Being the mother of two beautiful teenage girls, I feel it is my responsibility to ensure they have a positive body image of themselves, never playing in to what society deems attractive. My girls don’t look like what society claims is beautiful because they are not blonde haired and blue eyed or have scarily huge butts, they are beautiful Black girls who Rock! My daughters are physically different from one another and individually beautiful inside and out and it is their father’s and my responsibility to nurture and build that confidence within them.
Every time you turn on the tv or flip a page in a magazine or are just surfing the net, you’re bombarded with images of women who appear to be absolutely perfect, having the perfect figure, her make-up and hair are always perfectly done and her facial features make her gorgeous. As adults, we know all the work that goes into making these women look flawless, we know about the airbrushing and photoshopping, the extensive exercise and eating program they are on, and the team of people it takes to get that hair and make-up perfect, we know it’s not reality or how your everyday woman looks. Well, some of us know it’s not the reality of how and what they were born with. There are some grown women who will scrimp and save and even forgo paying bills to save up for a cosmetic procedure, thinking it will make her more desirable or attractive. The reality? If you don’t like what you see with your eyes when you look in the mirror, it’s because you are actually seeing your character and everything that happened to you in the past. You’re not seeing your actual reflection in that mirror, when you look at your face, you’re seeing all the criticisms of others about your appearance, those who weren’t confident enough within themselves to build you up so they broke you down. When you look at your body, you’re seeing what you lack that other women may have to get the attention of men you feel you’re not getting.
Plastic surgery is such a booming business in today’s world, so many people don’t like the way they look, never taking the time to realize and appreciate the fact GOD created them in HIS image as HE saw fit and they are perfect to HIM. Everywhere you look, women are getting butt injections or implants, they’re increasing their bust size, putting fillers in their lips and faces or getting liposuction to remove fat they are too lazy to actually do exercise to burn off. They are forever trying to change and alter their outer appearance, thinking that’s where their displeasure is stemming from. No amount of fat removal or injections in your butt and lips is going to change who you are at your core, that internal work is where you need to start. It doesn’t matter who you are or how you look, there will always be someone prettier/more handsome, ALWAYS, and that is a fact that will remain until the end of time. And, some of the most attractive people have the ugliest spirits and attitudes towards other human beings, it makes them unattractive on the outside as well.
I know a female who has gone under the knife 3 separate times, almost dying the first time, to alter her body to what she thought would make her attractive or more desirable and she still looks the exact same. She’s spent over $25k on a body she will never be happy with, no matter how much surgery she has to fix this or that. That money could have been spent for her child’s education and a vacation here or there with her child and maybe a couple alone. I’m sorry, it’s just wasteful to me to spend that much money on trying to fix the outside while never taking the time to work on the inside or even actually put in the physical work to tighten up the outside. Her insecurities were heightened when she began seeing this guy who’s preference was light skinned females and he gained interest in her even though she was brown skinned. She went out of her way to cater to and alter her personality and put her responsibilities on the back burner so she could always be available to and for him. The reality is this, he is who he is no matter how much surgery she’s had or how available she was at any given moment, if he wanted to be faithful and committed to her, he would have chosen to do so, it’s his choice not her actions, it’s just who he is at his core and has nothing to do with how she nipped and tucked parts of her body.
Growing up and entering puberty as a female is already hard enough, your body is going thru changes, some faster than others and you’re gaining attention of all sorts. If you don’t get boobs or other curves at the same rate as your peers, you feel inadequate and it starts to affect your self-esteem, making you think you aren’t as worthy of the attention as they are getting. On the flip side, those that develop at a more rapid pace are suffering with insecurities as well because they are now getting unwarranted attention from guys who only want them for their curves, not to respect and get to know them as a person. Having personally been the less developed teen in high school, I always envied the girls with the curves, wondering why my butt wasn’t a ba-donk-a-dunk and it bred an insecurity so deep, I didn’t get comfortable with my own body until I was about 40. Even though I had those insecurities, I never thought about altering myself thru surgery, I am who and how GOD made me, never would I mess with HIS idea of perfection.
I have this bad habit of watching reality tv, it’s one of my shameful guilty pleasures, and one of my favorite shows happens to be “Botched” where people have had plastic surgery go wrong and go to these two highly skilled and accredited doctors to repair the ‘botched’ surgery. I can understand some of the surgeries being necessary, like a tummy tuck given by an ob/gyn or a breast cancer survivor getting implants and tattooed nipples/areolas to give them their confidence back. I can’t understand the women who have had multiple boob jobs wanting them even bigger or the ‘botched’ butt implants. In the latter cases, would the repairs truly have been necessary had they just left their bodies alone in the first place? I have respect for these doctors because they won’t do every surgery, they take the time to talk to the patient and understand and realize some need to seek therapy instead of larger boobs or bigger lips and will tell them “No”. The unfortunate part is the patients they tell “No” will go find another doctor who doesn’t follow the same ethical practice as the much more accredited doctors.
This need for a bigger butt and other alterations is actually costing women their lives because they go to the doctors they can afford who aren’t even licensed but give them such a low price, they can’t pass it up. Society and videos make us believe that if we don’t have a ginormous ass we’re nobodies unworthy of the finer things in life and no man will ever want us. What a JOKE! There are women who get big ol’ booties and lil chicken legs looking like lollipops living in the hood! On the other side of the coin or torso, you have women who get unnaturally large breasts so big you can see every vein in their chest because the skin is stretched so taut around the implants, showing them off to everyone believing this is what beauty is.
I take my responsibility of raising daughters very seriously and make sure they are confident with their ever changing physiques, never calling them fat or making fun of their development, I tell them how beautiful they are on a regular basis. More importantly, I teach them how to be better people and focus on their character more than their outer appearance because I don’t want to be the parent whose child feels everything they see in the mirror is ugly.
No one is ever going to think you’re attractive if you don’t first love and accept everything about yourself first. Those stretch marks or pudge you have from having babies are what make you beautiful, you created and brought forth another human being into this world, what could be more wonderful than that? If you don’t like the amount of weight you’re carrying? Hit the gym or take a daily walk, do the work of yourself for yourself by yourself not with surgery. Embrace your flaws and imperfections, they’re what make you who you are and that’s a Queen with everything to offer!