A Picture of myself? Oh, Man

This week's Wordless Wednesday: It's often hard to like pictures of ourselves - post your favorite picture of yourself

*Yeah... I can't do "wordless"... Sorry.* 

They are correct. It is very hard for me to like pictures of myself. Over the past several years there are a handful of pictures that I actually, truly like. Each one is significant and each one is in a different time/phase/place of my life. At this moment in time, my favorite picture of myself is one from a dare. Yep, a dare. 

There is a movement called Operation Beautiful and they have initiated a very powerful. No Make Up Monday. That's right. You are asked to take a picture of yourself, sans-makeup, and post it to Operation Beautiful/Facebook/Twitter - you get the idea. Seriously, this is something super hard for me and I know it shouldn't be. So, a couple of weeks ago I took the challenge and posted my No Make Up Monday picture to social media and wrote a post about the challenge. I have to admit, it was incredibly liberating and that picture is now my favorite picture of myself.

  

The other ones I'm fond of:

  

 A rose from the bouquet my hubby sent for our anniversary during his second deployment to Iraq.(2007)

  

On our trip to Boone (Thanksgiving, 2008) 

No Makeup Monday

Yesterday, I learned about the No Make Up Monday movement. Every Monday Operation Beautiful celebrates the natural beauty we all have by going make up free. For the record, I love make up. I think it's so fun! - and Operation Beautiful agrees with me ;) But it is so important to remind everyone just how amazingly beautiful they are as their naked self. I actually really needed this reminder. After taking several pictures and analyzing which one was the best, (Proof of just how strong our sense of commercial "beauty" really is.) I nervously posted my picture to Facebook and Twitter. Here I am posting, once again, on the Internet. I must be getting better at this whole "body confidence" thing.

 

Some added inspiration, courtesy of Huff Post Women, helped quite a bit. In this article "Why I'm Wearing A Bikini On The Internet" Brittany Gibbons writes about her mountain she wants to climb: Wearing a bikini. *Note: I love bikinis but after having two kids I'm less than friendly towards them* She goes even farther and posts pics of this endeavor on the Internet! She's now my hero. Later this week she posted another article in response to the outpouring of commentary on the bikini one. This one was the reveal of her weight! I know, she's amazing! This article titled, Why I'm Revealing My Weight On The Internet she writes about how she had to defend her body and how she is, in fact, plus-size. In the end she writes: " People carry weight in all different ways. you can't draw a line in the sand and toss assumptions on either side. I do this, all of this, to show you what a real person looks like at this weight. And what a real person looks like in those cloths." 

Love it! Maybe one day I'll be that brave... Until then I will continue to raise awareness and try to help others in their recovery. Another awesome act of bold, natural beauty in the media is The Nu Project. The Nu Project is a 100% volunteer gallery of nude women in all shapes and sizes.The goal is to inspire women to feel better about their bodies. Huff Post Women also did a story about this project (how I heard about it) and has a slide show of 7 pictures from the gallery that are stunning. The creator of The Nu Project, Matt Blum, says that he tries to photograph women where they feel most comfortable - in their own homes- respectfully, with out a lot of sexual over/undertones.

Simply beautiful