Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it. ~Salvador Dali

Standing in front of a mirror some days can be like standing in a field of land mines. I'm lucky or I'm not. If I'm lucky, I get to keep all my limbs and face the day with my head held up high and proud of every curve and freckle. If I'm not lucky, not only do I lose limbs, I become distorted, surrealistic. It's called dysmorphia. I don't know the statistics about how many women have this, but common sense tells me it's more than you think.

Some people start art modeling because they love their bodies and want to share them. I started art modeling because I hated my body and wanted to love it. Through posing for artists, I was able to view myself differently. Seeing my body on paper, seeing the different curves and shapes - I’m not a naked girl up on the table for these people, I’m an art object. I’m curves and shadows. I’m hips and thighs and shoulders and neck. I was amazed by how non-sexual it was. I loved seeing myself through other people's eyes. It put things into perspective. I am not grossly overweight, or even slightly overweight. My thighs are not huge slabs of  flesh, but instead soft and curvy woman's thighs.

At least today they aren't those things. But I tell you, some days they are. Some days I can look into the mirror and I want to crawl under the bed to hide. It feels as though there is a monster trying to break out of me, but I know that, in reality, the monster is in my head and feeding me lies.  To put it simply, it sucks. It can affect things around me. My insecurities can cause problems in my relationship with my boyfriend. Jealousy springs forth like never before and it takes it toll on both of us. It's not always like that, but on those days, the slightest wrong look sets me of a wave of self-doubt.

I remember when I was ten I read in Teen magazine how a woman's thighs aren't supposed to touch when she's standing. I forget important dates and phone numbers. I forgot how to do long division. But I'm able to remember that article about thighs with no problem. Thanks Teen magazine. Thanks from every ten to sixteen-year-old girl who read that magazine and those shitty articles about how girls are supposed to look and walk and dress and thanks for burning it into our brains for us so that we won't ever forget that, when we're standing and our thighs touch, we need to loose that chub pronto.

My thighs touch, and my hip bones quite aren't as prominent as they used to be, but that's ok. I don't like my belly, because out of nowhere, it seems to have lost its concaveness. It's not a big deal, really, but it's these little things that seem to add up on those bad days. On those bad days I can't undress in front of my boyfriend because I'm scared he will notice how awful everything on me is. My breasts will be too small and my ass too soft. Just because I can stand naked for three hours in front of a group of strangers doesn't make everything perfect in the privacy of my bedroom. Where are those 'congratulations' and 'excellent work' from the artists when I stand in front of my mirror. When I used to get home after posing, I felt amazing. I felt like I've never felt before. Confident. Secure. Comfortable in my own skin. That is why I like art modeling. It makes me feel good.

Recently I read a book by Mireille Guiliano titled French Women Don't Get Fat. It was a good read and I recommend it only because Ms. Guiliano says to drink more (red) wine and eat more (dark) chocolate, but do it in moderation. Don't torture yourself by not allowing yourself to eat your favorite foods, she says, but narrow it down. If you eat a little too much Tiramisù  at desert one night, make up for it by walking a bit more the next day. I like her way of thinking. Yes, it is a sort of diet book in the form of a novel, but she makes some good points. We, in North America, eat horribly. Maybe, just maybe, if we changed our diet, not completely, just a few slight alterations, we would feel better about ourselves. She calls it a healthy relationship with food and I think she may be on to something.

Personally, I don't really need a guide on how to eat well. I need a guide on how to love myself, how to be ok with the flaws, the bumps and the bruises. Maybe it seems like a trivial subject to you, maybe vain or even rather juvenile and I won't disagree with you. However, when feelings of self-doubt start interfering with how you really feel in life, something has to change. Henry Miller wrote, “The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues. You can't separate them.  They're wedded.”

It isn't about vanity. I don't care if my hair is out of place and messy or my nail polish is chipped. I've finally accepted that I will never be the girl with the hair always styled and in place, or the manicured nails with matching toe nails. I will never wear the newest styles or walk around in five-inch fuck me stilettos. I won't ever buy Cosmo or Elle or Vogue because I know how it makes girls like me feel: overweight at a size three. Ugly because, wow imagine this, we humans actually have pores and skin texture, not to mention hair on our body. All that, I'm ok with it. It's the distorted reality of looking into a mirror on a bad day and hating every inch of myself that I want to get over. Millions of women feel this. Maybe a few thousand find a way to deal with it. I'd like to be one of those women.