your worst self is still beautifulI’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently. That’s a dumb sentence, we all do a lot of thinking, all the time. That’s what our brains do. Even when we are asleep- we be thinking. Hence why for a brief period of my pre-teens I had a terrifying reoccurring dream about a large dirty mattress chasing me down the street. New readers- I’m weird. Old readers- you should have figured that loooong ago. I digress.

Back to the subject at hand. The internet is now pretty much a mirror of our lives. We all have become the annoying aunt from our childhood who always wanted you to look at the photos she carried around in her oversized pleather pocket book. I used pocket book instead of purse, because it felt more “weird aunt” like. Unlike our dear old Auntie nowadays we have all these amazing tools to make each and every picture of our lives brighter, bolder, better framed, and more “product of an uptight photographer wearing a leather baseball cap” looking.Perhaps our greatest editing tool is the delete button. We have all played the role of “annoying bitch who demands 45 shots until she looks fabulous” in group photos. The 44 other shots? Clickity clack (those are button touches), deleted. We are only are best selves online, and that’s kind of sad.

The reality is the more we show perfection, the more perfect things have to be. We get so used to full faces of make up and perfect hair, that we forget what real people in real moments look like. We lose the memories and focus instead on how fabulous we look in them. Personally I think there is something special and beautiful in stories of the photos that show us at our not so best.

Take the photo at the top which i like to call the potentially worst photo of me ever taken. My hair is a mess. My body is in potentially the most unflattering position it has ever been. This is not the snazzy, sassy, sexy, drop of goddess most people on the internet know me as. But those who know me in real life? This photo is perfectly me. It shows that I am bit zany, shameless, oddly flexible, have great taste in swimsuits, and generally don’t give a fuck what people think. When it comes down to it, I think I should be celebrating this side of myself a whole lot more. I think we all should be celebrating the less perfect, but oh so much more interesting parts of ourselves more.

Help me change this.Let’s make the internet a celebration of all sides of our beautiful crazy ass lives. Commit to post on picture of yourself that isn’t perfect. That isn’t edited. That your make up isn’t done. That your body isn’t perfect. Tag it with #ImperfectlyBeautiful. I don’t care where you do it- facebook, twitter, instagram. whatever.

Lets start a movement and bring the real people with real lives back to the internet. Lets start celebrating multifaceted presentations of our lives and our bodies.

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