Bumblebees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1N_K-zZ0nQ - Architecture in Helsinki, "One Heavy February"

When I was young, I was a bumblebee. There's a VHS of it; a small herd of little girls standing in a driveway, doing "ballet." "Ballet" is in quotes because what we were really doing was squatting and spinning and pretending. The whole affair was homegrown--the instructors were teenagers, the girls were all neighborhood recruits. For our big recital, we dove through the costume trunk: a princess, a fairy, and me, the bumblebee.

ABRUPT SHIFT IN TOPICS: Last year, I cleaned out my closet at my parents' house. I found a journal I'd kept as a first-grader, long after the bumblebee. The journal was one of those books where you fill out the questions. In my tiny, child handwriting, beside What I'd Like to Change About Myself, I wrote: I wish I was not fat.

I wish I was not fat.

I was seven years old.

I'm twenty-five now. Twenty-five, and I still scrutinize myself in the mirror. I still suffer from Mirror-Photo Dysmorphia, which is a term I made up, where you see one thing in the mirror--pale, weird face, flabby--and another in photos--blonde, big-eyed, cute. And then you see yourself through your own eyes and it's a conflagration of the two; I have a beautiful face with bad skin, I have a good skeleton with too much over it.

It's complicated and it's hard. But then what? What do you do? Something. You have do to something. And something is more than a lot of people do.

For instance: I drink buckets of water. I work out with my Wii, and then I step on the scale and it doesn't change, but I feel a lengthening in my limbs. I stand taller. I put on bright red lipstick and a smudge of blush and goddammit, I'm ready to take on the fucking day.

Body issues are nothing new for any female, and I write about it now because some idiot asshole walked into my liquor store the other day and proceeded to keep up a running monologue of how attractive he found me: "Oooh girl, sister, honey, you so fiiiine, mmm, I bet you got a man, yeah, you got a man? I bet he can't ride it like I can, mmm, I'd ride that all night, uh-huh, chunky chunky, you sure fine."

I have long felt bad about being an unattractive girl when I considered myself such, and that marked the first time I felt bad for looking good. I once made a massive mistake and aligned my life with someone terrible because I thought I was terrible enough to deserve him. I'm now with someone who loves me as I am, flabby in spots, sure, but beautiful all around.

It's hard and it's complicated.

I think about when I was the bee. I remember feeling shame because the bee costume was the only one that fit me. But I also remember everyone laughing as I did plie after plie, bending my knees when no music was playing. I won the spelling bee in third grade; I was a fat girl in leggings and a turtleneck, but I could spell. And now, no, you won't approach me at a bar because I have an epic rack and svelte legs, but when we start talking, I will make you laugh and toss my hair.

Love yourself. Hate yourself and change what you hate, and what you cannot change--my pointy nose, my height, my over-sized eyes--you accept and learn to adore.You are the only you there is, and that alone is worth something.