat out my problems. Running gives me focus and energy while taking away my pain. Running breaks my muscles and allows them to heal stronger. Today, I went for a 5.5 mile run in the rain... with my Vibram FiveFinger Bikilas (like always). A new path in Marlboro, New Jersey with new scenery. Running makes me stronger emotionally, physically and mentally. My rainy running thoughts:

Yikes, it's going to rain. I better hurry.

Why can't I just let go & stop hurting?

Here comes the rain.

"I've got canned heat in my heels."

God, can you just make this go away? I need peace.

Use the balls of your feet, Melanie.

I feel like I'm flying. This rain feels amazing.

No thanks, Mr. Sklarin. I appreciate you trying to get me out of the rain though!

I think I'm going to give up drinking & just run from now on.

If it rains any harder, I might float away.

I love running. Period.

*wipes face* I think you missed me with a few of those raindrops.

So glad I don't wear sneakers anymore. My feet would be soggy.

Push yourself up this hill & I'll let you eat Swedish fish when you're back.

God's got something bigger planned for me. I know it.

You're better than this. Be better than this. You're worth it.

This rain is nothing. It's just rain.

Take it to the next level & show yourself you can do it.

Man, I totally understand why that lady was excited to run naked. I'm DRENCHED!

Wait... would I really be comfortable running naked?

Why am I thinking about running naked again!?

Ok... it would be quite hilarious. hahaha

Go go go go go! You're almost done! RUN FASTER!

WOOOOOO!!!! Yeah! I feel ready for the next thing someone can throw at me.
BRING IT ON!

Last year I hosted a series called I Can't Cook & So Can You. We got a ton of great recipes that were quick and easy thanks to all the helpful people who submitted posts.

Now while doing the #4weekdetox, I've found that I eat a lot more fruit and snack on bad things a lot less but am really craving vegetables. I know I need them in my diet but I hate the taste of most of them. Force-feeding isn't helping so I am looking for some great summer recipes that are easy. 

Do you have a favorite summer recipe that's quick, easy and healthy? It has to be veggie-heavy. Send it over and help me figure out how to eat healthier without choking on broccoli. Now that I've got a fridge & freezer packed with healthy ingredients, I've decided to start writing about what I make. I honestly hate cooking. I haven't found a blog about a cook who hates cooking, only those who love it but want to teach others how to do it. I don't want to teach anyone, I just want to share my trials & errors with you all so if you want something simple to cook, here you go.

Submit Your Recipe

Did you find a great veggie recipe (or accidentally make one up) that you want to share? Send it to me! Submit your info on my contact form & I'll email you my contact info so you can send me your post, recipe & link (if you have one) for your website/blog. I'd love to share it!

Can't wait to start getting other recipes!

 Melanie, The Simple 'Cook'

It's been a week & I'm still alive.

I've written before about my body image. I've told you all how much I hate my body… I still do and not because I'm trying to get any of you to say otherwise. It's my issue, not yours. I know I'm thin, I just hate my curves and bumps and love handles. My middle has been a source of disdain for the last 7 years and I've done everything in my power to make it go away… or so I thought.

A week ago I realized that two things were happening. 1. My middle area was not getting smaller no matter how much I worked out. 2. My intestines hated me almost every day. 

Why did I pick these?

I'd talked about doing a detox but couldn't figure out how to do it so I just kept putting it off. Knowing that I'm probably allergic to some of the foods I'm eating I decided to give up the 2 things most people have problems with: wheat & dairy. I also noticed that my sleeping patterns were all messed up and it was a crazy cycle of drinking caffeine every day then not sleeping because I'm naturally caffeinated as it is. Then because I didn't sleep, I'd need caffeine. Processed sugar & fried foods are just bad. End of that story. Alcohol became an issue when I realized that I was working way too much & felt the need to drink on my couch at home while I was working to make it not feel so stressful. I was drinking 4+ days a week and that also didn't help with my sleep habits and caused me not to want to go running. Now do you see?

First Week Report:

Aside from accidentally ordering ginger ale last night out of habit while out for a friend's birthday instead of my usual rum & ginger ale, I've stuck to the plan since last Sunday morning. 7 straight days.

• Wheat: easy-peasy. I don't eat a lot of wheat as it is. I don't plan on adding much back into my diet after this is over.
• Dairy:  isn't too bad since I'm not eating cereal or drinking coffee. I believe I'll be eating the giant container of Greek yogurt in my fridge this week though since it's too expensive to waste. 
• Sugar: The hardest of all of the list. I want a cookie or something sweet after lunch/dinner and have SUCH a hard time breaking this habit. I didn't realize how bad it was until I gave it up and didn't give in. I'm a sugar-lush! Fruits have helped replace this but nothing is as delicious as a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie… !! 
• Fried food: I do crave a big bowl of french fries but I have sweet potatoes that I may bake instead. I'm removing this from my diet wholly. No more fried foods ever.
• Caffeine: The first few days were really tough. I went to work exhausted. Later in the week I realized I was sleeping better, feeling more alert longer and ended the week wide awake. This is something I'll be giving up for good.
• Alcohol: This has been tough. I spent the entire first 6 days with just water. Nothing else. Yesterday I made a mocktail of 100% blueberry & pomegranate juice with seltzer water to help me through the craving.

Having friends support me and go through this with has been an amazing experience. It's been really rough but my whole being feels better and it's prompted me to hit my workout regimen much harder than normal. I'm heading into my 30's (31 shortly!) and want to make sure I hit them with a rock solid, hardcore body. Inside AND out.

Keep track of all of us & what we're eating at melaniespring.com/4-week-detox or #4weekdetox

Happy & healthy eating! 
Melanie

“It’s always eye-opening to see how others view themselves.”

“So glad I read this before heading out to the gym,
because now I can focus on how strong I am instead of thinking about all the flaws I have to fix.”

“I too have struggled with loving my body.”

“I can totally relate and feel relieved knowing that I’m not alone.”

“I share your pain.”

“I think we all struggle with being perfect.”

“The fact that you’ve started to overcome your problem is comforting
 and has made me a little more hopeful.”

These are just a snapshot of the comments left on posts throughout the Body Image series. The lives touched, the hearts that were softened, the tears shed writing and reading these posts, the honesty poured out, the love that went into them – I am so humbled by all of it.

Over the last few months, I had been formulating my post in my head while working out, running or slacking. Realizing that many of us have this same issue, I decided to write about my internal disgust for my body so I could work through it openly. While talking to Jennifer about it, I found that she had the same issue and wanted to write about it also. Thus, a series was born.

Just by talking about my battles, I stirred up a whole spectrum of people that felt the need to share their own. Every post I read brought tears to my eyes and I hope at least one of them touched your life. From a capable body to losing 100 lbs to battling with acne to battling anorexia, the Body Image series encapsulated so many.

Here’s a recap of each:
1. Learning to Love it (Melanie) – a race against time, striving for unneeded perfection
2. My Body is Capable (Jennifer) – motherhood, running & surviving
3. My Body, I Hate Thee (Courtney) – loving her body, an accident, hoping to love it again
4. The Ugly Duckling? (Annie) – overcoming the outer duckling to find her inner swan
5. I’m Up Here! (Nicole) – breast reduction, learning to love her body
6. I Love My Body (Amanda) – childhood anorexia shows her how to love what she has
7. My Less Than Perfect Body (DeChelle) – a battle with perfection & the scale
8. The Bald Way is the Only Way (Joe) – college hairloss leads to adult baldness & acceptance
9. Appreciate What You Have (Abbey) – learning about body love as an aunt
10. Confessions of a Guitarist (Neil) – childhood baldness slowly allows a rocker to find balance
11. Discovering Hope (Amy) – learning to cope with nervousness instead of taking it out on her hands
12. Finding Balance (Joe) – battling against the gay standards
13. Coming into Focus (Anonymous) – a lifelong battle with anorexia
14. It’s My Windows, Dammit! (Christopher) – childhood eyesight issues lead to other heightened senses
15. Things That Stay With You (Nicole) – a story of tattoos & being an emotional woman
16. My Face & I (Shannon) – a struggle with acne & putting her best face forward
17. A Change Will Do You Good? (Chris) – losing 100 lbs & trying to find peace inside his body
18. Courtney Gives Insight (Courtney) – a counselor explains the originals and formula for body image

Thank you so much for being a part of the series, even just as a reader. Now go love yourself. You are beautiful.

Next series: Passions – tell me what you’re passionate about, why you are, what you do about it and how it makes your life better or worse. Contact me if you're interested in posting. Series starts in September.

by Chris

The thing about having a huge gut is that you can feel it.

Sure, it’s bad enough to have to see it. Nobody wants to look like Fat Marlon Brando. What you can’t know unless you’ve been truly fat, though, is the unpleasantness-bordering-on-horror of the way your midsection feels – every day, every hour. Your belly precedes you into a room, dangling from your body like a surgical attachment, tugging your entire torso toward the ground.

The word that comes to mind is “visceral.” You feel your gut, tuberous and loose, in your bones. No surprise, really, that life at 300 pounds poses challenges. What’s much more interesting is how things change – and don’t change – when you get down to 200.

I reached the weight of an offensive lineman, more or less, about 18 months ago. I had been protruding outward, though, since my freshman year of college. The culprits, more or less in order: A type-B tendency toward inertia; a sometimes-nasty anxiety; an unhealthy diet stemming from habits I learned growing up in a pasta-pushing Italian family; work weeks that occasionally pushed 80 hours.

Factors like these feed off one another. It ain’t rocket science: Anxiety fuels inertia. Inertia makes you keep your crummy diet the way it is. A crummy diet means you have precious little energy – and when you’re working 10- to 16-hour days, that energy goes to your employer and not to a workout routine.

Then, abruptly, I changed.
Now I feel better.
Sometimes.

What led me to drop 100 pounds in a year and a half after tolerating so much extra weight for so long?

It’s weird to say, but nothing special. There were some come-to-Jesus pictures of myself I disliked even more than usual. I grew weary of the watermelon growing in my abdominal area. I found myself unemployed and, thus, with time on my hands to work out, to learn how to cook and how to eat. I was embarrassed and frustrated by not being able to make it through more than a few plays at a time in pick-up basketball, long my preferred method of relaxation.

So I put myself on a better diet, started exercising, and lo, the weight came off. A boring story, but the results are nice. I look better; I feel better; I no longer face the humiliation of paying an extra $2 for a XXL button-down. Forget the 5-Hour Energy guy – if you want to be awake in the afternoon, be healthy.
And yet.

“One can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out,” the poet Anne Sexton once said. She was discussing mental illness – Sexton eventually committed suicide – but it’s a wise analysis of life in general.

So it is with weight loss. Indubitably, it has been good for me, so maybe I’m underselling it when I compare it to something as cosmetic as a white picket fence. But it can’t keep the nightmares out:

• At a shade under 6’ and still 200-ish pounds, I still look, and jiggle, not unlike peach Jell-O. I doubt I’ll feel fully satisfied until I kill another 30 pounds or gain some muscle mass.
• The specter of screwing up and gaining everything back looms. Like plenty of mercurial 20-somethings, I’m prone to sloth, gluttony, hedonism. As I write this, I haven’t been to the gym in two weeks. I haven’t eaten dinner two nights this week. I’m finishing this blog post at 4:30 in the morning because I can’t sleep.
• I have plenty of thoughts about why I even need to lose weight to feel better about myself. Isn’t that perversion, feeding into a fat-success complex that leads to trash like this?

Perhaps the greatest benefit I’ve accrued though this process, though, is a more personal understanding of a truism: Body image is merely a subset of self-image.

That’s so obvious that it hardly seems worth mentioning, but we forget. The mind is too ready to commit fraud, to allow its user to rationalize and romanticize with impunity. It’s easy to think: Hey, if I just lose this weight/get a raise/move to a new city/get a girlfriend/travel the world/buy this stuff, things will be so much better.

Usually, they won’t be. Scientists have studied the psychology of happiness, and it turns out that we’re pretty lousy at figuring out what will make us happy.

I’m no different. I like to think of myself as rational, annoyingly so even, but we’re all prone to our own bouts with irrationally. A belief in the transformative, quasi-mystical strength of weight loss was mine.
Improved health and a better body are tangible benefits of losing weight. I’m grateful for them.
But – for a whole host of reasons – my overall self-image kind of sucks.

So my body image, though better, still sucks. I shouldn’t still feel embarrassed by walking down the street and meeting people’s eyes, but I do. I shouldn’t fret too much about the clothes I’m wearing or the haircut I really need, but I do. I shouldn’t look at my girlfriend and wonder (in weaker moments) whether her enthusiastic endorsement of how I look isn’t in some way tempered by private doubts, but I do.

By all means, we need a little bit of romance and self-denial in our lives. I wonder how many of us too easily trap ourselves, though, into thinking we’ve done something meaningful for ourselves – when in actuality, we haven’t had the guts, the necessary self-awareness, or the time to stare down whatever affliction dominates our days.

Clarity like that can be hard to come by. Courage to do something about it can be harder still. Resolve to follow through might be hardest of all.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from losing weight, it’s that I have the tools and the fortitude to get started.
 

by Shannon

Unlike many women, I am fairly content with my body from the neck down. Sure, I get annoyed at the bits of cellulite on my thighs or with my stomach sticking out, but we have a healthy enough relationship. No, my issue with the mirror – and my body – is more immediate, more unavoidable. It's my face.

Up until junior high, I was somewhat oblivious about my looks. In fact, I was a pretty cute kid. I knew I wasn't popular, but it didn't have anything to do with my appearance.

When I hit adolescence, puberty made me painfully aware of that connection. I started getting acne – ugly red and white pustules began arising from my fair skin. Splotches of red emerged on my cheeks. I'd look in the mirror and wince, not recognizing myself.

I might have been able to write it off as paranoia, except that my classmates reinforced this idea every chance they could. I was regularly told to “get a facial” and that I was ugly by both the popular girls and bullying boys. In seventh grade, I had a crush on a very popular boy. Convincing myself that my life could be a movie, I believed that he would see the beauty in me if I only took a chance. But instead, one of the coolest girls responded to me when I wrote a note to him. She said, “He said he would cut off his dick before going out with you.” I stood in shocked silence as she flounced down the hall.

Although I developed an “I don't care what they think” mentality, I can't shed the scars they left on me. Every time I have a new pimple, those words ring in my ears. When people mistake me for eight years younger than I am, I think of the fact my face looks like a teenager's. And of course, every commercial for acne medication reminds me of how hideous it is.

On the rare occasions my face is clear, I still examine it for any visible flaw. I look in the mirror and am vaguely disappointed, thinking I am “prettier” than the reflection I see. I avoid blush because it highlights the redness in my face; I'm still annoyed I let the makeup artist for my wedding put it on me. I focus on my small eyes, my strong chin, my bushy eyebrows - anything and everything. They're the sort of things no one else notices but affect you deep inside - what Tori Amos calls “my funny lip shape” in “Silent All These Years.”

The worst part is that my face is both something I can't change yet is obvious to everyone. I've tried every medication on the market, none of which have worked for more than a few months. Makeup doesn't work either; in some circumstances, it even makes it look worse. And I know it's something people notice, even if it's not as much as I do. Unlike large hips or out-of-shape arms, your face is the first thing to register in people's minds. Psychology studies have shown that people process the image of your face in milliseconds, using it to judge you on everything from trustworthiness to attractiveness.

Knowing I can't control something so physically and emotionally significant deeply frustrates me. Every time I look in the mirror, I feel like I'm in a war with my skin. As if something about my body itself hates me. Either way, it's a losing battle. Even when my face is clear, that mentality is neither healthy or productive.

So if my current attitude isn't working, what can I do? Honestly, I can't say I know. Right now, I'm making a pledge to myself to keep my skin as clear as possible while trying to be positive. I want to avoid breakouts, but just accept them as part of my body when they do occur. Like anyone who struggles with having a positive body image, it's easy to fall back on those destructive ways of thinking. But for my own sake, I need to work every day to look at myself a little closer and say with conviction, “I am beautiful.” If I don't believe it myself, how will anyone else?
 

by Nicole

No, you're not crazy. This is my second (and final) post on body image issues appearing on this blog. I feel as though I didn't get out everything I had to say the first time around; I'm sure that's a sentiment many of the contributors would say. Toward the end of my last post, I wrote:

I never would've thought that having life-long scars would make me feel better about myself, but it has.

I've spent a long time thinking about that, and what it means in my every-day life, ever since. What does it mean that I feel better after being physically altered and having my body changed permanently? Is there something wrong with me? Do I have emotional issues?

Then, I got to thinking about how I hate when women get stereotyped or branded as "emotional". To me, emotions are a beautiful, necessary thing in life. So, I'm going to come right out and say it: I'm an emotional woman.

I struggled for a long time with that statement because, outwardly, I'm fairly stoic. I only have two faces - "smiling and happy" and "I'm bored, get me out of here." I can't change this. I've tried. When I think I'm feigning a smile, people think I hate them.

Although I'm not great at expressing my emotions through my facial expressions, I've discovered a pattern over the past few years - I express my emotions through altering my physical state. It started in college when I became an emotional haircutter. Whenever I had a failed crush on a boy, did bad on a test, or was happy with everything going on in my life, I got a haircut. Emotional haircuts turned into emotional hair dying, then emotional piercings (several in my ear, one in my lip), and then into emotional tattoos.

To most, my tattoos would seem like a random smattering of ink on skin. Instead, they each have very specific meanings to me that express both emotions and my personal self-esteem and body image issues. Few people ever rarely ask what my tattoos mean, mostly because I don't flaunt them often.

Beginning with my first tattoo, three pink and black nautical stars on my lower back, I've subconsciously expressed my emotions and attachments to physical locations through tattoos. My fourth tattoo, an apple with a bite taken out of it on my hip, represents my time spent in New York as an intern. It was a marker of the things I accomplished, and a reminder to never give up on my dream of living in New York City (a dream I realized in the summer of 2008).

Over the past 9 months, I've gotten two tattoos of lyrics of my favorite songs - Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" and the Foo Fighters' "Everlong". Both are very emotional songs and are about love, hope, and recognizing the beauty in things. Sometimes people are taken aback by their emotional language, other times people are intrigued. I like them because they represent this moment in my life where I'm confident and figuring out how to be a whole, complete person.

My favorite tattoos, however, are the ones that are the most representative of my self-confidence and the issues I've had for a long time. On the outside, they look like they have no meaning, but, to me, they represent significant stages in the development of my self worth.

If you read my previous blog post, you know I've had a lot of issues feeling beautiful and comfortable in my own skin. When I was 19, that all changed. For the first time in my life, I felt truly beautiful. I celebrated this newfound realization with my second tattoo - a flower on my inner wrist. It's the only tattoo I have that is visible 99% of the time and I like it that way. It's a daily reminder that, even if I'm having a bad hair day, or the D.C. swamp weather is making me more sweaty than is ever sexy on a woman, that I should always remember I'm beautiful.

My 20th birthday was marked with even more confidence. I felt as though I'd come into my own as a smart, powerful young woman who had things figured out (I didn't, but at least I thought I did). I used to be scared to show it, but the compliments I've received on it have been incredible. When I tell people the story (those few that have asked), I explain it to them: I went through a lot in my first twenty years of life. Starting with the smallest star (on my lower right hip) and spanning across my back to my upper left shoulder.

All these tattoos are the physical embodiment of my emotions and will serve as markers over the course of my life. Some people collect stamps and post cards and quarters, I collect tattoos. As I get older, I don't regret a single tattoo. Some I got on a whim, others I spent years planning. Each is a testament to who I am: a strong, emotional woman with a lot left to learn about myself, my body, and my self-esteem. This doesn't mean I have emotional issues, but I am an emotional being and that's not a bad thing.

by Christopher

I work as a chiropractor in both Alexandria and Bethesda, so every day I see many people who come in with bodies to be fixed and wounds to be healed (both physical and emotional). In my 23 years of practice I have met people in all shapes and sizes. Nearly everyone I have met has something that he or she would like to change about their body or a health challenge that limits them. My brain is filled with so many stories and secrets that I sometimes feel like the local parish priest.

In searching for a topic for this series, I thought about my increasingly graying yet vanishing hairline, my “why-do-some-women-insist-on-pinching" butt, my large head, or my orthopedically-modified joints but I settled for the one that really has the strongest emotional charge for me.

I have inherited from both of my parents, a pair of rather penetrating big blue eyes. Yes, I have been told that I seem to be able to see through people, making some feel uncomfortable, but, honestly, I don't consciously do that. With respect to body image, it's what you can't see that bothers me the most - what the world looks like through my eyes. If it is true that the eyes are the windows of the soul, then in my case God or the Universe clearly "doesn't do windows."

I have either been blessed or cursed with severe myopia and a whole series of “weird eye problems.” This has resulted in my 'behind the scenes" body image issue. At the age of 3 years, back when there was no such thing as a car seat, I was perched up in the middle of the front seat of my parents' car, when my father saw me excitedly point outside exclaiming, "Doggie! Doggie!" When he looked over at the side of the road, it was clear to him that I was pointing to a rock. His conclusion was either that I had bad eyesight or a vivid imagination. It turns out that he was right on both counts.

Although I managed to squeak by in kindergarten without perfect sight, it became clear that I needed glasses for first grade. It was both traumatic and dramatic. As I recall, nobody else in Mrs. Schreiber's first grade class needed spectacles except for one - me. (Interestingly enough, I recently moved and found those original glasses, felt a shudder, and promptly thew them away - not suitable for the Lions Club). My father, a chiropractor and natural health fan, set to work to have me do eye exercises. There were the side-to-sides, the convergence, and the eye rolls. Eventually, it became our routine to do these every night. The funny thing is that, for a time, they worked! Much to the surprise of my optometrist, Dr. Roach (yup, his real name), my astigmatism disappeared even though he continually used the term "impossible." Nevertheless, despite my father's valiant efforts to save his son's eyes, my vision continued to decline resulting in stronger and stronger prescription eyeglasses.

School situations were difficult. I would leave my glasses in a gym locker so as not to break them outside. It wasn't all that unusual for me to be playing in left field when a baseball would whiz by my head and all I had to go on was my newly developed sense of "sports sonar." Multiple episodes of poor athletic performance resulted in me usually being picked last for team sports. This despite the fact that I could run the 100 yard dash faster than almost anybody in my school. Thick "coke bottle bottom" glasses didn't do much for my social life either. There was no "geek chic" back in the early 1970s. I avoided school dances like the plague.

When I went to Harvard, the image of my eyes was somewhat rescued by my college sweetheart, a cute blonde who decided that yours truly needed a bit of a makeover. She encouraged me to get hard contact lenses and my image instantly changed. I could finally have a conversation with someone without worrying that people were staring at the thickness of my lenses or watching my glasses slide down my nose. Contacts seemed to be my saving grace yet still my prescriptions kept getting stronger and stronger.

Fast forward to the past two years. I began to notice that there was a certain fuzziness in my right eye, a giant blind spot that appeared to be getting bigger and bigger. After ignoring this fact (Yes. Doctors DO make the worst patients), I found out from my new opthamologist that not only was my retina pulling away from the back of my right eye but that there was atrophy and my retina was LEAKING! Yikes! I was informed that this would require a series of eye injections using special substances designed to cease the leaking of blood into my eye as well as stop the growth of bad blood vessels gone wild. Dr. Murphy, my retina expert, and his staff were great with their care but there is something incredibly disconcerting about seeing a giant needle coming at your when you can't blink. Fortunately, 5 injections later I appear to be stable and now I am maintaining relatively good vision.

My vision has been so poor that I have often joked that I could easily be a watchmaker. In truth, in order to read without contacts or glasses, I have to be about 4 inches from a piece of paper - so close that I can see the grain of the paper. My ex wife used to recoil when she saw this, saying, "Poor little blind Chrisetchka... You make me want to cry." That just made me angry. I didn't want pity. I just wanted to be accepted as my current optometrist states, "a nice guy with a lot of really weird eye problems."

There is a bright side to poor vision. The good part of being severely myopic is that I now have highly-developed senses of both hearing and touch. Hence, I can listen really well and have a great pair of hands. As a chiropractor, I've been told that I "give good neck." Not such a bad reputation to have.

by Amy

We all struggle with our image of our body in certain ways. For some, its the inches around your waist. For other women, it is the lack of inches around your chest. I would be lying if I said that I don't wrestle with those frustrations from time to time, but my main challenge doesn't have anything to do with the common body image trouble spots.

My struggle is with my hands.

I can hear you now saying "Your hands? That's ridiculous!" But, it is incredibly true. For the past 15 years, I've picked at my hands until they were bleeding and raw. It started during my part-time job in high school as a florist. I would come home with cuts on my hands from making flower arrangements. Soon, I would pick at those imperfections without consciously being aware that I was doing it. Next thing I know, my thumb was red and my cuticles were raw. I've even started to pick at my right earlobe and

It is such a habit that I don't know that I'm picking. I pick during meetings, whether stressful or not. I pick my fingers as I'm out in public and having conversations with incredible people. Heck, I'm picking my fingers now that I'm typing this blog post and spilling my guts to all of you.

I have had many people who have tried to keep me accountable over the years. They verbally point out when I'm destroying my hands or, in some cases, will hit me if they see me hurting myself. I encourage this behavior because I wouldn't know that I'm picking if people didn't point it out. And I've tried everything to stop: Band-Aids, that gross-tasting stuff, expensive hand lotion, fake nails and lots and lots of prayer.

The physical injuries are not necessarily the bad part - it is the emotional toll that it has taken on me. The attention to my hands can make me seize up in public and withdraw from conversation. (And if you know me at all, you know this is very uncharacteristic). Because I can't control how or if I pick my hands, I feel like I can't control many aspects of my life. I feel like a failure at one thing that everyone can see and will ask about all the time. This issue has spurred countless tense conversations among those I'm closest to and has caused so many tears. I often feel completely defeated and almost gave up on trying to fix the problem earlier this year.

I'm told that the technical term is Dermatillomania, a slight form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). While I wouldn't say I'm totally OCD, I am a perfectionist and am prone to worry a lot in stressful situations. But, who doesn't worry, right? Right, but sometimes that stress manifests itself in weird ways. Instead of the "normal" nervous habits like twirling hair or tapping your feet, I pick my hands and everyone can see the effects. It has such a stigma at times. No one wants to broadcast that his or her nervous habit may be a bigger issue.

The fix: identifying the major stressors and not allowing them to reign in my life. I've been through a huge life change in the last four months. I've had to prioritize how I want to proceed with my career and take risks I never imagined. By stepping away from one thing I knew as secure and "safe," I've actually alleviated a source of stress in my life. This renewed vision and other realizations have actually improved my hands. The next step is to continue the healing by being diligent about watching my actions and identifying my stress for what it truly is.

For the first time in a very long time, there is hope. Hope that I don't have to wrestle with this issue as much as I have in the past. Hope in overcoming huge obstacles. And hope that others who have dealt with this will not be as reluctant to continue this conversation.

I'm discovering that hope in healing is a process and I'm learning to love it.

by Neil

Any music critic will tell you that music and image go hand in hand. Let’s face it, what would Michael be without his white glove, Cobain without his flannel shirts, or Lady Gaga without her RIDICULOUSLY goofy self-made outfits!

But image is not always about a certain piece of clothing you wear, it’s about your body as a whole. Body image is one aspect of you that derives confidence, and the level of confidence one has affects performance.

As the lead guitarist for the Alternative/Rock band, Redline Addiction, performing is my job and the difference between a good or bad performance determines the whole outcome of my success. So to say that body image plays an important role in my life is a VAST understatement. Body image is something I’ve had to struggle with my whole life and continue to do so today. My story begins early on.

The beginning of the end:
I had just finished the sixth grade where I conquered elementary school with flying colors and was getting ready to start the next chapter of my life in seventh where I would take the middle school world by storm! But a funny thing happened. Little did I know that an itty bitty hormone deficiency would rock my world and would forever alter my course in life. You see, at the ripe age of 11, my hair started thinning causing me to have issues with male pattern baldness as a child. To this day, I haven’t met one other person who had to deal with hair loss at that age. Now add puberty to this equation. I was completely SOL! A little bit of background. I’m an Indian American (that’s dot, not feather). Genetics alone tends to give my people dark features including dark hair and lots of it! Picture this, an 11 year old Indian boy with glasses who is the first to have a mustache and chest hair in his grade and looks like he’s bald. Was this a cruel joke from God?!? Being Hindu and believing in reincarnation, I was sure I was a serial killer in my past life. God: “As punishment, I’m going to take Neil and make him the hairiest bastard possible and just to mess with him; I’m not going to put any on top of his head. HA!”

At first I tried ignoring it hoping no one would notice, but as we all know, kids can be cruel. It started off with class mates sitting behind me noticing my bald spot and announcing it to the rest of the class. From there, it spiraled into a frenzy of old man jokes and constant teasing. Who could blame them…I was a walking bull’s eye. Always being an extrovert, I still had lots of good friends but I started noticing that even they would stare up when they were talking to me like my head and thinning hair was the center of the next great battle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. I tried ignoring my impairment but the damage was already done. And my complex had already been built.

This filtered on to high school all the way through college where it never got any easier. I became more introverted and less active in social activities because of my hair. My passion for music and learning the guitar was my only outlet and I spent countless hours practicing in my room away from the public eye and scrutiny. My parents tried taking me to several doctors as a child to help explain why this had happened to me at such a young age but to no avail. It wasn’t until later in life that I discovered that a hormone deficiency causes my hair follicles to be spread further apart than the average human causing my hair to look thin.

The ability to wear hats was my only savior but this self image complex I had built constantly haunted me… to the point where it controlled my actions. I wouldn’t leave the house without a hat and if I misplaced or lost it, I wouldn’t go out at all. My hats were my safety blanket and I felt lost without one. Dates and formal occasions were awkward for me as I constantly worried about what a girl would think…even getting intimate was tough as I was so embarrassed on what they would say if they saw what was underneath my hat.

The change:
A decade and a half later, I had been three years out of college and had a new found look in life. I was exercising regularly and eating healthy. For the first time in my life, I had felt healthier than I had ever been. My girlfriend at the time, who was a hair stylist ironically, urged me to start shaving my head. I was reluctant at first but decided to give it a chance. With the likes of Vin Diesel on the rise, it had become a socially accepted look and people thought it was a natural cut for me. It took me a while to adjust but after a short period of time, I never gave it a second thought and became more and more confident with my looks inside and out.

But life is ever changing and battles just keep on coming.

Enter Adulthood:
It’s a funny thing getting older…it’s like a switch goes off and your body just says “no” to anything you want it to do. For me, that switch went off three weeks ago on my 30th birthday. Simple tasks like lifting up a small box or walking the dogs puts you out of breath. Your stomach starts to hurt in the middle of the night from the diner you stopped by on your way home from the bar. And that drinking tolerance us guys worked so hard building since puberty?!? Forget about it! You’re ready to pass out after a few beers.

The older you get, the more responsibilities you have.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m the self proclaimed “busiest man on the planet.” I have a tendency to take on more than I can handle and am constantly moving from one project to another. Between a full time job, touring in a band, graduate school and personal commitments to family and friends, it’s hard for me to find a balance between commitments to others and find time for my personal well being. I tend to lose focus on other important aspects of my life such as dieting and exercise. In fact, it barely allows for it at all.

This in return has caused another battle with body image in which it’s hard to maintain my ideal weight and health. Being as busy as I am, my options are limited when it comes to cooking healthy meals or providing my body with the proper exercise and dieting it needs. As a result, I have gained weight in the past years and feel excess fatigue when it comes to work and playing shows.

Finding balance:
What I’ve learned in my lifetime is being confident and successful at what you’re working towards takes great discipline and balance. Maintaining that balance is always difficult to do but there is always a way to do so if you work hard enough towards it. I now make it a priority to include exercise and dieting with my other commitments and value it as important as anything else in my life. I have always gone through struggles with body image that affected my confidence and I guarantee there will be more to come. Part of being confident which affects your overall performance is to understand your limitations. It took me a long time to come to terms with my limitations being it not having hair or not being my ideal weight, but I understand them and accept it for what it is. Knowing these limitations, I always strive to the best I can at what I can do instead of worrying about how to change what I can’t. In time, I have come to be comfortable with my body image and now let my confidence be dictated by my performance rather than the other way around.
 

by Abbey

My name is Abbey and I will be a good auntie.

I spent some time with my two nieces who are 11 and 6-and-a-half a few weeks ago. The elder was discussing how she is going to be the shortest of her siblings. She was not terribly upset about it but I looked on as a concerned auntie. Unlike her two siblings, the 11-year-old takes after my family and tends to be on the shorter side while the other two seem to have acquired tall genes. But, really, isn’t 11 too young to be acutely aware of one’s body? Shouldn’t childhood be preserved for all good thoughts about oneself?

CONS: I don’t remember a time when I didn’t realize that I was the shortest of all of my peers and surely this has always had pros and cons. It’s the cons that have stood out more often, however. Being short makes it very difficult to be “curvy”. The only thing worse than trying to find pants for short legs is having to find pants that also fit my curves. Further, shirts just never seem to hit my body in just the right places, making me look even curvier than I already am. My short waist and curvy bust-line make shopping for clothing this woman’s worst nightmare. In my mind, it looks dreadfully funny when the waist of your pants or skirt come close to the bottom of your bust. This accentuation of my least favorite part of my body leaves me self-conscious much of the time.

How is it that the part of my body that makes me the most insecure is the part that society tells me I should be happiest about? Magazines everywhere suggest that it’s not just blondes that have all the fun but women with big boobs do too. Women pay big bucks to have breasts the size of mine and I can’t figure that out. The first time my chest embarrassed me was in middle school when I overheard the boys talking about them. These same boys, who were friends of mine, proceeded to poke them with a stick. Today this would be called sexual harassment and those boys probably would have been suspended from school. In my mind, they were simply normal adolescent boys who had heard what society tells them: “Big boobs are fun to play with.” I’m here to say that society can just shove it and we need to start appreciating girls and women for their more important assets.

As an auntie, I hope to be able to encourage my nieces to love their bodies no matter what. Our bodies are our gifts from God and we need to appreciate how He made each of us unique. Both of my nieces are exceptionally smart, athletic, funny, sweet, caring, outgoing, and artistic. I pray that they will always love themselves the way that they are and know that they are loved. My job as auntie will also extend to my nephew. I promise to always teach him that girls and women are way more than how they look and guide him to see beyond the superficial. It may be too late though. I visited with him too and he was already enamored with a beautiful young actress that attended the same wedding that we did that weekend. Ah... life as a 9-year-old boy!

PROS: In order to set a good example for my nieces and nephew, I am going to have to start appreciating my own body. Being short helps me look younger, I always have leg room on planes and in the back seat of cars, and I can always hide behind taller people when I don’t want to show in pictures. I guess the curves aren’t so bad either, especially the breasts. Someday I may have the blessing of nursing my own newborn- a bonding experience that no father can ever have. More importantly, I am grateful that mine continue to be healthy while many women have lost theirs to breast cancer. It is so freeing to develop a positive body image.

My journey has just begun.

by Joe

My hair started falling out during my first year of college. I thought about killing myself.

No, I'm not kidding.

My hair was poker-straight when I was a kid; pics abound of me sporting the traditional bowl haircut (with the requisite turtleneck and plaid pants, of course). But something happened in 7th grade, which seemed to coincide with me playing football. My hair began this metamorphosis from straight and malleable to some kind of wavy, bushy mass that seemed to grow out sideways instead of down toward my shoulders -- no matter how hard I wished it would.

And this being the age you start to notice the opposite sex (and begin hoping they notice you), I tried every damn hair care product in the free world attempting to make my hair look longer and cooler, to get the sea of waves to relax enough to resemble something approaching the long locks of the metal musicians I worshipped. Alas, it was not to be. The longer I let it grow, it never grew down…just OUT.

At the same time I never had (as far as I knew) what most girls my age considered to be the ideal "look." My Italian heritage gave me a short, squat stature. Although I wasn't fat, I wasn't skinny either. Soft in all the wrong places, you could say. I was always actually pretty muscular as well, but never in any defined way, not like the guys I played football with who seemed to be blessed with thin skin that wrapped tightly around very defined muscles beneath. If I worked out, I got stronger, and I got bigger; but in size only, never in definition.

When I played football my stomach was rock-hard (the coaches would walk on it when we did leg lifts), but it still looked like a one-pack. And for whatever reason I always had visible love handles, always a little extra poking over the sides of the tight, faded Levi's that were required apparel in those days. I felt surrounded by good-looking, well-adjusted people whose clothes fit them perfectly, who didn't wear the "husky" size, whose mothers didn't have to hem every pair of pants they owned because they were made for kids who had legs longer than a basset hound's. And the hemming bit itself was enough to kill my desired look; jeans in the 80s were tapered toward the bottom. So when you cut off 3 inches or so, instead of the cool streamlined look your friends had, you wound up with something that looked like the cardboard tubes left on an empty roll of toilet paper. Stovepipes were NOT cool at that time, I assure you.

Add to all this that I had never felt able to "fit in" in high school; I was all over the place – punk, metalhead, jock, sensitive artist, nerd – and as such no one group really wanted anything to do with me. My outward persona was never defined enough to meet the criteria of any clique, and at the same time I was struggling with my parents with regard to who I was and what I was into. The way i wanted to look and what I wanted to listen to and what I wanted to do with my life (art or music) did not sit well with the folks…war all the time.

So on the outside I remained, and my self esteem and body image were predictably low.

So then I got to college, which was cool because it felt like a chance to start over. Be myself. Redefine, reinvent. Walk, talk and act like I wanted to. Join that rock band and practice and gig because there were no parents around to forbid it. Discovered graphic design, fell in love with it instantly. Met incredibly cool, like-minded people who seemed to 'get' me. Grew my damn hair out…and out…and out…until I had a big unruly bush of hair that finally, mercifully, went down past my shoulders. All very good for our boy Joe.

And then my hair started falling out.

And receding at the temples at the same time.

In a matter of months my hair began to resemble some kind of strange mohawk-mullet, with a growing bald spot at the back corner of my scalp. We were playing a gig where the seating area had a balcony, and a friend was up there snapping shots of us. When I saw the top of my head my heart sank through the soles of my feet. At the top of my head, starting at each temple, was a U-shape where there was clearly very little hair. at the bottom of the U where the lines met was a big bald spot about 3 inches wide. I had been teasing and pushing and prodding my hair for so long to get it to look a certain way that when looking straight on, it wasn't visible.

I wanted to die, there's no other way to put it. I felt crushed. i felt like the person I was becoming -- more ME, less external influence -- was suddenly arrested in his development, thrown out, locked away. Not to be. Not now, not ever.

So fast forward past a lot of nights alone in my room feeling very, very sorry for myself, wearing bandannas and backwards baseball caps and other assorted headgear to ease the pain and hide my malady from the world. Eventually I came to some kind of uneasy truce with my follicles and decided to get it all cut off.

Somewhere I get the idea that a flattop might work, because I still had a little on top. Short sides would de-emphasize the receding areas, or so I hoped. So I set out to the local shop to get it done.

The girl completely mangles the cut, shaving all the way down to my SCALP in one area. When I look in the mirror from the chair I see that instead of a straight, flat line across the top, it looks more like grass that was cut with three or four different lawnmowers by blind men of various height. So I stare for awhile and I think OK, maybe it's one of those things where when you go home and wash it it'll bounce back to normal. Yeah, that must be it.

Except it isn't.

It looks equally as bad, if not worse, after I come out of the shower. This is almost worse then the balding problem. Remarkably I bounce back quick with an idea: screw it. I'll go back and tell her to shave it all one length to match the shortest-buzzed areas of my scalp. it'll grow back, and I can start over. Bandannas and baseball caps here I come.

Here's what happens the first time you shave all your hair off: your head looks HUGE. I mean musk-melon-on-steroids HUGE. Like it doesn't belong on your body, like you have a giant punching balloon where your head is supposed to be, and it has your face.

But then a curious thing happened after a week or so: I stopped paying any attention to my head whatsoever. Didn't think about it. No combing and brushing and gelling and pulling and being frustrated that it wouldn't lay the right way or wouldn't cover the bald spots. No constant self-torture about rocking what is now known as the "skullet." And hey, it was different. It was unique. It was….ME. This was about 10 years before it became cool to rock a shaved pate, and so I was really beginning to dig the uniqueness. And somewhere along the way, the more time went by, I realized that I no longer felt the least bit self-conscious about my hair. Did. Not. Care. And that felt like a victory: a long-fought, hard-won victory.

I was 20 then. I'm bearing down on 42 now, and I have never gone back. For me, the bald way is the ONLY way and I can't imagine anything else. It's me, it's mine, it's purely and essentially who and what I am.

I'd love to say that I'm less self-conscious about other areas of my body, but I'd be lying. I'm in good shape and the woman I love thinks I'm dead sexy and tells me so -- but I still obsess about those areas at the sides of my waist, about the hair that grows in more places than I'd like it to.

But be that as it may, the feature I lead with is one that I'm proud of and totally at home with. I LOVE my bald head and am proud of it – because for me it symbolizes a concrete victory over shame, fear and self-loathing. So yeah, I went bald - but I lived to tell about it.
 

The Social Media Campers #smcampers (Rahiem, Charlotte, Alex, Aisha & I) went on a 'twamping twip' to West Virginia staying at the gorgeous Abram's Creek Campground. Instead of telling you how it went, see for yourself. As one camper said 'correctly': What stays in the woods, stays in the woods. ;)

Pictures from Alex's Professional Camera:

Pictures from Melanie's Canon Elph:

ENJOY!

by Amanda

I’ve always been obsessed with food. And in turn, equally fixated on my body, and not in a particularly positive way. If the women in my life are any indication, from friends to coworkers, most of our relationships with food and with our bodies are intertwined, thanks to years of dieting, binging, yearning, and often sacrificing dessert in the name of fitting into a smaller dress. And more often than not, leaving the table wanting something more and still scrutinizing every ripple in the mirror.

Hi, my name is Amanda and I love my body.

Let me explain how my obsession with food and my relatively new-found love of my body are wrapped up together like spinach and phyllo in spanakopita. My obsession with food has not always been a healthy one. In my childhood, I loved to eat, and eat I did. I grew quickly (more sideways than up, judging by some of the photos) and loved fried things, desserts, and all of the yummy-fattening-sugary things that are just what kids shouldn’t eat in excess. I remember volunteering for a piano recital just because I wanted to go out to KFC with everyone after. My parents were great at serving us a balanced diet and ensuring there were always fresh fruits and vegetables around the house, but sneaking fun sized Snickers in my room was much more appealing than a salad sometimes. I was a pudgy Girl Scout who liked to read, and lived in leggings and oversized sweatshirts until I was in sixth grade. And somewhere along the line, I started to believe I wasn’t pretty because I wasn’t rail thin: exactly what all of the more “popular” girls had in common. And that’s when I started to hate my body.

Middle school. I have yet to find anyone who thought adolescence was easy. I was a smart, quick-thinking perfectionist, who realized I had some control over what size my body was, and attempt to control it I did. I started depriving myself of the delicious things I had loved in the past. I ate less and less, and more compliments came flowing my way. People, especially my peers, seemed to like me more because of how I looked. Packaging those two things (acceptance and body size) within my mind was a dangerous combination, and by the time I started eighth grade I was a skeleton of my former self. And what did people say on the first day of eighth grade? “You look great!” And I still didn’t love my body.

High school. Despite having starved myself to a point of emaciation, achieving the impossible (for me) of squeezing into size 0 (and sometimes double zero) pants, I still didn’t love my new shape. I wanted to be smaller, because I equated smaller with better. Therapy and nutritional counseling until I finished high school helped me get back on track with my eating, but I still wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. I just learned that it wasn’t okay to starve myself, and I reluctantly accepted the fact that my body didn’t like being rail thin and I would need to just get used to that. And I still didn’t love my body.

University. Perhaps it wasn’t the healthiest choice to select a university with a remarkably high eating disorder rate, filled with women who looked like they belonged in a swimsuit catalogue rather than in an 8 am lecture hall, but that’s precisely what I chose. Over four years, I coped with and sometimes resented the fact that I didn’t look like a Barbie doll, and between going out and eating out and some less-than-regular exercise habits, I seemed to gain weight more often than I would lose it. I loved my time there, had amazing friends, joined a sorority, served in leadership roles in Greek life, and graduated cum laude with university honors , and without an anorexic-relapse. And I still didn’t love my body.

Grad school. Working on my Masters, I had two wonderful experiences that changed the way I thought about my body. The first was having someone in my life who loved and appreciated my body exactly how it was, and told me so often. Not that I like to admit that I needed that outside reassurance (I’m a big fan of doing things for myself), but somehow, in this arena of life, it was helpful. Everyone likes to be told they’re beautiful. I will forever be thankful for him for giving me that gift, though we’ve gone separate ways. The second was spending a summer living in rural Kenya, where standards of female beauty seem to be entirely different than what they are in the States. Curves are embraced, an ample bosom and hips and a sizable derriere are acceptable, and standing 5’10” and being thin and muscular is equally fine: there seemed to be women in so many different sizes and shapes, so many of them carrying on with an air of confidence I relished, that I couldn’t help but be amazed. Many pieces of who I am and what I want to do were shaped by that summer, and it most certainly impacted the way I thought about my body. I began to think more of what it could do than what it looked like. I was amazed. And I started to love my body.

Hi, my name is Amanda, and I love my body. And the love I have with it is the kind of love you have in a long-term relationship, or with parent, or with a sibling: I don’t always like my body, but I always love it. I can nitpick with the best of them, and envy the muscled arms of women far more disciplined in their gym regimens than I, or the lean, long legs of a runner. Over time, though, that envy has evolved into an appreciation for what others have done with their bodies, and what they are able to do with them. I have no fear of walking around a pool in a bikini, even if my tummy doesn’t even resemble a six pack. My body does amazing things for me, and I want to shower it with the love and affection it deserves, embracing every curve and every little imperfection. I love to cook, and enjoy crunchy strips of bacon and rich sauces as much as the next foodie, but in moderation. Being healthy, eating healthily, and enjoying the nourishment and satisfaction food brings to my body became more important than my dress size sometime in the past year, and for that, I am grateful.

by Nicole

Summer in the city means cleavage, cleavage, cleavage. Or, so Regina Spektor says.

I remember when I used to be ashamed to show my cleavage - it really wasn't that long ago. I first became ashamed of my breasts when their rapid growth (I was a D cup by the age of 13) caused me to quit figure skating. Despite my talent and grace on the ice, large breasts made it impossible to keep my arms in tight to spin in the air or hold my back straight when doing a spiral.

Also, ninth-grade boys are brutal. Around the same time I quit figure skating, I began getting harassed by boys in my 4th period class. In the winter time, they would open all the windows so that I'd get cold and then you know what happens. I turned one boy in for sexual harassment and, instead of taking it seriously, my principal brought us in for counseling together. He wasn't reprimanded or moved to another class. Instead, the torment increased and became more devastating.

I held a lot of resentment toward boys in high school and never had a serious boyfriend because all the attention (positive and negative) I received from them was focused on my breasts, so I completely avoided boys all together. When I got to college, I began improving myself internally; I got a job, an internship, and took classes that interested me for the first time. I also met friends of all shapes and sizes, both sexes, from all across the world. My horizons were rapidly expanding, but I still had issues with my breasts.

I started dating my first real boyfriend when I was 19, but I was incredibly self-conscious. He would constantly tell me how beautiful I was, but I never "felt" it. I would always bow my head in shame and say, "You're crazy." Or, "No, I'm not." None of the attention he gave me was focused on my breasts, but I still carried that resentment from junior high school with me and took it out on him.

At one point in our relationship, I mentioned how I'd talked to my parents when I was younger about getting a breast reduction. He told me that I was beautiful no matter what my breasts looked like, but that I should research the surgical options if I thought it would change my negative self-image (in addition to the physical pain: indents in my shoulders from my bra straps and intense back pain).

A few months of research, begging my parents for money, and talking to others who'd had reductions, I made plans to get a breast reduction two days after Christmas and two weeks before my 22nd birthday.

It wan't an easy decision at all. I had a lot of questions:

- Would I be able to breast feed if I wanted to? Actually, the size of my breasts before surgery greatly reduced my chances to breast feed if I had a child. After surgery, it's much more likely that I could breast feed if and when the time comes.

- Would they really be that much smaller? What if I went through with this surgery and they weren't able to make my breasts small enough? Or, what if they were too small?

- Would the scarring be so bad that I was embarrassed to take off my clothes or that I was ashamed of my breasts in a whole new way? Unlike implants, breast reductions require a two large incisions on each breast (doesn't seem fair, right?). Imagine the shape of an anvil cut on your skin - that's what it looks like. Thankfully, I'm very pale and my skin is soft, so my scars aren't red or puffy.

The day after surgery, I went back to the surgery center for a check up and was happy, standing tall, and not wearing sweatpants. Apparently when you have plastic surgery, it means you have an excuse to wear sweats for the entire time you're healing. That wasn't me! I was excited - I wore a shirt I bought in high school that I'd waited six years to be able to button (I tried it on about 5 hours after surgery and almost jumped up and down in excitement, but that would've hurt).

I took the standard post-surgery photos and was smiling. The nurse taking the photos said she'd never seen such a transformation and that I looked like I'd lost 30 pounds. The doctor told me he removed about a pound of tissue and skin from each breast. Yes, A POUND. Can you imagine that? They're still pretty large, too! (They were a size DDD before surgery and are now a D)

So, how has my life changed?

1. My clothes fit better. A lot better. I basically had to go out and buy an entirely new wardrobe. The extra larges I'd been buying for 6 years no longer fit. I could now buy mediums from most stores (and even smalls from some more generously-sized stores) and I could button shirts for the first time in as long as I could remember. I don't hate shopping anymore and I feel like a "normal" girl who can go into a store and pick something off the rack and buy it.

2. A lot of attention I receive from men is still focused on the size of my breasts. That hasn't changed, but now I know how to deal with it. Also, I'm more comfortable with them - I'm not afraid of what I look like naked or how a potentially romantic situation might end if a guy sees that I have scars on my breasts. (In fact, I now think I look better naked than with clothes on!) Now that I'm comfortable in my own skin, guys generally don't say the negative things they used to. I began presenting myself in a new way that encouraged guys to treat me differently.

3. Also, I'm open about my insecurities, but in a positive way. I talk about my surgery openly and people ask a lot of questions about it. Nine times out of ten, someone will respond, "I had a friend in high school who had it done. Best decision she ever made." People also say, "Wow, they were bigger?!" Also, when a guy tells me I'm pretty or beautiful (or even sexy, sometimes), I say "thank you" and smile.

Two years later, I can safely say the breast reduction was the best decision I've ever made. I never would've thought that slicing my body open, taking out some tissue, and having life-long scars would make me feel better about myself, but it has.

Now, whenever I hear "Summer in the city means cleavage, cleavage, cleavage," I think "Yes, Regina, it does." And I'm okay with it.

I write a lot about relationships - friends, love, family, God, and work. Life has us wrapped up in relationships, most of which are good but some are not the ones we should have. My life has consisted of lots of incredible friendships, hard family relationships, a back-and-forth God relationship, good and bad work relationships and terrible love relationships for the most part.

My dear friend, Diana, told me that I need to let go of the bad relationships and move forward in my incredible ones so I can find the peace I need inside myself. This is such a big struggle in my life. I tend to reach out for the relationships I shouldn't have because they are a challenge and I like to fix things. I end up getting hurt badly by them but go back again and again. I have too many of these relationships in my life right now and can't find a way to walk away from them.

I keep a little devotional book on my desk at the office called Hope for Each Day by Billy Graham. It's a short verse with a 1-page devotional, quick and easy. This morning I walked into my office with a headache, miserable at myself for not going running and had to deal with a lazy employee which just ended up making me really angry. I was also thinking about relationships I have in my life right now that I know I need to walk away from.

The devotion for today reminded me that God knows everything and puts things in our way to show us He's really there. It reads:

Accept God's Freedom
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.  James 4:8

One day a little child was playing with a valuable vase. He put his hand into it and could not take it out. His father, too, tried his best to get the little boy's hand out. but all in vain. They were thinking of breaking the vase whtn the father said, "Now, my song, make one more try. Open your hand and hold your fingers out straight as you see me doing and then pull."

To the father's astonishment the little fellow said, "Oh no, Daddy. I couldn't put my fingers out like that because if I did I would drop my penny."

Smile if you will - but thousands of us are like that little boy, so busy holding on to the world's worthless trifes that we cannot accept God's freedom.

What "trifle" is keeping you from God? A sin you won't let go of? An unworthy goal you are determined to reach? A dishonorable relationship you won't give up? I beg you to drop that trifle in your heart. Surrender! Let go and let God have His way with your life.

I believe that God is in charge and really knows my pain and misery in these. I do have relationships that are sinful, dishonorable and painful. They cause me hurt and headaches and I need to let go of them so I can move forward in the way God has asked me to.

What relationships are you still holding onto that you should let go of? Take it to Him and ask Him to help you remove them. I'll try to do it first and let you know how it goes.

Starting May 7, I am on a 30-day detox. I've been wanting to do this for awhile but really needed to find a moment of clarity to guide me into that moment.

I host networking events & happy hours for friends. These are places where people gather to drink and socialize. With as many events as I attend, I tend to drink quite a few nights a week without realizing it along with a glass of wine while working in the evenings.

Working out as much as I have been recently with races upcoming & summer weekends at the pool, I realized I haven't been able to lose the weight around my middle like I had hoped. All the empty calories from wine and mixed drinks have been really unhelpful to my workout routine. Waking up at 6am to hit the gym or the trails has been inhibited by my long days, social drinking and late nights. My 6am self typically loses the debate of 'to run or not to run' and I end up needing to sleep longer.

Running a company takes a lot of vision, passion and focus of which I have a lot less when I am tired from being out socializing & drinking. I need every bit of clarity and excitement to get me through each and every 15-hour day. Being at the office at 8am and networking until 9pm gets really tiring when you're not on top of your game.

I'm not doing this because I believe I've hit 'alcoholic' status, I just feel it's time for a bit of a detox. When life isn't going exactly the way I planned I would have a drink to quiet my mind and stop worrying. I should have been turning to prayer, reading or finding another way to satiate my mind. Music is the way I've always escaped - listening, playing, singing - and I don't use that to really get out of my head. Time to get back into that.

It's been 6 days and I feel much stronger, more healthy and more energetic. Time to order a 7-up with lime or a juice spritzer instead of a martini when I hit the town. I'm excited about my challenge. I'm ready!