Love Your Body


I love one part of my body above all others, and it’s not my armpits.

Really, does anyone love armpits? My guess would be no. I don’t just hate my own armpits; I hate everyone else’s, too. As I’ve mentioned, this is why basketball will never be my favorite sport, or even a sport of which I can stand to watch more than one minute. Unless you have some weird armpit fetish and nothing gets you going quite like a freshly shaved underarm, my guess is you also hate them, whether you’ve ever consciously thought about it or not.

And now I’m going to get all kinds of hits for people seeking armpit porn. Awesome. But armpits are not what I came to talk about today.

I came to talk about how much I love my hands.

I think every woman - and maybe even every man -  has at least one body part she absolutely hates and would do anything to change. Society puts so many unrealistic expectations out there for body image – thinner, firmer, taller, blonder – that it’s almost impossible to love ourselves completely anymore, which is terribly sad. A society that makes us hate ourselves? Let’s focus on what we love instead.

I love my hands. I love that I have long fingers. I love that little scar on the first knuckle of my left index finger – I don’t even remember how I’ve got it, it’s been part of my hands for so long. I love that I have strong fingernails that I usually ignore, that grow long and elegant until I at last have to clip them off so I can keep writing.

I love that my ring fingers don’t really bend at the last knuckle. I don’t know why they don’t, or when they got like that; I never noticed them till high school. They don’t even have flex wrinkles, they bend so little. It’s a weird thing, but it’s my weird thing, and I love it.

What do you love about your body? Focus on that, rather than on socially mandated hatred.

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