Thoughts on Beauty

so the other night i was looking through old pictures and i found these pictures that alexis and i took back in hawaii. we both needed some pictures to send out for our graduation announcements so we just snapped a few of each other and called it good. 

now before i continue, i'll preface this by saying that all the thoughts i'm about to pour into this blog post are pretty personal and somewhat embarrassing. but for whatever reason i feel the need to write and share so here we go...

so i was looking at these pictures from a year ago and as vain as this sounds, i thought, "wow i look pretty" yup. i said it. tan, sun lightened hair, skinny, toes in sand, bliss.

but you want to know the funny thing about it all? i so vividly remember alexis and i taking these photos. and then i remember going through them all afterwards and trying to decide which one i wanted to use on my graduation announcement and i didn't like any of them. seriously... i thought i looked ugly. i remember feeling bummed out looking at the photos and wishing i looked like my beautiful bff alexis. i remember thinking i looked fat with a weird smile. you're probably laughing reading this, but it's the truth. 

and ever since i started looking at these photos, i haven't been able to stop thinking about my concept of beauty. to be honest, i've always struggled with my confidence and loving myself. for as long as i can remember it's been an issue.

growing up i was never really the pretty one that boys noticed. i even remember this one time in 4th grade.. yeah can you believe i still remember this.. so it was one of the last days of school and we were all cleaning out our desks and there were trash bags everywhere. i walked over to throw something away and there was a crumpled up sticky note on the ground by the trash can. now keep in mind this was elementary school back when everyone was obsessed with writing notes to each other and passing them back and forth, then secretly reading it in our desk while the teacher wasn't looking. so grabbed the note to read "lauren is so ugly".

ouch.

i mean it was 4th grade and people weren't the nicest. but it hurt. and i still remember it all these years later. in middle school my best friend was pretty popular and all the boys loved her. i was never noticed by the boys and i became used to it. i mean it was middle school and i didn't find it a big deal. i wasn't the skinniest girl. i was tall. oh goodness... annoyingly tall and taller than all the boys. i had the worst teeth that were soon covered up by an expander and then braces.. ohhh yeahhh, get at me boys. and we can't forget the beautiful acne. i had acne early on while the rest of my friends were blessed with their baby-smooth childhood skin, i looked like a pepperoni pizza.

high school came around and while most of my awkward middle school appearances lasted, some began to fade. braces eventually came off, i slimmed down a little, learned how to actually do my make up, and i felt a little better about myself. the boys weren't that into me, but i had my group of friends and life was good.

but i didn't think i was very pretty. this isn't a boo-hoo, poor lauren post. this is just how it was.

even when i had my first serious boyfriend, i still had lots of insecurities about how i looked. and when that 2 year relationship ended because he had cheated on me with my beautiful backstabbing best friend (say that 5 times fast), my insecurities only sky rocketed. and i know it's so lame that for the most part, my perception on how beautiful i was stemmed from what boys thought of me, but it's the truth.

and while i wish i was confident enough to say that i love the way i look right now. i'm not. and it's something i've desperately been trying to work on over the past few years. i remember having a breakdown in hawaii once. i sat out on the beach on the phone with my sister and just cried as i vented my feelings about being ugly. i had this idea in my head that once i got this checklist finished that i had created, i would be happy. everything on this checklist was related to my physical appearance. for example.. once i have a skinny/fit body i'll be happy. once my acne is cleared, i'll be happy. once i have straighter teeth, i'll be happy. etc. etc. etc. and my sister told me that i will always be creating and adding new things to that list. but i was insistent on the idea that once i accomplished my initial list, i would be 100% happy. and she kept trying to tell me that that would never happen. and that the only way to be 100% happy is to love myself and get rid of that list. and frankly... i thought my sister was full of crap ha.

i would google and pinterest "how to love your yourself and your body" and i felt like every article was garbage. i remember reading an article that had a list of 20 things to do and one of them said, "count your blessings, not your blemishes". at that point i just shut the computer. everyone made it seem like self confidence and self love was this easy on/off button that you pressed and i felt like the blind person that couldn't figure out where the heck the switch was. and it was frustrating. i began to resent people that would tell me i was pretty because i didn't believe it and it made me angry because i felt like they were all lying to me. my then boyfriend (now husband) would tell me i was beautiful and i would roll my eyes every time. we even got in arguments about it.

i even remember when alexis told me i looked anorexic and i 100% believed i was FAT as can be. the problem with this was that i really couldn't see it any other way. there's a difference between thinking or saying something and then actually believing it. as long as i believed the sky was blue and the grass was green, i believed i was ugly. over the last 2 years i have really tried to change my perspective on it all. and let me tell you something...

it is not easy.

there is no switch and it's not as easy as some people may think. having someone tell me "you're beautiful, just believe it" doesn't make me believe it. it's a sickness. and like most sickness's, it takes time, medicine, love, and a lot of healing to overcome it.

i'm in a much better place now then i was when these pictures were taken. i'm also about 30 pounds heavier and a thousand times less tan haha. which for me, goes to prove that i'm in a better spot mentally. i think a big help with me overcoming my concept of beauty was living in africa.

you ask alexis and she will tell you the same thing, we were looking rough in africa. our skin was constantly peeling from sun burns (caused from taking our malaria medication), we never wore make up once, we hadn't showered in weeks, our clothes were never washed, our faces were breaking out and oily, and we felt pretty unhealthy based off of our weird and somewhat malnourished diet. but a lot of the tanzanian's thought we were straight up beautiful. alexis was even compared to beyonce; which don't get me wrong, i think alexis rocks it like the queen b, but in africa.... we would debate that haha. we thought it was hilarious that people thought we were pretty. we had a lot of conversations about beauty there. and i think these few things helped in me overcoming my concept of it.

1. we hardly looked in a mirror. this sounds extreme and i don't know if i would do it if i didn't have to. but we didn't have a mirror in our room or anywhere really. we maybe saw a mirror once a week or so and every time it shocked us haha. but when you think about it, a mirror is a little narcasistic. just looking at yourself, you are giving yourself so much time to just analyze and critic every little thing about you.

2. no tv, no bilboards, no advertisements, no internet. the town we lived in was so remote that there really wasn't any type of advertisements. women didn't have any images to compare themselves to. no one was trying to get a thigh gap or 6 pack in our town because there were more important things. alexis and i got onto social media about twice a week, maybe more, maybe less. and i think taking away that constant comparison to other people really helped. it wasn't until i got back to the united states that i realized just how big of an influence there is for beauty. it overwhelmed me. a lot. i'll never forget standing inside of forever21 and crying because i couldn't handle how many clothes there were.

3. devoting my time to others. my goals in africa were a lot different than my goals were in america. a typical day in america for me is planned out like this:

-wake up and eat breakfast

-take a shower, get ready, hair + makeup + what outfit am i going to wear?

-work

-lunch

-check social media every hour + send out emails

-gym

-dinner

-computer/netflix time

-bed

now obviously there are a lot more things that happen in a day, but that is the gist. now how much of that time is dedicated to me? how much is offering up room to compare myself to others?

in africa, our days were spent volunteering with the orphans. we spent free time reading scriptures and journaling and talking. alexis and i talked about everything and anything. we had the deepest conversations there and talked about our hopes and dreams all the time. our focus was spent for far more good than the vanity we so often find ourselves consumed with.

those 3 things are what i've been able to pin point as changes that have helped me in my journey on the perception of beauty. what do all 3 of those things have in common? focus less on myself, more on others. when i did that, i began to find beauty in the unexpected. 

i sit here and look at these photos and i realize that i currently look a lot different. but i'm okay with it. i'm actually happier which is something i never thought would have thought could happen. i don't have a concrete answer for what the article should say when you google how to love yourself. but i know it's not as simple as people often make it sound. at least it wasn't for me. 

truth is, i'm terrified for the day that i have kids and if i have a girl. just because i know how tough it is to grow up in this world that relies on the concept of beauty so heavily. i hope that i will have the guidance, love, and knowledge to know how to make sure my daughter always knows that she is beautiful. i hope that she learns some of the lesson's that have taken me longer to understand at an early age. i hope that she always focuses her efforts onto internal beauty and having a loving, beautiful heart, because that is really what will shine through. i hope she believes she is beautiful and that she believes me when i tell her that every single day. i hope she always finds happiness.

"no matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful."

-eleanor roosevelt 

on a side note... alexis is absolutely beautiful inside and out. seriously, she's amazing. and she's single boys ;) (if you're reading this alexis, don't hate me for writing that! haha love you!)

to anyone that actual read that entire, somewhat embarrassing for me to write, post, high five to you! and hey, know that you're beautiful.

xx, lauren.