“At the age of fourteen, I really thought I was open-minded about beauty, but the appreciation was totally cerebral. I never actually felt the beauty in different sorts of bodies, never experienced it with my senses.

Just before graduating high school, I began interning with The Body Positive. I was going through what seemed like a million changes at that time, and, needing an outlet for my confusion, I got into visual art. I drew pastel landscapes of the Mono Lake Basin desert, created twisting patterns in the Stinson Beach sand, and made a variety of abstract watercolor paintings in my bed at night. The more weeks I spent with the self-loving, diversely-bodied individuals of The Body Positive, the more I grew to see them as works of natural art, and I examined them with the same close attention I gave to patterned sticks and the tender ridges on the inside walls of a bell pepper.

As a kid, I liked to soften my gaze completely until my eyes lost focus and things became abstract, Rothko-esque blobs, no longer defined by their everyday purposes. At seventeen, I discovered that by letting my mind relax in the same way, I could stop measuring beauty by how closely somebody fit the “ideal” and start going by pure visual intrigue. There were so many entrancing things I had completely dismissed! Aside from their fascinating appearances, I found culturally-shamed body parts especially beautiful because of what they represented. Wrinkles, for instance, are unique records of every expression over one’s life delicately crinkling and creasing into deep, firm lines. My mother expresses embarrassment about the loose flesh of her belly, but it is a product of all the stretching that allowed her to give birth to me, the squishy softness a symbol of the strength and flexibility that parenthood requires. My best friend’s scars are another wonder, because they show the body’s amazing ability to heal, if only partially at times. My great uncle’s age spots show a long existence of growing and learning, having access to memories of a time that I know I can never touch.

And noticing these parts on others makes me understand the true beauty in what I used to call my flaws. I love my funny ears that stick out, the intensity of my facial expressions, my straight hips and subtle curves, the fast-growing hair under my arms, and my short legs.

Like everyone, I am a natural wonder deserving of awe. And it’s so much more fun to live with this knowledge, because I can actually experience the loveliness of those around me rather than acknowledging it vaguely with my head turned away. I see truly exciting things, and others feel delighted when I tell them what I see. We are breathtakingly beautiful when we let ourselves be.”