Circa 2008

Today I was reminded of an old modeling photo from when I was 18 and it got me thinking... If I could go back in time & give advice to my younger self, I'd tell her: Stop hating your body. Really, just stop it. Your negative thoughts are doing nothing for your self esteem. Those big ol' hips that you've been starving yourself since you were 14 to get rid of? Yeah, you're going to appreciate them when you get older so stop being silly and just eat some **** food. You joke around about being cold all the time and how it's because you have no soul (which, by the way, isn't even a funny joke), but you don't understand that it's because you're 5'8 and only 107lbs, and you don't have enough fat on your bones to keep you warm even when it's the dead of summer in sunny Miami. You're going to work with many photographers and a handful of fashion designers who are going to tell you that you're too curvy for their size 0 clothes, and it's going to hurt, but please believe me when I tell you that you are perfectly fine the way you are. The size of your body does not define your worth. The next couple of years are going to be rough. You're going to lose your full-ride scholarship to college, you're going to work with many more photographers & have a run in with a superrrr creep, you're going to move to a new city, then another one, you're going to party too much and drink more than you should, fall in & out of love a couple times, and somewhere along the way you're going to get your act together (thankfreakingGod). You're going to start taking care of yourself and loving your body and you're going to regret all those years of hating it. If I could tell my younger self one single thing, I'd tell her: your worth is not defined by your relationship with gravity. You are so much more than the size of your hips and the number on the scale. Please realize that life is far too short to spend even a moment of it hating your body. ?

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