A Young Black Mind: My Body is Beautiful

“I think that whatever size or shape body you have, it's important to embrace it and get down!” -Christina Aguilera

Before I began, a lesson to all the girls is to know that no matter what, beauty comes from within. Everyone is beautiful inside and out and you should never change yourself no matter what others say. I honestly love telling my friends that, but I never practiced the things that I preach.

Growing up, I was always ashamed of my body. I didn’t like my curves, I didn’t like my stretch marks, I hated my acne and I always stayed inside the house to hide myself from being bullied for my looks. I remember brushing my teeth in the morning and I wouldn’t even look in the mirror because I would always cry about the way that I look when I see myself. Overtime I would try to focus on loving my body and myself, but once someone says, “You’re ugly.” I’m back to being an introvert. It’s not like I can control the way I look because when I do, I still would be disrespected in different ways. I used to get compliments on the way I look, but I never believed them.

My sisters always tried helping me boost my confidence back up. I remember my vacation to Florida months ago, and I was beyond excited to go. My sister bought me a two-piece bathing suit and I thought that she was insane. She told me “You don’t have an ugly body; you are a beautiful soul.” I smiled, as if someone had the prettiest flowers I have ever seen. So, once the day came to go to the beach, I decided to wear the two-piece bathing suit. I was very confident in what I had on, and I posted a picture of it on Instagram.

Most of the comments that I had were sweet and nice and they supported me unconditionally. But they had people that were not so nice. Once people saw the picture of me being confident, people decided to use it against me and post it and repost it. Saying that I have no body, I’ll never get a boyfriend, I need to lose weight, and many more remarks that people made about the way I look. I cried the entire day because of it. I remember consuming different foods because I was sad about the way that I look. I used to ask myself ‘how come when I’m finally confident in myself I get pushed back down the stairs?’

I didn’t want to write for the majority of the summer because I was too sad to get up and write. I decided that I should just rest my nerves and relax. I used to read the comments consistently, and I would deconstruct what they would say about me in my head. I would cry myself to sleep at night because I thought that everything that they would say is true. But in the daytime, I would shake things off and joke about the way that I look to brush off what others would say about me. I used to see a picture of myself and call it ugly, or fake vomit and then laugh it off and my friends would look at me in a different type of way.

One of my friends took it into consideration and decided to take me to a man. His job was to basically draw me of how I, or other people would describe me. I stood by the mirror, and I barely looked at myself until I was told to. I would shift my eyes away from the mirror sometimes because I wasn’t happy about the way that I look. The man told me to ‘tell me what you see’ and that’s exactly what I did. I described myself as wide and a round face with a pig nose. Then, a stranger would come in and describe how I look in their eyes. The woman said that I look very beautiful and curvy. I don’t have a pig nose, but my nose is very wide. She said I had long hair and beautiful brown skin.

When she was finished describing me, I was able to step out of the room and I compared the two drawings. The first drawing was how I described myself, I looked like a pear with a pig nose. Which is what I see myself as every day. Now what the woman described, I was a curvy plus size girl, with a big, beautiful smile, and long black hair. I cried instantly because comparing what I saw myself as and what other people saw me as really broke my heart. I have always seen myself as fat, ugly, and many other different names most people have called me growing up. My friend also cried because she thinks I’m beautiful and that I shouldn’t have to see myself as ugly which is why she took me.

Well, I’m here to say now that you don’t have to listen to the negative things that people say about you. Nobody knows the real definition of ugly because there is nothing to specify what ugly really is. No matter what the models look like on Instagram, what the guys at your school go for, or what negative remarks are people saying about you, just know you are beautiful inside and out. I believe that everyone is beautiful, but it takes a good soul and a kind heart to be considered truly beautiful. So, the question I would like to ask you is…

Don’t you know that you’re beautiful?