Body Image...

[katiesue]

So I've been working on a reply to this thread. Some of these things have actually come up for me as well recently and I've been mulling about posting them.

I don't look in mirrors anymore. I noticed it a year or so ago. Oh I check to see if my make up is smudged or if I've gotten something on my shirt but I don't really really look. A quick glance to see what I need to see and that's it. I don't like what I see so I just don't look. I caught myself in a reflection at the mall this weekend and was horrified to be honest. I'm not sure how I got to be this size. I avoid photos if at all possible as well.

Growing up I was scrawny - a beanpole. I spent three years trying to GAIN weight. My goal was to get to 115 forever. I didn't get my period until I was 16 so flat as a board as well. And to be honest I was fine with that. I'm not a fan of the boobs. They get in my way.

My Dad always called me ugly. As a nickname. It was supposed to be humorous - and I took it that way on the surface. But years of it and I guess it seeped in a little at a time. Maybe I really am ugly. My Great-Aunt would always say I should be a model and I secretly thought she was being overly kind, and perhaps she was becoming a slight bit dotty. I look at photos of myself then and I really don't look horrible at all. But at the time - that's not what I thought.

I think part of it has been Maddy, because when she was smaller she was an exact replicate of me sans eye color. If she was that cute I couldn't have been that horrible if we look alike right?

What brought this up for me was last weekend with my Sister & Brother In Law (he went to High School with us). They were telling Maddy how back in the day I wasn't as uncool as she thinks I am now. And it was so odd to me. How other people have said things over the years about how they think of/remember me is so totally off from how I saw/see myself. My sister said I was a "trend setter. Everyone waited to see what she was wearing and copied it". My Brother In Law "Everyone knew Katie McQ - and if you didn't you knew of her". Seriously me? I had one date in high school. I wasn't unpopular but I was never homecoming queen or LIT princess or anything like that. Oh sure I knew everyone but it was a small school and half of us started out in Kindergarten so of course I knew people. My friend Steve (Joe cool, captain of the football team) mentioned a few years ago that I was "hot, gorgeous, sexy, amazing, etc" - how could I be so totally off? Goober would have been my description of myself. Oh I would have thrown in smart and funny and all that. But looks wise - goober.

My opinion - I'm average. I don't think I'm ugly but I don't think I'm all that either. On a decent hair day in the right light - I'm not scary. And I've always been ok with that. I've always been in the brains/personality count more camp anyway. But now that I weigh more than I did when I was preggers - ugh. I just can't look in the mirror for more than a few seconds.

Of course this is all my own doing - and I need to get up off my ever growing butt and do something about it. Swanie's cajoled me into the Disneyland 1/2 Marathon in August so that's my goal. To get in shape by then so I don't need paramedics.

How do we get so off in our perceptions of ourselves compared to how the rest of the planet seems to view us?