Beauty Everywhere

Yes, Mollie is back from vacation. She’d asked me to guest blog, along with some other wonderful ladies, while she was away but I got my days all messed up and well…

My name is Simone Grant and I blog daily over at Sex, Lies and Dating in the City. I didn’t have to think long about what I wanted to blog about for Mollie, because I really liked her post Beautiful You. It got me to thinking just about what an odd relationship I have, and most women have with our bodies.

Now, before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, I’m gonna out myself here. I’m not participating in this Muffin Top Monday thing. And, truthfully, I don’t really need to. I’m pretty thin. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own body and self–image issues.

I’m a 38-year old single woman who lives in New York City, a town where an unnatural percentage of the population makes their living being beautiful. It’s freaking intimidating. I’ll think I look nice, on my way out to a date, and then pass a gaggle of teen-aged supermodels on my way to the subway. Pow, there goes my self-confidence. One night, years ago, I was actually stopped on a street corner by a “helpful” stranger who told me to go home and put on nicer clothes and some make-up (it was a hot summer night and I was wearing a tank top and cut-offs, without a stitch make-up).

There were many years (decades?) when I was completely incapable of looking at myself, naked, in the mirror the way Mollie talks about in her post. And then one day I kind of got over it. I realized that no one, certainly none of the men I’d ever dated, expected me to look like a supermodel. And that I was beautiful in my own way.

Just like Mollie (heck, if I had a boyfriend who told me I was hot, I don’t know if I’d be dieting). And just like all of you. Beautiful. Every damn one of us.