Why You Don't Have to Totally Love Your Body

This post has been rattling around in my brain for a while, so bear with me.

I have two fairly prominent scars on my face: One on my nose from last summer and one right above my lip from when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure it's from when my youngest brother threw a VHS tape at my face, but don't quote me on that.

Now, every "body love" thing I've read is all like, flowers and rainbows about imperfections. Hooray! Your scars make you unique! Stretch marks are beautiful! Your big nose is distinguished!

Okay, so I get the sentiment. It's good to be confident, yes. But do I love my scars? Nope. I hate them. I hate them so very much. I cover them with makeup just about every day because they irk me, even though I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who notices.

Here's the problem with being pressured to love your body. It goes something like this:
1) Have something about your body that you dislike.
2) Hear someone say that you should love it anyway.
3) Try.
4) Fail.
5) Feel extra bad because now, not only do you dislike something about your body, but you feel bad that you can't embrace it and are quoteunquote "not confident."

That's two times the bad feelings, people!!

It was as I was slapping primer all over my nose scar and repeating positive affirmations about scars being A-OK that it finally hit me. Guess what? You don't have to like everything about your body. In fact, you can straight up dislike stuff about yourself and it's okay. 

Here's the thing: Everyone -- and I mean everyone -- has stuff about their body that makes them contemplate plastic surgery or juice fasts or a face transplant. The trick to really knocking it out of the park is liking something. Not everything -- just something about your bod that you know makes other people jealous and that makes you feel good.

I propose that for real body love, you need to stop slavishly working to love all of your imperfections (I DO love my cankles I DO I DO I DO!) and focus on something that you do love. Because I feel like telling myself that I love my face scars or my big nose or my weird ribs is like hugging that aunt that I never see. It's not genuine and it makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable.

I have a friend who makes me say something good about myself every time I say something negative. The other day I was joking about my T-rex arms -- seriously guys they are SO short -- and she was like "Fine! Say what you want but now say something good!" Not: "Don't say that about yourself!" but "If you're going to say something negative, say something positive too."

Sorry, there's no special class that you can take that will teach you to love every little thing about yourself. Instead, you have to work with what you've got. Why spend time hoping that one day I'll fall madly in love with my forehead wrinkle when I have really good hair to style? My imperfections don't even deserve that much time or thought. Honey badger don't care.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you never learn to love your elbows and you don't feel like displaying your stretch marks on the beach, it's OK anyway. You don't have to love everything about yourself. You're not perfect. You'll never be perfect. Can we all like, get over it and move on?

I'll probably never make nice with those stupid scars and I'll always put makeup over them. Does that make me a less confident person? Probably not. Because I have scars on my face but I also have a really good butt and long eyelashes and I can live with that trade-off, you guys. Whole body love can suck it -- it's about as real as unicorn poop.

As my home girl Amy Poehler says, "There’s only, like, five perfectly symmetrical people in the world, and they’re all movie stars, and they should be, because their faces are very pleasing to look at, but the rest of us are just a jangle of stuff, and the earlier you learn that you should focus on what you have and not obsess about what you don’t have, the happier you will be."