The fuckery.

hi there, anon. i didn’t realize i took a lot of selfies. thanks for the info. so, your question was whether i think i’m pretty. you already answered that no, i am not. 

and i have to agree, anon. i don’t think i’m pretty bc i’m not.

i’m fat.

i always have a double chin.

i constantly look like i haven’t slept in a week bc of my dark circles

and, i always look sunburnt. idfk why

i have this white line across my nose that makeup can’t cover up 

i have tons of wrinkles on my forehead. like what the hell? i’m 25

also, it’s the size of fucking texas

i still don’t know how to smile in pictures bc i hate my fucking teeth

my feet are flat. my hips are huge. my boobs are weird. i am covered in stretch marks. my voice is grating. my ears stick out two miles from my head. i am always fucking sweating and i’ve been asked if i was pregnant more times than i can count. 

so, you’re right. i’m not pretty. i can’t stand the way i look.

which is why it’s so fucking important that i post “a lot” of selfies. bc, anon, you’d better fucking believe that if i look in the mirror that day and don’t cringe, i’m gonna take a fucking picture to save that tiny little second. and GOD FORBID i show the world that i posses a little self love every once in a fucking while. 

TO ANYONE READING THIS: DON’T EVER LET SOMEONE MAKE YOU FEEL ASHAMED FOR LIKING THE WAY YOU LOOK—EVEN IF IT’S JUST FOR A SECOND. IF YOU LOOK NICE, YOU TAKE THAT FUCKING SELFIE AND YOU SHOW IT TO THE GOD DAMN WORLD BC THEY DESERVE TO SEE THE GOD/GODDESS YOU ARE!

that beard finally coming in? go ahead, bro. take a selfie.

you finally got that piercing you’ve been wanting? not really my style, but you’re fucking rocking it. take a selfie.

your boobs look awesome in that shirt? take a selfie.

you finally lose or gain that weight you’ve been working on? take a selfie.

your eyeliner look awesome? your new sunglasses make you look like  a celebrity avoiding the paparazzi? you killing that tux? you feel a tiny, rare level of self love? you always on a high level of self love? you just like your face? 

TAKE A MOTHAFUCKING SELFIE!

thanks for the question, anon. this one’s for you.

Accidentally Skinny (and why I hate the bathroom scale)

Recently something completely unplanned has begun to happen to my body and it’s washed up a tangle of old, forgotten demons that I have worked pretty hard to cut out of my life. I’ve been losing weight. Before you roll your eyes at this and say, “Bitch, pleeeease, you’re fucking skinny and you have always been skinny and just shut up because no one wants to hear the pity party of a skinny chick.” I implore you to just hold off on your eye rolling for a couple of paragraphs and read what I have to say.

I hadn’t weighed myself in about a year, and then the other day I found myself in a room with a scale. Not weighing myself is a very conscious decision, because there is nothing that number will ever tell me that will benefit me, my happiness or my love for my body. Less than I expected? Ok, cool, maybe I shouldn’t eat that extra handful of M&M’s and try to keep it here. More than I expected? Err, maybe I shouldn’t eat that extra handful of M&M’s and try to drop it a little bit. Either way, when I see that number flash between my feet, nothing good comes of it. Whatever the result, I start second guessing that handful of M&M’s and let’s face it, that just sucks.

So when I stepped onto the scale and realized that somehow I’d lost a significant amount of weight between what my brain-number told me I was and what the bright red number at my feet yelled back at me, I was kind of in shock. I knew that my clothing had seemed a little loose, but I blamed that on the whole, “clothing stretches out and all of my shit is pretty old,” school of thought and ignored it when my jeans didn’t fit.

And then, shortly after the realization that I was no longer weighed “blank”, but rather “other blank”, I got stomach flu and could hardly eat for a week straight. That, coupled with some personal stress and hard shit at the moment left my pants not simply loose, but falling-off-my-now-nonexistent-ass loose. And at this point you may be thinking, “Um, ok, no offense but how does losing weight make you start hating your body?” Let me elaborate on that right about now.

There’s this thought that creeps into the back of my mind when I perceive myself as “skinny” that starts whispering things to me. It tells me that if I stay skinny, I’ll be prettier. If I stay skinny, I’ll be happier. If I even get a little bit skinnier, I’ll be so beautiful that everyone in the world will adore me. I can buy new clothes. I can be a new size with a smaller number and my pelvic bone will stick out from underneath my dress instead of my tummy being the bulge against the fabric. My fingers will look long and delicate and strangers will look at me as I pass by in the street and think, “That woman is so beautiful, so fragile, so lovely. That woman is perfection.”

And though I know those voices aren’t true, they make me look at my world differently. I begin to subconsciously do things like decide I don’t need breakfast that day, coffee is good enough. Or a few small spoonfuls of ice cream is a perfect lunch, because I’m fragile and thin and don’t need to eat a real meal anymore. These things in my brain, they twist and grow and wrap themselves around other thoughts until they become so intertwined with my self-image, I start looking at myself in the mirror and disliking the girl staring back at me.

And that, my friends, is total and complete bullshit. I was fucking gorgeous before I lost weight, and I’m fucking gorgeous right now. I have been beautiful, wonderful and perfect at any and every weight I’ve watched my body transition through. There wasn’t a thing in the world wrong with me before I lost weight, and stress, sickness and lack of self-care have somehow wrapped themselves up in my brain to try to convince me that they are good things, that their result is a better version of me. I don’t want a better version of me. I want my squishy tummy back.

I don’t want to second guess that handful of M&M’s, I don’t want my pelvis to jut out against my clothes, and I don’t want strangers to use the circumference of my waist as a metric on which to judge my importance, desirability or worth as a human being. I want to love the girl in the mirror and smile at the rolls on her tummy and fit happily into whatever clothing size fits that day regardless of the number that’s printed on the tag. I don’t want to let those voices tell me that anything in my life will be better because there is less of me. My life is awesome, and it has been for a long time. My size and my weight should have nothing in the world to do with who I am, what I do or how much I love myself.

So maybe I’ll gain it back. So what? Maybe I won’t. So what to that too! I am determined to love the hell out of myself regardless of that bright red number glaring up at me from a bathroom scale and treat my body with love, respect and adoration no matter what size or shape is takes on that month. I will not let those voices convince me that I am better right now than I was a year ago because of a superfluous thing like a bathroom scale. I will not let those thoughts ruin the confidence and stability I’ve built within myself throughout my life. I am determined to love that girl in the mirror no matter what she looks like that day and I’ll feed her breakfast if she’s hungry and buy her clothing she likes no matter what size it represents. I have made a promise to myself to love that girl, and no matter what my brain dredges up to use against me, I will not stop.

Day 180 - From Bare to Bush

It’s been 180 days since the inception of this (almost accidental) project. True, I meant to start a blog that documented my pubic hair regrowth, but I never in a million years envisioned that it would become such a renown and adored fixture within Tumblr society. I never thought I’d create a post that received over 100 thousand notes on it on this platform alone and has appeared within countless other venues on the internet. I never thought I’d receive so many messages that my fingers started to burn after hours of responding. I never thought I’d post a picture of my period on the internet and have people share it with their friends and praise me for my bravery, audacity and strength. A lot of things have happened since I started that I certainly never expected, but for which I’m absolutely grateful. I am humbled, grateful and flattered that you, strangers who have never even met me, have given me so much of your love. That you have found solace in my words and enjoyment from my pictures. That you’ve written me countless letters of how you now finally have the strength to do things in your life that you have always wanted to and never felt you could. I am grateful too for the people who have hated me, written me nasty emails, left rude comments and ripped me apart on forums. You’ve taught me the ability to accept myself even more, and to know that no matter what I do, someone will find fault in me and I will never change that. I’ve learned to face criticism and to let it pass me by without taking it personally. I’ve learned to accept hate, and for this I honestly have the internet to thank. This project has always been about me, and about the regrowth of my pubic hair. At 180 days, I feel like it’s to a point where I can safely say it’s full grown. It’s been just shy of half a year since I set out on this journey, and I think 180 is an appropriate place for it to end, signifying a full reversal - from bare to bush - a 180 degree turn around from the bare skin that started it all. I will not be taking down any of my posts, or deleting my Tumblr or website. They will remain online and I’ll periodically check in and answer some messages when I have time, but for now, there will be no more posts. I’ve thought long and hard about this and have been trying to keep myself motivated, keep the creativity flowing and keep it interesting but at this point I have really run out of things to say. It’s a hard thing, walking away from something that has taken on a life of its own - to take a bow and turn your back on a full house of people who are all eager to hear what you have to say - but it’s something I need to do. If I come up with a fancy new venture, I’ll be sure to tell you all about it, but at the moment I have no such idea and I’m content in that. For those of you who I know will write to me as soon as you read this and beg me to keep going and for those of you who have written in the past and begged me never to stop - I appreciate the sincerity and enthusiasm, but you’ve missed my point. This has always been about what I feel like doing, saying and posting. What I am doing with my body, how I feel about it at the time, what I’ve decide to do or not do, and so on. This has never been for or about anybody but me, and right now I no longer want to keep going with it. Sometimes when you embark on an idea with no end game, you can’t tell when it’s finished, but other times you can. Other times you reach a point where you realize in order to keep growing, you need to let go of it and start fresh, taking the lessons you’ve learned along the way and embracing whatever comes next. That is where I am, and it would be dishonest for me to keep going with this when my heart and soul are no longer there. This blog, above all, has always been about honesty, in everything that I’ve written and shared and on that I will not compromise. I want to say one more thing and it has to do with the question of, “why?” Maybe I am the only person who faces this problem, but I doubt that is the case. So many times, I believe we are all guilty of stopping ourselves before we start something because we ask ourselves, “why?” Why should we do it, why should anyone care, why would we bother? To a degree, that question can be healthy but I think far too many times we let it limit us and silence us before we even open our mouths. Why would I ever start a blog documenting the regrowth of my pubic hair? Why would anyone possibly care about that? What good would that do me or anyone else in the world? Had I let those questions stop me, I wouldn’t be here today writing this. I wouldn’t have reached thousands of people all over the world, I wouldn’t have had the chance to cry over letters sent to me by strangers telling me how much they needed to hear my “voice” at that moment in their lives. It’s a lesson that I’m slowly learning, that sometimes the best way to learn the answer is to just simply start doing it and you’ll discover why you did it after the fact. We are all capable of creating projects, reaching out to each other, forming little pockets of positivity and honesty within our worlds, and there doesn’t have to be a reason. Because we can. Because we want to. Because we have no idea what else we’re doing. Because we must. To borrow a famous quote, you really can be the change that you wish to see in the world. You don’t need me, I’m nobody special. You’ve got everything you need all inside of you, and if you feel that you don’t, just keep going and eventually you will. I am and always have been, an anonymous girl on the internet with no more credibility or clout than any person reading this. If I can build this with nothing but my words, my honesty and a digital camera, you can too. I believe in that one hundred percent. Go get ‘em, tiger.