Have you ever felt ‘Unbeautiful’?

I went jogging last night for the first time in a long time. I woke up this morning feeling inches slimmer until I tried on a dress I had worn only a few weeks ago and the zipper refused to move past my bust. Instantly my earlier notions of weight loss melted into thoughts of heaviness. I felt fat and ugly. I stared at the mirror, my imperfections illuminated; a huge pimple at the side of my noise, dark pigmented skin, acres of fat on my thighs, arms and abdomen.

It’s not the first time I’ve felt this way nor do I believe I am alone in my flashing feelings of self hate. Over the years women have perfected self judgement and criticism. We wish we were slimmer, younger, lighter, had longer hair, legs, bigger breasts, smaller buttocks, thinner hips, the list really is quite endless. Perhaps this is why almost every revolutionary beauty product claims they can offer any buyer these miracles.

A while ago, I made a conscious decision to extend my focus of beauty beyond the physical. Anytime I felt depressed over how I looked, I questioned the reasoning behind my feelings. I also spent more time focusing on positives- external and internal than on negatives. My new thought process exposed me to women who although looked and spoke like me had one salient difference- their notions of the physical self had no bearing on the women they had become. These women are a far cry from perfect, but yet myself and women all over the world look to them for inspiration.

Lupita is one of these women. Although named as the most beautiful women in the world by peoples Magazine, Lupita in her acceptance speech at the Essence Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon says she too had felt Unbeautiful. Chances are you’ve heard about/watched the speech, for me it is a valid reminder that “beauty isn’t something you eat, it doesn’t feed [us], it is something you have to be, [women] cannot reply on looks to sustain them”

And just like Lupita’s acceptance of her own looks are partly based on seeing someone like Alek Wek in the spotlight, we owe it to ourselves and the future generations to become unconstrained by our own feelings of inadequacy and step forward. So that other Lupita’s can become inspired. And who knows, maybe as we do this, we too may become new gate keepers of beauty, an all embracing kind of beauty