Little Things I Love About Myself

I don’t exactly have the best perception of my self image, nor do I like how I look on a daily basis, but I’m trying my damn best to overcome it. The body positivity movement has helped me a lot, and is something that – though I always follow – I dip in and out of posting about myself, on here or on instagram. That doesn’t mean my stance changes, though – I will always preach self love; it’s so important.

We all have little bits we don’t necessarily like about ourselves, which is a sad thought because… look at you beautiful people. LOOK AT YOU. But, I’m going to try and overcome mine, whether that refers to trying to combat my body dysmorphia and hold an accurate image of myself up, or just bigging up the little things unique to me!

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Today, I’m going to spread the love about features of my face.

I love my wrinkles

That’s right, my wrinkles. You may be questioning what I mean by that, as I’m 20 years old and people see wrinkles to be an ‘aging’ thing; I have a condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which you’ll have heard me talk about in the disability content on my blog before. The condition impacts my daily life in a lot of ways, and one thing that causes this is my collagen. Collagen is a form of connective tissue that lies between parts of your body, holding them together whilst also keeping them apart, and the condition causes my collagen to be more stretchy and fragile. The fragility of my skin means it’s incredibly stretchy all over my body, so I can tug at random parts of my body and show people my skin span harmlessly. This does also, however, mean, there are areas that skin essentially hangs, such as on top of and underneath my eyes. This causes me to have premature wrinkles. I always joke about trying the anti-ageing face masks, which targeted at an older audience and are meant to have collagen in them, but of course that’s not going to cure my chronic illness.

But hey. I’m 20 years old and I damn well love my wrinkles.

I love my beauty spot

I wasn’t born with my beauty spot, and I couldn’t tell you when it developed. It was actually only relatively recently that we realised I wasn’t born with it, when reminiscing over old photographs from my childhood.

I’ve never been confident about it. I’ve rarely had days where I dislike it (though there sure have been some) like other aspects of my body, but I’ve never particularly liked it, and frequently just ignore it. One thing I’ll always remember though, is my girlfriend’s comment about it; that’s the same for a lot of things, if I’m honest – she really builds my confidence and makes me feel beautiful – but in this case, she told me it was one of the first things she noticed about me, visually, and how adorable it was, in her words.

I love my smile

I’ve always been told my smile is radiant, and that is something I can see. I love that it’s radiant, but there are other things about it I’ve struggled to accept; my cute chubby cheeks have received far too many comments about their size in attempt to insult me; depression has resulted in the mistreatment of my teeth so they’re not pearly white; I have a lot of eczema on my lower face cracking up. But these features aren’t bad, or ‘ugly’ like I’ve grown up being told. They make me me, and they’re also perceived differently by individuals. I love my goofy smile, and I’m not at all ashamed about it. Especially when it shows how goddamn happy I am.

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Every pride is special but prides with you are the most special 💖 @readingprideuk 2018 was when we told the world we were together, and I met your family for the first time. A whole year stronger and they’ve made me feel like family too 🥰 The celebrations were laughter and smile filled, and celebrating who you love WITH them is truly the best 💞✨💕 – – – – – #pride #lgbtpride #lgbtqpride #queer #queerpride #lesbianpride #lesbianlove #wlw #girlswhokissgirls #girlswholikegirls #nonbinary #lesbian #nonbinarypride #girlfriend #couple #lgbtcouple #queercouple #readingpride #loveislove

A post shared by Lauren Curr (she / they) (@laurbethany) on Sep 5, 2019 at 11:56am PDT

I love my eyes

Now, genuinely, aside the aforementioned wrinkles, I’ve not had many issues with my eyes. My eyes are striking and green and match up with my ginger hair so perfectly, and I truly do love them!

I love my individual make up style

Since switching my make-up style about 18 months ago, I’ve gained a lot of confidence. It started with a burgundy brow pomade and soon escalated to bright blue brows becoming a daily look. Working for Lush, a company that prides itself on the self expression and individuality of staff members, also enabled this as I could turn up to work in the weirdest of looks and do so with pride. It’s not conventional, and I don’t know if people using the adjective ‘interesting’ is a compliment or not, but I do still get a lot of genuine compliments and that plus knowing I’m expressing myself well makes me a happy enby gal, for sure! I also love getting into drag for the same reason, and these have also helped with my gender identity!

The following image has been taken from my drag account.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BocVfw5h4rH/?igshid=l729y1io44o7

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So, these are features of myself I love, and I wanted to share this burst of confidence with you, so even if I don’t feel as good about these features, I can say a little mantra to help my ill perception.

Please feel free to let me know what you love about YOU – I’ll be writing a post on that soon, so any instagram or Twitter responses, or comments, will be appreciated and help to spread the love!

Love (yourself) always,