Imerge Magazine January 2014 | Page 12

I read an article recently that really inspired me to write about his month’s topic, feeling pretty. There are too many plus-sized women out there who are running away from mirrors because, they are made to feel ugly and undesirable every day and that just does not have to be the case. If you are an overweight child then it will start at a young age and continue throughout our lives, we have it ingrained in our minds that if we are not thin, we are not pretty, or we hear “You are so pretty in the face, if only you would lose weight”, we are the only ones that can stop this and allow ourselves to look in the mirror and like what we see. I am not in any way saying that as long as you feel pretty you do not have to address your weight issues, I have been battling mine literally all of my life, but I am saying that in the process you can increase your self-worth, self -esteem, self-image and feel good while you work on the weight. Notice the word “self” is used several times in that last sentence, why?, because you have to do it yourself, no one else can make you feel pretty. It took me years to be able to look in the mirror and see a pretty woman, I had a childhood full of being made fun of and bullied because I was a fat kid. I kept my head down and avoided eye contact in high school in hopes I would just be unnoticed, but every day was like hell for me. I honestly did not have my first real date until I was in my late teens. One day something just snapped