Women

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I used to hate my nose. Sometimes I’d pull it up while sleeping at night to see if in the morning, it would look any different but instead, it only hurt. The more I looked at it, the more I hated it.
Then I got married; my husband would often say he loved it. At first I thought he was just trying to make me feel good about myself, and then I thought he was afraid that I’d want to have a nose job, and later on I thought that perhaps he didn’t want me to look good after all. To simply accept the fact that he loved my nose was just impossible, after all, I hated it!

I remember once going to the doctor and him saying that my nose would look even worse with age! It took me years to finally get rid of my insecurity about my nose. But even so, when I finally started working towards loving my nose, I got an email from someone who used to watch me on TV. She advised me to get a nose job. I must say it hurt deeply because she had touched my weakest point, but at the same time, it made me realise something I had never thought of before. Who says noses must be thin, small, and turned up?

I suppose this is a woman’s biggest burden nowadays. We must fit in to a certain mould or else we’re not good enough.
Our arms must be thin; our figure must be tall and thin (no curves whatsoever); our skin smooth; our eyes big and bright; our hair full of volume, and our nose perfect. Since we cannot fit into that mould, we look in the mirror and start hating what we see.

As if that wasn’t enough, because we hate ourselves, we start hating other women too. We look at their every inch and we always find something that’s not good enough, so we point it out.

Magazines do well because of this need for women to look at other women and criticise them. They take pictures of famous women when they least expect it, and the whole world of women, quickly rush to spend their money just to see their ‘favourite’ star’s new look and laugh at their shame.

If you can’t love what you see in the mirror, what makes you think you can love what other women look like? So the vicious cycle continues and women remain the target of other women’s insecurities.

When I used to hate my nose, I’d do the same. I’d look at everyone’s nose and try to see something wrong with it. I didn’t like my nose and so I didn’t like anyone else’s nose either. That’s how it works, unfortunately.

If you don’t like your looks, you’ll always criticise the looks of others. If you want to stop this bad cycle we women got into from childhood… change the way you look at yourself. Love yourself, the way you are, and then you’ll love others the way they are.

Funny how men don’t have this problem. They hardly criticise themselves in the mirror and much less other men. One wonders.



In faith,

Cristiane Cardoso
www.cristianecardoso.com

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