re-learn to love my body by focusing on the parts I like

I have nice, shapely shoulders and collarbones. I noticed them recently for the first time in ages and remembered that I’ve always liked them.

I like hands in general. They do things, they touch things, they make things; holding hands is one of the nicest things in the world, and they’re quite miraculous pieces of natural engineering. (Go on, look at your hand. Flex your fingers, together and separately. Look at the way the palm creases and the way the tendons move at the back. Amazing, isn’t it?)

I like my hands in particular, too. They’re a little big for a woman’s hands, but they’re in good proportion to my frame. They have long shapely fingers that look elegant when my nails are long and capable when they’re short. They have character too: a scar on one knuckle that you can only see when I make a fist, a callus on the top knuckle of my right middle finger from the way I hold a pen. I have two odd fingerprints – they’re all loops except my right thumb and left index finger, which are spirals.

I won’t be quite so effusive about all the bits of me I find to like, I promise. I just have a thing for hands, and the more I look at mine the more I like them.

these are the parts I don’t like: my eyebrows, my nostrils, the flabby bit under my chin, my upper arms, my skin my skin I hate my skin, my breasts, my tummy, the rolls at the sides of my back, my thighs, my knees, my big toes.

I’ve been pondering posting this goal for a couple weeks, wondering if it was healthy. I’m supposed to be working on genuine deep-down happiness, not using the self-esteem boost I get from feeling physically desirable (which, if I’m honest, is what this is really about) to make me feel temporarily better about myself. Not that there’s anything wrong in itself with wanting to feel desirable, but when it gets to be such a crutch that the least hint of not being wanted by a lover casts me down completely disproportionately, it’s become very unhealthy. And then it gets tangled in my head because I don’t want to be wanted just for my physical appearance. Maybe it’s only when you’re happy with your body that you have the luxury of saying looks don’t matter.

So yeah, there are some complicated issues around the whole thing, but I do still want to feel better about my body for my own sake, whatever anyone else might think of it. I know I used to, and some part of me still does; during a recent conversation about body image with some friends I found myself saying that I loved my curves and really meaning it. I need to find that part of me and feed it until I’m happy enough that it’s no longer an issue.