Who needs a Valentine when I have ME?

While for many, February is a time for planning a romantic gesture for a signifcant other, for others it can be a little harder.  For those of us without a Valentine, February means cold days and nights.  It’s not all bad news though.  Along with being the month of Valentine’s Day, and Black History Month, February is also International Boost Self-Esteem Month.

I remember being a 10 year old kid in an elementary school classroom the first time I’d ever heard the words “self-esteem”.  It wasn’t exactly something I thought about on a daily basis because I hadn’t yet been exposed to the insecurities that everyone feels once they reach a certain age.  The presenter explained the idea of self-esteem to us through a balloon.  He filled it up, and told us to imagine that the air in the balloon was good feelings we had about ourselves.  He let air out slowly as he made negative comments, in order to illustrate to us how self-esteem can be affected by those around us.

As cheesy as it sounds, it stuck with me for all these years.  Almost 13 years later, I still feel the imaginary balloon inside of me that contains my self-esteem.  It’s pretty full right now, but it wasn’t always that way.  I had my insecurities just like everyone else; I still have some today.  But that’s okay.  Learning to love yourself as you are is quite the process.  As women, we all look in the mirror on a daily basis and probably have different things about us that we don’t like.  It’s been fed to us since we hit puberty that if we don’t look a certain way, we’re not attractive.  We’ve been told all our lives that we should do this or that for the purpose of others.

I can probably go to Yahoo or some other news site centered around pop culture and find an article about women’s fashion trends that men most like, or makeup looks that men hate.  These are things targeted to us women to make us feel like everything we do should be with a man in mind.  But you know what, I refuse to fall into that trap.

I love myself, I love the way I look.  I love myself without makeup, I love myself with makeup.  Sure, I’ve had ex boyfriends who tell me “Oh I hate makeup, you look so much better without it.”  I even had one who told me I was “fake” because of it.  The problem though, is that I don’t put on makeup for them.  I don’t put on makeup so someone will look at me and think I’m attractive.  I wear the makeup I do because I like it.  I choose the makeup I want to buy because I like the way it will look.  I dress the way I want to dress.  I will leave my hair a crazy curly mess, throw on a sweatshirt and jeans, and go to class because I like the way it looks.  (That’s not to say that if you’re a woman who enjoys getting dolled up every day of the week that you’re wrong.  If you do, you go girl, I wish I had the motivation to do that every day.)

It took me a long time to be okay with myself.  It took me a long time to truly know my worth, and to build up my self-esteem.  And that’s a process I think every woman has to go through.  No one can help you love yourself.  You have to work at it and truly believe that you are amazing, beautiful, courageous, strong, and every other positive adjective you can think of.  Without self-esteem, you can become vulnerable to the traps set by the media all the time; the fad diets, the photoshopped images in magazines.

If you’re currently on a weight-loss mission, good for you.  If you’re trying to be happy with the body you have, that’s great.  If you want plastic surgery for yourself and your own reasons, good luck.  If you wear tons of makeup every day because you like makeup, awesome.  If you hate makeup and never wear it, that’s cool too.

So if you have a Valentine, that’s awesome and I hope your Valentine’s Day is all you wanted it to be.  If you don’t have a Valentine, don’t sweat it, that just means you don’t have to compromise on what to do next Friday night.  In any case, how about we spend February pulling together and working on ourselves?  Let’s all learn to love ourselves and truly mean it, instead of just saying it because you feel like you should.

For the next three weeks, my mission will be to not be bitter about Valentine’s Day, keep my chin up, and my self-esteem balloon full.  What will you do to boost your self-esteem?

Until next time Divas, wear your heels well!  And let’s truly love ourselves!