Over the 30+ years of my life, I have struggled with a disconnect between what I think I look like and what I see in the mirror. 

My internal image of me is so different from the person I see in the mirror, to the point that sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and have to think for a moment to realize, it is my image, not someone else looking at me. I go on to put on my makeup to make “that person” look nice. Don’t get me wrong, I like that person. But she is not me. 

In my minds eye, my face is different, my body looks different (though still female), my entire manner of movement is different.

I hate taking pictures of myself, because not only they feel like they are not of me, but they don’t even resemble my friend from the mirror.  

I have thought about it a lot, whether it is a side effect of all my astral work, whether I am getting a glimpse of the soul that lies within the body, or whether it is simply a mental problem. 

I don’t know. I know that I have to get used to the person I see through contraptions outside of me, like mirrors and cameras, to stop getting startled whenever I have a glimpse of “myself”. 

Yet I also want to experience the feeling of: “Yes, this is the true me.” through those same means. To feel seen in my true form. To know, that others can see what I truly look like, and for me to be able to see the same. 

Resolved to: give 0 damns. 

Gina Barreca is a treasured comic, writer, and revered crone here in Connecticut.Her recent columnon turning 61 was not a gift wishlist, but a list of what she hopes to KonMari the hell out of her mindset, and the values she wants to focus on now now that she’s a woman of a certain age.

Her prompt was: What changes, for better and for worse, as we get older?

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Can we talk about the fashion industry

Look, don’t get me wrong, I love all of the plus size models we see represented now. But can we just have average sized women, please?

I’m not a plus size, but I’m definitely not small or petite in any way. I’m just average. And I cannot find models that looks like me hardly ever.

I love fashion, and I love to look cute, but I’m insecure in my body because I don’t see fashionable influencers with my body type, or models that are just normal sized.

I just feel like us average people need representation too.

self deprecation is bad but will i continue doing it? absolutely! however i am making an effort to do it less and less and i encourage you all to do the same. you won’t stop immediately but the less you do it the better you’ll feel and also you deserve self love so be kind to yourself

‘Confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can wear’, ‘confidence breeds beauty’, ‘confidence is the secret to all beauty’ We see quotes like these semi regularly on social media, and although I disagree that the only reason to have confidence in yourself is to be more attractive, they really do have a point! Confidence helps you in every aspect of your life. Sadly a lot of the time respect has to be demanded and working on my self confidence has definitely helped me to demand it. Listening to Rihanna’s new album got me thinking about confidence and the part it plays in sexuality. Having confidence in myself and working on developing my sense of self worth has really helped me sexually. I would honestly say that I owe a certain amount of this to pop/R&B singers like Rihanna, Beyonce and Nicki Minaj; being able to access the messages of women who preach such unabashed self love. I’m able to tell myself I am ‘Flawless’ and that ‘sex with me is so amazing’ and start to really believe it. I’ve found that my growing confidence (both sexually and generally) has led to much better sex, where anxieties can be ditched and both partners can focus on their pleasure and sensations and have fun!

This is the reason that a lot of people will be more likely to approach sexual situations while they’re drunk, as it simulates confidence. This idea makes sense but is ultimately misguided; being under the influence makes it harder to orgasm, harder to maintain and erection and harder to self lubricate. Alcohol also causes loss of inhibitions, which can lead to reckless and harmful decision making.

I’ve found that some people’s reaction to self confidence is to treat it as arrogance or cockiness. I agree that there is a line to be drawn, but I have never read Rihanna’s attitude as one of arrogance. All I can see is self love and self empowerment. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, if love isn’t coming from you then where is it coming from? Why should we have to rely on other people to validate us?

SO as Rihanna has helped me to channel my sexuality and self confidence, I wanted to share some of this in three sections

SEXUAL CONFIDENCE.

Sex with me is a bonus track from Rihanna’s new album ANTI, in which she speaks about sexual confidence and pleasure. This is something we’re still not quite used to. The idea of a woman owning her sexuality to this extent is still shocking to us. The knee jerk reaction might be to dismiss her saying she’s cocky. The idea of everyone enjoying and being open about enjoying sex is still taboo. This is why this song is so important! why can’t we say sex with me is amazing? why can’t we feel good about ourselves?

INDEPENDENCE.

While we know that we are at liberty to own our sexuality - it is wrong to assume that everything we do is sexual or romantic. It’s a shame that this assumption is made. As a woman it is still often assumed that you are just killing time until you can get married and start popping out babies. Here Rihanna iterates something that is important for us all to remember - I am self sufficient - I am already complete.

BODY POSITIVITY.

Confidence inspires confidence, I am lucky to be surrounded in my life by beautiful unapologetic independent people who own their bodies and own their sexuality. However, if I didn’t listen to the message from Rihanna and women like her then I would not be able to have the confidence that I do today. Repeat after me : sex with me is so amazing!

Inktober - Hide

Allow me to recount the extent that I despise myself.

Looking into mirrors has never been a practice of vanity, no matter the hours I’ve lost staring back at the monster I saw. Illustrations too close to what I am in reality holds no amount of aesthetic merit to me. Family albums are still devoid of years of my life from the fervency I duck out of photos, untag myself on social media, and conveniently crop myself out of.

As much as dysmorphia and disordered eating has dictated that I reject myself, so much of my existence has been poured into that self-hatred. I want to change. I’ve wanted to change since middle school. But recovery is a painful cycle of breaking free, stepping forward, and faltering back into those shadows.

Sometimes, all I can do is hide, and fall apart in isolation.

He wants to meet…deep breath, crazy stampeding butterflies, heart like a jackhammer. He wants to meet in RL in Oct….holyme…I am excited, terrified, did I say excited? I want it too, but I am so scared. I have body issues and I think when He discovered this, especially how deep mine go. I think He was disappointed. He didn’t say anything like that, He has been very patient with me. I hadn’t told…

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Does our self-image get in the way of us living our lives?

” ‘Know thyself’ is not just silly advice: it’s actively dangerous”, so reads the title of an essay from Aeon Magazine (Found here). The accusation is that you can not know yourself because you change over time, and therefore to know yourself is a mistaken notion. At most, you can only know who you were at one point in time. Therefore, concludes the author, trying to define who you are is a bad…

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drinkyourjuiceshelby:

(Imagevia)

Objectification. We’re all guilty of it. Men get blamed for it most of the time, but women do it too. Instead of approaching each person we encounter as a three-dimensional human person, made in the image of God, we reduce others (and ourselves) to a word, a body part, a sin, an ideology, or an occupation. Suddenly, the man or woman we see on the street or meet at the cocktail party or work alongside or go to class with becomes flat and one-dimensional, a caricature that we can perfectly understand and therefore easily dismiss because, well, he or she is (a)

Conservative

Liberal

Secular

Idiot

Jerk

Meathead

Asshole

D-bag

Man-Boy

Wreck

Crazy

Slut

Fat

Skinny

Traddie

Protestant

Catholic

Atheist

Muslim

Hot

Weird

Boring

Holy

Pro-life

Pro-choice

Divorced

Single mom

Single dad

Intellectual

Hot Mess

…or what have you. Objectification is a perennial temptation for us because it’s SO MUCH EASIER than acknowledging the truth that we are allmulti-dimensional, mysterious creatures, made in the image of a Mysterious God. No one can be reduced to a single word, even if that word happens to describe them (or some aspect of who they are) well. Even if that word is one that they would use to describe themselves.

What happens when we objectify? I can only speak from my own personal experience, so please allow me to share with you the areas into which I’ve noticed objectification rearing its ugly head.

1. Objectifying myself

This is perhaps the most common form of objectification (for women anyway), and the most difficult to avoid. Most women, myself included, could probably come up with a list of ten things they’d change about themselves faster than you can say “Kate Middleton.” When we look at the mirror, instead of seeing ourselves as beloved daughters of God, we see acne or wide hips or a belly or too-muscular legs or man-shoulders or huge pores or sucky nail-beds. It doesn’t take a psychological genius to figure out that this is a recipe for misery.

Idon’t think the answer is to continue to scrutinize your reflection until you can force yourself to acknowledge something in it that you like. Focusing more on yourself in such a reductive way is not the answer. In my experience, the best thing to do is to give thanks for the way that God created you. If you can’t do that (I definitely couldn’t for a long time), ask Him for the grace to do it. Praying in thanksgiving for my body (often in front of the mirror) coupled with exercise, therapy and God’s grace has truly changed the way I see myself. The Lord still has lots of work to do on me in this regard, but I can honestly say that real change has happened, and the root cause is gratitude. (Also, not having too many mirrors around doesn’t hurt.)

A less easily-recognized form of objectification happens when we reduce ourselves to our job (I did this during my first few years as a teacher) , talents, state in life (single, married, mom, etc.), number of “likes” on Facebook or followers on Twitter, etc. But that is a subject for an a whole other post.

2. Objectifying other women

Part of the torture of my eating disorder and body image issues, particularly when I was in college, was that I was constantly sizing up other women: in the gym, on the quad, in class. Her thighs are thinner than mine…She has better skin…I would kill for her tiny waist…Why doesn’t my hair always look that good…Why is every guy into her? So ran the hyper-critical conga line in my head. It was awful; not only because I was looking at these women as a set of body parts that I coveted instead of as sisters in Christ, but because I began to see other women as competitors, which is 1) not true and 2) not helpful for developing friendships.

Thanks be to God, after lots of therapy and healing, my eating disorder faded and I developed a healthier body image, which in turn made it much easier for me to avoid objectifying other women. But, I still had the bad habit of visually sizing up pretty much any woman I encountered on a daily basis. This was completely involuntary and drove me nuts. So, I began to pray a Hail Mary each time I caught myself, and after a few months, the habit was broken. Truly,nothing is impossible for God.

3. Objectifying Men

No, I’m not talking about staring at photos of a shirtless Ryan Gosling (although that can certainly be a temptation to objectification of a certain kind). I’m talking about reducing any man we encounter to a one-dimensional type, usually through our thoughts and words.

How much easier is it to reduce a man who’s obviously checking you out to “d-bag” or “lech” than it is to pray for him, that he would come to know his own dignity and that of each woman he encounters?

How much easier is it to reduce a man who has rejected you (or one of your friends) or led you on or treated you poorly to an “asshole” or a “hot mess” or a “man-boy” than to acknowledge that perhaps there’s more to the story of this guy than your experience with him?

How much easier is it to go through a mental “future husband/boyfriend” checklist in your mind when talking to a guy you just met than to actually listen to him and get to know him? 

Answer: a lot easier. But it does horrible things to your heart. This was (and sometimes still is) something I struggled with, particularly when it came to men who had disappointed me or treated me badly. Due to my habit of objectification, instead of being inspired to forgive them or to love the men I encountered as brothers in Christ, I found myself becoming more bitter, angry, and distrustful toward men in general. No bueno.

When the Holy Spirit convicted me of this, it hurt. Badly. I felt sick knowing that I had been reducing some of the men I encountered in this way, denying the fullness of their humanity and their being beloved sons of God. But after the initial sting, the Lord began what will no doubt be a long healing process, and thanks to Confession and a newfound awareness of habits of speech and thought that tend to objectification, I’m hopeful that I’m on the road to truly seeing, not reducing, the men I encounter.

In conclusion:

Objectification is the easy way out. It saves us from having to deal with the gray area, with the mysteriousness of one another’s humanity, with imperfections in ourselves and others, with the messiness inherent in living in a world marked by sin. It also prevents us from truly knowing the beauty and glory inherent in each Image of God we encounter. Put simply: objectification is a flight from Reality. And you know how I feel about staying rooted in Reality. 

If you’re reading this and find yourself nodding in agreement, please join me this year in praying for the grace to resist the temptation to objectify ourselves and others. Let’s make 2014 the year of seeing and loving. What do you say?

I’ll let CS Lewis take us home:

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour…There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.Andour charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy almost in the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.” (from The Weight of Glory, emphasis mine)

I’m so ugly not even makeup can hide it

Stop trying to find the good in evil, there isn’t any.

holes in the patchwork quilt

I think I tried to

be too many things, only

to fail at them all.