Looking Good Now

It was a rough couple of years. First there was unemployment, then there was work stress and financial stress and on top of all of that (I suspect) hormonal imbalances to boot. Basically, I’ve packed on the pounds.

I’m working hard at losing the weight but I’m finding that at 43 it’s not quite as easy as it used to be. What’s a girl to do? I work out. I eat less. I’ve eaten mini-meals throughout the day. I’ve starved myself. I’d drank enough water to grow gills. It’s been, and continues to be, a long and frustrating process.

I look in the mirror and wonder, “What happened to Karyn??? She’s disappeared under a sea of fat!” I don’t feel attractive. I don’t feel confident. I certainly don’t feel sexy. And despite my shopaholic tendencies I don’t feel like shopping either. I don’t want to buy clothes in my current size. I don’t want to be relegated to the ‘Womans’ section or Lane Bryant. I want my old body back or a reasonable facsimile.

It’s gotten so bad that I have practically worn out the few fitting clothes I have. I've had no choice but to do a little shopping. So one afternoon, I reluctantly ventured into Ross and approached my size. I headed into the dressing room with a sense of dread, my head hung low. I tried on what I’d picked out and I was horrified … not just by the size but by the unconscious transformation. I picked out frumpy, style-less, bland clothes. When I looked in the mirror, I felt less like me than I ever had before. I heard the ringing. This was my wake-up call.

I am changing. This is true. I am working on losing. I will not be this size and this weight forever. However, I need clothes now and I need to look good in those clothes now. I need those clothes to be a true reflection of me regardless of the size. So I came out of the dressing room handed the stack of bland clothes to the sales lady and made another pass at the racks.

This time I went for bright, rich and vibrant colors, not just the depressing blacks, grays and browns. I was able to find clothes that had more shape and style, not ill-fitting shapeless mumus. When I made the second trip to the dressing room, I fared better. I saw in my reflection clothes that not just fitted but reflected the woman that I am – funny, quirky and upbeat.

I got tons of compliments on two of the sweaters I’d picked out. It felt good, like I had recaptured part of myself I’d let go. I hadn’t realized how much weight had impacted my life. I had stopped feeling good about myself on the inside and it showed on the outside. I promised myself that day in that dressing rooom that it was going to stop.

The destination is important but so is the journey. So on the way to weight loss, I plan on looking and feeling my best. I owe it to myself.

The Square Peg Phenomenon

My name is Karyn … not Karen but Karyn. As a kid, it was annoying because I could never find little key chains and other knick knacks with my name spelled correctly. Now, I love it. It’s different. It’s me.

Also, as a kid, I struggled with penmanship and I still do. I cringe to think what would be revealed about me if I ever submitted to a handwriting analysis! However, to the bane of my grade school teachers (Mr. Embrecia, Mr. Goodman and Ms. Brooks), I would not hold a pen the way they wanted me to. According to them, my grip was all wrong. They gave me guides and other ‘learning devices’ and I really did try, but it just wouldn’t work. It still doesn’t.

So what am I getting at? Here’s the moral of today’s story. Getting rid of little differences shouldn’t be a big deal. All of us have a little square peg within us that simply won’t fit into the prescribed round hole and that’s okay. That’s great!

As I was formulating the idea for this blog, I got a great email from one of my readers (wow, I love how that sounds). She wanted to share with me a list she worked on about the benefits of being left-handed (read it here).

Only 7 – 10% of Americans are lefties. Being a leftie in a rightie world can’t be easy. I’d imagine, at times, it’s downright frustrating but just like having a differently spelled name, it’s just one of those things that should be embraced … another square peg feature. I remember suffering through cursive writing with a leftie. She couldn’t be a rightie anymore than I could be a kid that held a pen correctly. It was just who we were!

Forcing a square peg into the round hole is a fruitless exercise. Think about all the energy and pain spent trying to cram that peg into that hole. The square peg isn’t the wrong peg, it’s a different peg.

Anyway, if all we had were round pegs and round holes the world would be a very boring place!

If you love trivia, the Leftie List is full of great info!

Competence and Confidence

A friend of mine recently started a new job. She loves her job and has been working successfully in her field for over a decade. This job is a bit of a challenge although she’s done the work before, she’s never had this particular title.

As a result, she has the competence to do the job, but her confidence isn’t there. As she told me the other day, “I realize with each passing day that I know a lot more than I’ve given myself credit for. I definitely have the skill set and the expertise to do this job. I just wish I had more than just that.”

I said curiously, “What else do you need beside skill set and experience?”

She responded, “I wish I had more formal knowledge, if not a degree at least a certification. Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned on the job.”

The fact that she’s learned what she’s learned on several jobs, in diverse situations and garnered great reviews and respect from her peers did little to bolster her confidence.

The irony is that her predecessor was the opposite. Apparently, she was all confidence but not much competence. My friend says that everyday she is undoing the work of this woman. Her predecessor had the staff doing time intensive workarounds because she didn’t know how to use the software correctly. She made the people under her subscribe to complex standards and routines that, according to my friend, served no purpose other than to make her look like she had a lot of knowledge.

In fact, even though some of those old methodologies and tactics have been proven wrong, people are still convinced that this woman was a competent, knowledgeable professional – a true testament to how strong her confidence level was.

Luckily, my friend’s confidence is growing with each passing day.

Competence and confidence is a formula for unstoppable success.

When Bootylicious Wasn't

Back in the spring, I was asked to participate in a project about women and self-esteem. Each woman was asked to contribute a short essay about her experiences grappling with her own self-esteem. Since this is an issue I'm very passionate about, I didn't hesitate to share my story. I felt, with today's blog (see above), this was the perfect time to share this piece.

Growing up I was 'lucky.' I was smart and funny and had the privilege of going to a great school. Of course, for years, I was the only black girl in my class - a drop of chocolate in a sea of vanilla. I stuck out. And matters only got worse around the 7th grade when I could add curves to the growing list of things that made me different from my classmates.

Hips . butt . thickness . blackness. It belonged to me and me alone in the Class of 86. It was hard not to feel self-conscious. I didn't get that same look in my Jorache jeans. And my curves didn't suit Calvin Klein very well either.

While no one commented to me directly, it was hard not to feel a little out of place when my petite classmates complained about being 'fat' and the horrors of having a 'big butt'. Frankly, I didn't see any butt when I looked at them . But when I turned around it was a different story.
I tried to starve myself throughout high school. I actually wanted to be anorexic. I hated the fact that not eating made me sick. If only I could lose that butt!

Over two decades later, after years of agony, I have finally come to a place of not only self-acceptance but self-love. My curves are mine and I wouldn't trade them for anything. And what's funny is that fashion has finally caught up with me. Bootylicious is a good thing now. Women actually pay to get tanned and to get their lips plumped.

And the other day, I experienced the ultimate victory when I saw a product I'll never need . butt-padded panties for the booty-impaired.

The curvy girl gets the last laugh.

How To Feel Pretty

A couple of years the Dove Organization, which runs The Campaign for Real Beauty, surveyed 3,000 women globally. Astoundingly, only 2% of those women considered themselves beautiful. I thought the same thing you are probably thinking right now. Beautiful sets the bar really high. What about cute, attractive or pretty? With other, less loaded words, the results weren’t much better: 9% went with attractive and 7% identified themselves as good-looking or cute, 5% were pretty.

The only two words to garner more than a 10% response were natural with 31% and average with 29%.

I know there is a lot back story involved with these numbers. As women, we don’t want to come across as vain or conceited, and I think that plays a significant role in why we shy away from words like beautiful and, to a lesser degree, pretty and attractive.

But, there is an underlying perception there as well, and that is that a lot of us just don’t feel attractive. We don’t, as the song from West Side Story says, “Feel Pretty.”

Growing up, as one of the few black girls in my class, I didn’t feel pretty. In fact, I felt down right ugly. A fact that was reinforced by several boys in my class who during gym in Middle School made sure I knew that, at least in their eyes, I was “black and ugly.”

I wrestled through high school, college and through my 20’s with this stigma. I even stood up a great guy in college because I just couldn’t believe that he would want to go out with me. I certainly couldn’t see anything good about me and I couldn’t see how anyone else could either.

When I look back, it pains me to see how many years I wasted settling for less because I didn’t feel or believe that I was worth, or deserved, more.

Then, one day, I guess you could say that I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I decided to work on my self esteem, really work on it. With time and a whole lot of effort, I realized that the ‘black and ugly’ seventh grade duckling with the braces and bad hair cut had become, in her own way, a swan.

Here is what I did:

I asked. I asked my closest friends to name something about me that was attractive. They told me I had a beautiful smile and happy, animated eyes. They told me I had a nice figure. They liked my smooth skin.

I looked. I looked in the mirror and at pictures of myself and slowly I began to see those very things. “You know,” I said to myself, “Years of braces paid off, I do have pretty, straight, white teeth. I do have a great smile.”

I was honest. I was honest in assessing that even with the eyes and the smile and the yada, yada, there were still some things about myself that I wasn’t crazy about and might never be crazy about but that was okay. Everyone has things they aren’t crazy about, even supermodels.

I focused. I focused on what I liked about myself and slowly, those positive things, and not the things I didn’t like, were where I focused my thinking.

I looked beyond. I looked beyond the physical. When I asked my friends what they found attractive in me, they went beyond the physical and I realized that I needed to do that too. Listening to them, I found that my dedication as a good friend, my sense of humor, and my willingness to help made me just as beautiful as a smile or bright eyes. And that to truly embrace my beauty I had to embrace the total package … inside and out.

So do I think I’m beautiful? Honestly, I’m part of the 98% that would not use that word to describe myself. But I will take cute, pretty or attractive. : )