The conversation I had headed home on a bus way back in my high school days has always stuck with me about how much it is we tend to obsess over our looks and how we think other people see us--two things which are rarely ever viewed through the same lens.
All of us girls were on the bus talking about how we thought guys hated this or that about us and all the things we'd done to try to change them, when one of the guys from another school chimed in with his own insecurities and wanted to know our opinions of them. He said he thought that all girls liked a guy with like a more muscular or more, in his mind, average sized butt, and he felt really self-conscious that he felt he didn't have one or that his butt was just really small.
I was so incredibly confused by that because this guy was gorgeous. Crushing on him, I told him, he had great hair, the most beautiful hazel green eyes, cute smile, and he was tall. Check, check, and check. The last thing I'd ever thought about him or probably most other girls, was whether or not his butt measured up. It just confused me that someone with all these amazing qualities was completely self-conscious about something that no one even cared about.
But that's just it, isn't it. We see ourselves in the mirror every single day of our lives and tend to be hyper focused on what we see. We notice every hair, ever pimple, every scar, every ounce of fat or lack of muscle tone, every wrinkle, or every dropping anything. We see it all and we think everyone else see's it like we do which is usually with shame or embarrassment. We think no one will ever like us if we don't have this or that. We are fed the same photo-shopped images of what a beautiful man or woman is and there are a billion different products we consume that promise that if we use them, we too can look like so and so and get all the guys or all the girls...if only.
Even if you are model gorgeous, if you don't see it in the mirror yourself, you're going to continue to be an insecure empty shell and there are few things less attractive (ironically) than people who can't see how beautiful they are. It's a total turn off because they spend all their time with you constantly needing reassurance or validation on their body or their looks, or they freak out over every little detail about themselves to the point where you just get frustrated and want nothing to do with them because you rightly so, can not be that person for them that can literally be their self-esteem. It becomes too exhausting.
Part of getting over yourself and all these insecurities is you've got to tune out the noise of society, friends, family, or whomever who is trying to tell you who you are, or put your beauty in a proverbial box, or of a magazine telling you, you can only be beautiful if you are rail thin and have big boobs, or are a beefy muscular guy. You will never get a population of people from around the world with different genetics, temperaments, personalities, what have you, that can all be that magazine cover. You are your own magazine cover.
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF SELF CONFIDENCE.
Roll your eyes if you want to. Continue to believe that no one can ever like your type of beauty. Have a pity party all day and all night, but I'm all but sure that isn't working for you and isn't doing you any favors. Fake it until you make it by at least at first just projecting that you love yourself just the way you you are if you can't get there just yet in your head, and see what happens. Try it for a day or so and see how people react to you smiling, standing up straight, and walking into a room like you own the place, and just confidently talking to others. It may be that you've been blind to how great you really are because you've been too focused on who you think you should be. You might then start to really feel confident in who you are as you see that by being self confident and not focusing so much on little details, no one notices, that you become that confident person IRL that you never thought you could be.
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