You're Gorgeous

What do you say to yourself when you look at yourself in the mirror?

I regularly ask groups of teenagers this question. I present them with 30 words – such as ugly, cheerful, selfish, kind – and they get to choose any five words as to how they describe themselves. Over the past few years a pattern has emerged. When I ask how many of them have ‘more positive words than negative’ a few tentative almost guilty hands go up. Invert the question, and there is a mass rush. The stats? About 96% are in this second group.

Fact: Most teenagers have a real downer on themselves.

So, what do you say to yourself when you look at yourself in the mirror?

What would you change? What do you see that you really like?

The first time I was airbrushed was painless. It was involuntarily for the front cover of our marriage service sheet where I was made to look like George Clooney. No, actually it was just the ‘odd blemish’ that was vaporised. Man, I looked unreal.

The truth is this: Most people want to change something about how they look. There’s far too much comparing body to body that goes on and not enough ‘maybe I’m okay as I am’. Sure, many people want to look their best which is great, and that’s very different to believing they don’t look ‘good enough’ which presents itself as a constant striving for something new.

This issue of airbrushing is something that teenagers tell me affects how they feel about themselves. Girls particularly, but not exclusively. They’re clued up to the unrealism of por*ography and the intimacy-void it promotes and fails to fulfil. Airbrushed sex. Hmmm, not very romantic.

Many young people are genuinely surprised when we unveil the extent of photo-shopping in the media – natural body marks and even bones wiped out. Necks elongated, eyes widened, noses shrunk, busts expanded. It all gets ‘the treatment’.

Fact: Much of what we see on billboards, magazine pages, glossy brochures isn’t real. They’re not real people.

They don’t exist.

They’re not people you can become Friends with on Facebook.

Those finished specimens don’t have their own fingerprints.

This issue was brought home to me last week. Quite literally it was brought home to me through the letter box in a plastic wrap. The front cover model of Runner’s World UK had an image of a runner without sweat - which is fair enough because he was in a studio not the Great Outdoors. But the bloke had legs smoother than a lady from a BaByLis advert and a streamlined jaw which was too perfect for my liking. Possibly just jaw-jealousy that last bit.

Those who know me know I’m a runner.  Running is definitely not about airbrushing. Running is not about instant change. Running is not about looking perfect for a roadside billboard. Running is about coping with life’s tricky stuff whatever that is for the individual, taking control of your headspace, and by pounding the road or trails for mile after struggling mile turning it all into something positive. So you can look at your sweaty puddle-splattered body in the mirror and say ‘well done’. 

Because I do believe really and truly that it is not what’s on the outside that matters so much. But getting to a place, however skewiffy the process might have been or still is, of accepting yourself.

Being able to look at yourself in the mirror and say “Hey, you’re alright.” Honestly, when was the last time you did that?

The psalmist David uses a phrase. He writes that the The Creator of All Things looks at you and says you are ‘the apple of his eye’. Bible-speak for ‘You’re flippin’ gorgeous, just as you are’.

“Wave your hands in the air” I sometimes say to the gathering of young people. “Look super carefully at your fingerprints. Notice the swirls and loops and arches.” A hundred adolescent heads peer at their fingertips and whispered jokes begin and – honestly – looks of amazement occur. For some it’s as if they’re thinking “On my goodness! Who just put those fingerprints there!?”

“There’s the proof. No-one else on planet earth has those same marks. Seven billion people alive today, and only you have that set of marks. Proof that you are unique. You are a rare species of one. You’re flippin’ gorgeous just as you are.”

It’s a simple exercise, but a truth-filled one. If the Advertising industry had its way I daresay our fingerprints would be airbrushed away. I fear for the day that “compareyourself.com” is launched. How dare we be ourselves.

Fact: Most if not all of us want to be accepted as we are. No more trying to prove ourselves, compare ourselves, digitally enhance ourselves.

Now, what would that be like?

Yes, I have contacted Runner’s World UK about their front covers asking about their image enhancement policy. They might ignore me, again. But at least I can look myself in the eye, in the mirror, and remind myself that I’m alright. Maybe not George Clooney, but I’m alright.

And you? Hey, you’re gorgeous. Remember that next time you look at yourself in the mirror.