Blurry

I was getting ready for bed last night and something happened that surprised me. . . although it's happened before. I had just completed my ritual of teeth brushing, contacts, face washing, etc., and I went into my room. I sat on the edge of my bed and looked down and the "clean" pile of clothes on the floor and tried to distinguish the t-shirt that I wear to sleep in from the others. Now, if you sit on the edge of my bed, you are forced to look directly in the mirror that sits on top of my dresser (the other edge is against a wall). So I reach down, pick up my sleepy-time shirt, stand up and pull of my current t-shirt and I glance up at the mirror. (Remind yourself that I had already finished my ritual. This means I have taken my contacts out - and I'm pretty freakin' blind without them.)

Suddenly I stop. I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I actually look pretty good standing there in my underwear. Why is this such a surprise you ask? Like a lot of girls I know, I have struggled with my weight my whole life. But in order for you to get a better sense of this, let me leave my story and do a little back-tracking.

I am about half an inch shy of being 6 feet tall. I'm not huge, but I am overweight. My friends try and calm my anxiety by telling me that the reason I wear a size 16 is because I'm so tall. And while I appreciate that, I beg to differ. (Let's save that for another blog!) I've been on diets since I was in middle school (I think even 5th grade) and am just now getting to be comfortable with myself. Well, that's a lie. I'm not comfortable, but I'm really trying to find it. Ok, wait, I forgot my point. . . Oh yeah, there it is.

So, I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I'm thinking "wow, if only I could look like this". Are you confused? Again, I took my contacts out so the image I see in the mirror is blurry as hell. The cool thing is that I can't tell where the blur ends and where my curves begin. It's pretty cool. I stand there in my bra and underwear and start thinking. Will I ever be able to see myself with my contacts in and think the same thing?

I appreciate companies like Dove who have the campaign for real beauty. This particular ad shows larger women in their underwear say how proud they are to be curvy. It backs up the statement that "real women have curves". And while I appreciate this effort - I really do - I think they need to be careful. In huge letters, a banner runs across this advertisement that says, in fact, "REAL WOMEN HAVE REAL CURVES."

There was a conversation in a college class of mine a couple semesters ago about how women are portrayed in advertising and how the images are skewed. One fairly normal sized girl, slightly on the big side, said something about "how real women don't look like bean poles" and "they should use real women in their ads". Immediately, this tiny little thing (see, even I'm being condescending - actually, there is no silent stupid. . . maybe I'm just being patronizing. . . what was I talking about? oh yeah) sitting in front of me shoots a look that could kill across the room at our speaker and says, "what, I'm not real because I'm not as big as you?" With tears welling up in her eyes, she says that she has just as much trouble, probably more so, finding clothes that fit than we "big girls" do. Not to mention she has society telling her that she isn't a real woman. hmmm.

Guess I'm not the only one who has issues with my body. I still say blurry mirror vision rules!