THANKFUL FRIDAY

Yellow

8 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Yellow"

Our scale is broken. I stepped on it Thursday morning and got blank results. I weigh nothing. I haven’t stepped on a scale in some time, but thought it would be a good idea to not be surprised by the scale at the doctor’s office when I go in for my yearly next week. So when the scale reads way more than nothing at the doctor’s office, I will act outraged and insist that their scale needs recalibrating. I like this current feeling of weighing nothing. Truth be told, I’ve been feeling pretty okay in this body. I eat healthy. I exercise daily. I spend about an hour every day on my yoga mat. I drink lots of water. And I’ve been listening to a whole lot of Lizzo.

I am completely and totally inspired by this woman and she is just one on my list of woman to look up too. ‘Look up too’ seems like an odd way to phrase it considering that most of these women on my list are a number of years younger than I am. They all have a similar message of self love and beauty at all sizes. I listen to their message and wonder what kind of woman I’d be today if these women had been there when I was a teen. I grew up looking at the impossible standards for girls on the cover of Seventeen and the chunky girl was always the sidekick for the main actress in the sitcoms. Health did not matter. Feeling fit and healthy was not up for discussion. There was an expectation of perfection without completely relying on a food disorder to achieve that perfection. Really, it was best if you were just born that way. If you could not be born thin and perfect then you would be placed in a lesser human category. Now we’re starting to see all shapes, sizes and colors for our clothing ads and magazine covers and leading ladies. There are discussions on exercise and eating whole and real foods. Diets are a thing of the past. Now we have lifestyle changes with an emphasis on healthy. And all I can do is sit back and think about how fucking empowering it’s got to be for a young girl to see and hear these messages.

But it is not too late for me to embrace this message, to feel empowered by these images and words of self love. I am learning the lesson of standing in front of the mirror and telling that person I see that she is beautiful. She is sexy. She is strong. She makes her own standards and blows them completely away. She is no sidekick. She’s the leading lady, the boss, the leader, the head hancho. I’m still getting used to the idea of telling that person in the mirror that we are the same. She is me.

But I’m getting there.