If I was given the opportunity to change my appearance, I would take it in an instant without hesitation. It doesn’t matter how much faith I have in God or how much love I have for Jesus, I still hate how much body hair I have, how terrible my skin is; I hate my body fat and big-boned frame, my thick wrists and stubby limbs. I even sometimes get angry enough about it to blame God, since He did, after all, make me this way. He could have made me beautiful by the world’s standards (He does it with so many other people), and He could have even made everyone that beautiful, but instead, He chose to let me be ugly, and I hate myself and His choice enough to wish every day that I was different, that I had the power to morph myself, or the money to pay for a surgeon to do it for me.
None of my precious Bible verses change the fact that I would change myself if I could. All they do is put balm on the bleeding sore that is my low self-esteem, and remind me that even though I am ugly in my own eyes, God loves me the way I am. Sometimes that’s enough to get me through the day, sometimes it’s not. I know I should appreciate myself more, be thankful for what I have, care more about my heart than my appearance, but I still end up wishing for beauty, even if it is stupid, superficial, and temporary. Beauty doesn’t last, and it doesn’t make you a good person or save your soul, so why should I care so much? Especially since I don’t want to get married or date?
I can’t explain it, except that I guess advertising and movies have brainwashed me with an indelible desire to be beautiful, whether it’s attainable or not, whether it’s real or not. I’ve tried so hard and so often to dig it out, to convince myself to think and believe otherwise, but it always comes back, like a disease: even if it goes into hibernation for a while, or if I think I’ve finally gotten it all out, if even just a tiny speck of it is left behind it will grow back to full-fledged self-loathing.
I would even wish for beauty rather than wish for a society that doesn’t care about beauty. I would change myself rather than the world. At least I feel that I would. I can’t believe how selfish this obsession has made me, and I hate it for it. Every time I see a girl who is beautiful, or skinnier than me, I ask God, “Why did you bless her, but not me? Why did she deserve it more than me?” And I figure, if I had grown up beautiful, I might have actually wanted to date, to waste my time and money on make-up and shopping and other beauty enhancers and obsessed over my appearance even more and wished for boys to like me and gotten distracted from school by going on dates. I saw it happen with other girls all the time, and I’m afraid it might have happened to me if I had been beautiful and confident in my appearance. But I was (am) not either, and so I am content to be alone. I expect and prefer it. And I don’t waste my time or effort trying to enhance a beauty that does not exist.
But even though I am comfortable, I still have anger toward my body and face that flames up sometimes. Often, lately, I have been able to believe that I don’t care about my appearance or how ugly I am, and be happy the way I am. But as I said, the jealous anger always comes back. Like today. And I guess this is when I need to get down on my face and pray to God for strength, wisdom, peace, and a change of heart. Because apparently God’s not in the business of outer cosmetic surgery: He just does an inside job.
(And of course this is going to lead to a post about wanting to eat right and nourish my body—taking care of the inside—rather than obsessing over the physical features that I can’t change and hating myself.)
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