I guess I unfortunately feel really negatively about them. I went to a
high school that was in a suburb of Minneapolis, and there, everyone
is skinny, blonde, blue eyes, rich, so while I may be blonde, and have
semi-blue eyes, I don't really fit any of the other things in there. So I
actually, from high school coming to Carleton, I think I've gained like
thirty or forty pounds from high school, and so that's really a negative
thing for me, but it's also something that I do want to change. But the
unfortunate part of that is that I will probably always have the stretch
marks from that, and it will be a reminder that I did gain that weight,
and that's frustrating to me, because I don't want to feel negatively
about it, but I do... In high school I would definitely do anything I
could to hide them, like if I had any on the insides of my thighs or
anything, and at Carleton, it's to the point where, yeah, I'm unhappy
about it, but if someone sees it, it's kind of like, "well it's my body, so
deal with it." But even on my desk there, I have cream that's
specifically for pregnancy stretch marks, to try and get rid of them... I
guess I don't know if I see that many of other people's very often,
because they are often in places like the insides of your thighs, or the
side of your body, but no, not necessarily. I think it's something that
I'm more set up to notice because of being hyper-aware of weight
because of the environment I grew up in, but it's not something that I
would be like, I'm not gonna associate with this person because of
that. I think it's something that everyone feels a lot differently, and
everyone struggles with differently, if they do struggle at all with
having them. Also I would say that I think it's really amazing that a lot
of mothers who have stretch marks on their stomachs, like from
pregnancy, call them tiger stripes, and that has helped me kind of
reframe how I feel. Although it's kind of different, because the only
reason I have them is because I gained weight, not because I gave
birth to a beautiful child.