spread your love project: by a nose

Victoria Hughes of Garden of Eden Designs and Lindsay of Scenic Glory have challenged us female bloggers to, for a moment, ignore the voice in our heads telling us to self-criticize our bodies and talk about what we love about ourselves. This is the Spread [Your] Love Project.

Victoria says, "Lindsay and I are declaring the week of June 1st through June 8th Spread [your] Love week, and we want to know why you love yourself. So take a photo of yourself with a sign and let us know why in a post. Help spread [your] love and promote positive body image for all our girls out there."

Let the navel-gazing begin!

Let's be honest, I've got a lot of features people could, if they felt so inclined, tear apart. But most of all, I've committed the apparent female beauty sin of daring to have a noticeable nose.

When I was young, I hated my nose. Unfortunately, this type of thing can take a while for a girl to finally sort out. When you don't see faces that look like yours among those fitting the mainstream beauty standards, you start to think that you're the wrong-looking one (Others may not disabuse you of this notion. On the contrary, actually.) Even now, the only media faces I see that look anything like mine are male. Or from the French silent film era.

I'm okay with my fate as a Ben Linus lookalike. Hell, these days, I think my nose is one of my best features. It makes me look like me, an instantly recognizable self. I can't be mistaken for just anyone. It's kind of awesome to be able to almost look like two totally different people in photos, too, depending on the angle of my nose.

Also, I'm not gonna lie. There's something questionable about the dislike of certain features, like big noses. People can argue all they want about universal aesthetics or personal preference, but I'm always going think they might as well just say they want someone to look less ethnic.



You can join in on the Spread [Your] Love Project here.