HIMPower Magazine HimPower April 2018 | Page 35

Beauty isn’t about someone else’s expectations of you, it’s about loving yourself, as God made you, because He declares that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. was that self-love and self-appreciation are virtues that are necessary to possess for healthy living and true beauty. Everyone will have their opinion of you. One designer will think you are perfect and beautiful and ten minutes later, you can go to a different audition and they will have the opposite opinion. If you spend your life trying to prove to others that you are special, you will begin to lose sight of who you truly are. Beauty isn’t about someone else’s expecta- tions of you, it’s about loving yourself, as God made you, because He declares that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. It took me a long time to realize that and to accept that. I would lay out in the sun and tan to make myself even darker so that I would stand out more, because someone told me that my skin tone was “In between”. I would straighten my hair because that was more attractive and desirable in the fashion world. I would go days only eating raw vegetables to appear thinner, though I secretly desired hamburgers or shrimp alfredo or a Twix candy bar, now and then. I compromised a lot of who I was because I wanted to be the girl who got picked. I wanted to stay memo- rable and I wanted to prove that I was just as talented as any other model. I made good friends with my model mates, but I some- times felt that they had something I didn’t and I was constantly trying to prove that I was just as good. But, eventually, it wore me out. You can’t please everybody and you’re not supposed to. What I learned is that when our iden- tity is grounded in the L