When I was a little black girl growing up exclusively around little white girls I got teased many times for having big lips. I would try to hold my lips a certain way so they’d appear narrow and I wouldn’t get teased. Now kids are bruising their lips with a stupid “lip challenge” to try to get lips a fraction as luscious as mine naturally are. Madness.
Girls. Women. Boys and men even. Please listen. No matter who you are and what size you and your body parts are, learn to love yourself as you are. Don’t go stressing or hurting yourself to try to look like someone else. I know that is easier said than done, because there are days I look in the mirror and wish I saw someone else’s face looking out at me too. I also know the days I look in the mirror and resolve to love myself as I am are far happier days. So don’t do what I used to do and put yourself through all sorts of changes to try to look like someone else. Be you. Do you. Love you. You are beautiful as you are.
2 responses to “Here’s a healthy “lip challenge”: LOVE YOURSELF AS YOU ARE.”
My lips are fairly full – I think trying to alter your body for the sake of fashion or what everyone else is doing is just.. madness. Fashions change as quickly as the wind. Why waste your time trying to keep up with that?
Thank you for this post.
When a person is convinced their looks are somehow lacking the ever-changing nature of fashion is the last thing on their mind. I can understand putting forth the time and energy to try to keep up from that point of view; with my self-esteem issues I would have been likely to do that lip challenge too, had I been born with thinner lips. In that frame of mind it isn’t a waste of time at all: it’s an attempt to be accepted, if not loved. And in the case of people who are being bullied, it’s an attempt to stop the bullying by changing themselves.
We need to have compassion for ourselves and stop tying ourselves in knots trying to look like everyone other than ourselves. We deserve better from ourselves. We are far too precious to put ourselves through that.