...you'll love your feet.

I used to hide them beneath socks and Adidas Shelltoes even on the hottest of days in the New England summer where the humidity made sweat drip down the middle of your back. Size 10's and too wide to fit into strappy sandals, I deemed my feet too ugly for public consumption.

With a big toe and little piglets standing by its side; they were too fat, too white, and too scary. They finally came out to play around the same time that I stopped wearing a thick t-shirt underneath my basketball jersey. If my fat arms could be seen in public, so could my toes.

In high school, they televised our basketball games on local access television. During my freshman year, I avoided watching myself. In the sea of lanky white bodies, my yellow skin, dark bushy hair with matching eyebrows and shorts riding up my crotch felt like I was watching National Geographic and I was a one woman stampede. Even if I felt good about my body in real life and in real time, there was something that made me very uncomfortable to see it on a tv screen.

There has always been this sense of acceptance that let me know that my body was good enough to be used in a public space. I didn't mind running down the street or riding my bike around the block. Yet, there was always something unnerving about my body being on display as a sign of beauty or attraction.

When I chose to become a blogger, it was for the sole purpose of sharing my story (read: long ramblings about important moments in my past). However, in an image conscious society, in that, we love pictures of people doing even the simplest of things (i.e. the phenomena of instagram), folks weren't interested in only words. Writing wasn't enough. If I was writing about eating oatmeal and blueberries, I had to attach a picture of myself eating the goop. And then the comments were usually about what I looked like (I love your hair! So cute!).

Through my body's work (awkward picture poses AND shooting bricks), I have found that there is a place for my physical self as more than just a vehicle towards something. My body, in itself, has the unearned right to exist.

In my second year of high school and varsity basketball, I stopped caring so much about what I looked like when playing basketball and redirected my energy in comfort. Wearing sandals did not come from the yearning to be pretty or fashionable, but realizing that no one cared what your toes looked like after two hours of running. Your toes were supposed to be ugly. At that time, I thought I had earned the right to spread out my stinky toes in a pair of Nike flip-flops.

More than ten years later, I'm sitting on my couch with my feet pressed against my thighs, still too fat, too white, and too wide, and think about how much I have come to love them. I love the way they hurt after a long day of walking. I love the way they callus. I love that they look like Fred Flintsone feet.

My feet exist. They still aren't beautiful to me, but their purpose is functionality. Yet, I still can't believe that I have to come a place where I can take a picture of my toes and post them in a public forum. My feet have the right to just be and that is something that I love and cherish more than anything.

...you'll stop thinking about how your body looks.

And you'll be more concerned about whether your body works. From the early morning aches when you get out of bed to the fear that maybe your eggs won't ever be fertilized, the non-existent gap in between your thighs just doesn't seem to make it on the things to worry about list. And you'll wonder why everyone else isn't doing the same.

Earlier this week, I saw the tweets about the new Dove Real Beauty videos and decided to skip out on the conversation. I can't believe we're still putting so much of our collective energy into convincing women that they are beautiful, as if it matters. One of my team members thought it'd be a good idea to show our students the latest video. They're trying to send a positive message: "you're not as ugly as you think." But I want to know, does it matter? 

You'd imagine that middle schoolers think about their looks all day, and maybe some of them do, but from what I have seen they only care about what they think adults care about. Maybe little girls are so obsessed with being beautiful because we say things like, "YOU NEED TO KNOW YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!" 

And when they don't feel it (still not sure of what It is), they go searching down the endless rabbit hole for beauty products, push-up bras, and unsolicited (but still loved) negative attention from boys. We, adults, have allowed (physical) beauty to hang around on our list of societal values. We allow it to be relative. For the young people who want to do nothing but grow up a little bit faster, they focus all of their attention on it because it seems so important. I wonder what would happen if we stopped talking about it? If we erased it from our daily conversations (i.e. She has the perfect nose! She is just so stunning! Her body is to die for!), what would happen? What could happen?

What if being beautiful didn't matter? What if we spent our time talking to our girls about the good and cool things they do, by the company they choose to keep, and the positive impact they have on their tiny world?

I'd rather tell (my) girls that they're kind and smart. Or that I love how they take the time to get the math problem right even when it's hard. Or that I like the way they wrote their name in chalk on the sidewalk in bubble letters. Or listen to them talk about the social studies teacher that they just can't stand and then encourage them to still get their homework done. I'd rather talk to (my) girls about how brave they were when they had the courage to tell  an adult that their BFF was self-harming. I'd rather show them that girls can feel, think, and do so much more than to feel, think about, or do something about their doggone beauty. 

And yet, before they leave everyday, I like to give them a hug and call them Angel Face. There is nothing more heaven sent than a little girl with the big dreams, the kindness, and the power to make the world better. This is what I want them to know, feel, and do something about.