You look good, you just need to believe it.

I rarely like my fresh photos. I usually need them to marinate a little, give it a month, then come back to them. And still I try not to look at them for too long because then I start noticing all the insecurities people have projected onto me in the past.

I never quite noticed that my face was asymmetrical, that my eyes were a bit lazy, not in the sensual way but the tired way. I never bothered about the radius of my forehead among other “flaws.” It just happened that people who were close to me started mentioning them casually out of the blue, then they stuck. And I began obsessing over them, finding ways to hide them.

Every time a woman or man looks in the mirror, these sentiments start propping up. Suddenly all you see are flaws. The pimple you think you must pop, the nose you think needs contouring, your full cheeks when you smile, or the teeth you hide because someone once told you that you need braces.

You move down to your chest and try to push up your breasts with your hands, imagining what it would be like to have cleavage. You remember the saggy‑breast jokes people throw around in the streets and wonder why it’s such a big deal. You’re tired of wearing push‑up bras with uncomfortable wires underneath.

Your next inspection is your nonexistent love handles. You just have a tad bit of fat that protects your reproductive organs, but the fact that it bulges out when you sit down or wear fitting trousers bothers you a lot.

You take a step back and the full body scrutiny begins. What’s my body shape? A pear, an apple, a banana, a watermelon. Heck, maybe I’m a star fruit.

It never stops. There’s always something to scrutinize, something to pick on. You don't even notice how you wouldn't let anyone pick on your friend but here you are dragging and bullying yourself.

We learned to see ourselves through the eyes of social media and questionable beauty standards. Internalise ideas like “skinny is the outfit” when in reality how you style your body is.

Before we even noticed ourselves, we already had people around us telling us what we looked like. The aunty who always mentioned your chubby cheeks, the neighbour who always noticed your slender figure, the cousin who mentioned your big feet or the teacher that was openly colourist.

We were always taught the ugly we need to look for. How else would they make us bend over and conform if they taught us to appreciate ourselves.

So even when, after months of eating healthy, sleeping on schedule, and doing the work, on the day you finally get to “glow up” and someone tells you you’re beautiful, you still cannot bring yourself to believe it.

How can you when you’ve been conditioned by external invalidation for years? You’ve been conditioned to trust criticism more than compliments.

If someone tells you your dress is ugly, you’ll be quick to believe it. The comment will linger for weeks because it’s what you’re familiar with.

We then proceed to always be a working project, never able to admire our current selves. Only able to look at the photos we took a year ago and gasp, “I looked so good. Why was I even stressing?”

You’re pretty, you just need to bring yourself to believe it. Otherwise you’ll shed or gain the weight, get even skin, grow your hair and hairline, learn to do your makeup, but still walk around with self‑doubt and imposter syndrome.

Believing that somehow, someway, someone will grab your wig off in the streets and you'll become a spectacle. With everyone assembling and shouting “ Look she thought we wouldn't notice that she's not all that.”

You need to learn to appreciate what is before you, and not just who you were two weeks ago during your follicular phase. When you didn’t have acne, a bloated stomach, or a puffy face.

You need to believe you’ve got this, in sickness and in health, in thinness and thickness, in gestation and postpartum. On birthdays and DND days.

Till death parts your soul from your body, be your own cheerleader!

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