Do you like how you look?

I thought the same til I saw MY's post on here! haha! I think the majority of women will have some sort of hang up about their appearance, and we are our own biggest critics.

If I lost all the weight I've put on the over the ladt few years I'd be much happier about myself. I need to lose a good 3 stone just to put me around the top end of my healthy weight range.

I'd still not be the prettiest of girls, but with make up there's a defnite improvement. I just can't be arsed most of the time to bother with it!

I'm just really really lazy. I know I need to lose weight but I love my food too much to really try lately. Even my wedding wasn't enough of an incentive to diet!

I like naughty food. I can't change this. If I stop eating it I get miserable. I need to lose a few stone to be a healthy weight really, but that won't happen for a little while yet.

I hate my legs mostly. I do however like my boobs!

Currently feeling like I have no "style", I have a mish mash of things in my wardrobe, none of which really goes with anything else!!

This thread has highlighted something rather awful to me about myself.

If I'd thought about this 18 months ago then my answer would have been 'yes' while what i actually meant was 'I'm far too busy to even think about this. I comb my hair in front of a steamed up mirror, get dressed into smart clothes and go to work. For many years I really hadn't given my appearance a second thought. I have a decent haircut regularly so I'm presentable. I lose weight periodically as a health concern, but don't look in the mirror.'

My answer now, after WP for a year and a half, is that I really don't like the way I look. I've lost 5st since becoming engaged, and have become more body conscious as I start making my dress. I suppose that I hadn't really looked at myself for so long that when I started again I had aged and got fat and become a middle aged matron, which is perfectly normal but not how I feel on the inside (except it is actually). I doubt that i will ever particularly like the way i look, I'm just holding out some hope that once the wedding is over and no-one is likely to be pointing a camera at me again, i can forget about it.

You can change your perception of it, though. No food is 'naughty'. Food is just food, it has no moral value. I know exactly what you mean by it, but if you try to alter your mindset, it should help

I have days where I think I look fugly and fat in everything I own, and that makes me miserable.

But generally, I don't *hate* the way I look. I'm a lot slimmer now than I was 4 years ago, and I just think about that. Nobody's perfect, and nobody should try to be either.

Beauty is, after all, subjective.

I disagree with this. How can there be a "commonly accepted standard" when attractiveness is subjective?

I dunno, I think there is - stuff like body weight/size, long shiny hair, smooth tan skin, perfect teeth. I'm not saying that there aren't people out there who find different looks attractive, of course there are. But look at our female celebrities, particularly American ones - most of them are trying to conform to those standards. That's why people who don't, like say Rebel Wilson or Gabourey Sidibe, are made such a fuss of.

I'm 35 this year and the smallest/lightest I have been since I was 16 (piled it on, kept it for 17 years, lost it) but still I'm not happy. There is so much i would change about my appearance, starting with my teeny boobs, I would change my hip size, my hairline, my wonky lopsided face, my various vile scars, my sticky out fangs, my awful skin. But that said, I know I am not a complete munter and I should just be happy with what I've got and stop worrying about my imperfections. It won't change my life in any way as I have learned since losing the weight.

I think sometimes it helps to see yourself through the eyes of your parents (if you get on with them..?). They will - more often than not - think you are the most beautiful precious creature they have ever laid eyes on. Also, if someone spoke to you the way you speak to yourself in the mirror, how would you react?

I get on great with my parents generally, but my mum definitely doesn't think that about me! She likes to tell me how fat I look in things - "breathe in" is one of her favourite phrases. A couple years ago on Boxing Day she told me that if I didn't stop eating the chocolate I had gotten for Christmas, I'd get diabetes.

I'm fat and need to lose weight. I do think I'm "ok" looking though. I take great pride in my appearance, have pretty good hair and take a lot of care in my skin. I always make an effort to look nice and love makeup. I need to get to the gym though and need a massive kick up the arse in that respect.

I don't think that the OP is about attractiveness though is it? It's about being comfortable in your own skin. I think that my discomfort at this point comes from having had, eseentially, a lifetime of not considering how I look: nerdy teen, (v brief period of hair dying/make up wearing in here), academic, speccy, married early twenties (wore makeup that day: the foundation and eyeshadow I bought on the the day before my first wedding are still the newest ones in my make up bag), over 20 years of worrying/concentrating on other things, got fat, got thinner, got fat again; worried about this from health point of view.

I join Hitched and women are booking professional make up artists. I honestly didn't know this was even a thing outside theatre/film work. Suddenly it becomes important to me that I 'be beautiful' for this man who's known me for over 25 years and I can dispassionately see that I'm not. It's a very very uncomfortable feeling for me to even be thinking these thoughts; I suspect that this is horribly delayed teen angst: I never ever worried about this as a teen.

..and yes I am making my own dress, very slowly! ?

Erm yes and no. The way I feel about myself changes daily, if I feel a bit low then I think I look sh1t, I look for flaws in myself and it feels very heightened, then when I'm having a good day I look at myself and I think I look ok. I don't think I'm ugly or pretty, I guess somewhere in the middle. I do hate certain parts of me, my sticky out ears for a start, my top teeth are a bit off centre because I stopped wearing a brace when I was younger and I am extremely pale, these 3 things do give me a complex if I think about them for long enough. On the flip side, I have things that I like about myself. I would say I'm ok with how I look but there is certainly room for improvement but I'm not itching for that improvement just yet.

Ha! Now I sound like I love myself!

I'm nowhere near perfect, nobody is...and if I had a magic wand I'm sure I'd change a thing or two.

For me the OP is asking if I am comfortable in my own skin, and for the first time since childhood I can say yes. I'm not ugly, I'm not morbidly obese, I don't smoke or risk my health in any other way. I could do more with hair and make up but frankly I'd rather spend my time on things I enjoy. So on balance I am happy with how I look.

I just find it a shame that most people who are unhappy feel so because of some image they have in their head of how they 'should' look. I can appreciate people feeling upset about scars or illnesses that can't be changed, but the amount of gorgeous women (and man) on here who feel like they need to lose weight to be happy with themselves saddens me. I mean this in a genuine, non-patronising way.

No I'm not happy with the way I look. I'm the heaviest I ever have been and it just depresses me even though at size 14 its not exactly massive. I hate the fact I'm getting old and starting to show it. I could spend all day listing the things I would change and very few things I would keep the same.

H2B tells me I'm beautiful but given how old and fat I've become since I met him I wonder how. His ex was 14 years younger and a good few dress sizes smaller than me so there is always that comparison in the back of my mind.

But this isn't a new thing. I thought it was until I found a diary from when I was 18 a couple of weeks ago. In it are my teenage angst moments which are quite funny. (do you remember the 'top ten diary' that was popular - you wrote down the weekly chart toppers too. Its full of 80's big hair!) But also quite revealing were the weekly weigh ins I would have at the boots weigh in computer thing (a digital scale with a print out was the height of technology back then). The print outs were stuck in the diary with comments, mainly around how fat and disgusting I was. I was between 8 stone and 8 1/2 stone in most of them (I'm 5'8), at least half a stone of which was probably hair spray. I remember being thin, I don't remember thinking I was fat and how unattractive I thought I was. If only I could go back and tell the younger me to enjoy life and stop worrying about how I looked.

So I'm trying, in addition to getting fit, to start some positive mental attitude a bit more. Thinking what would the 68 year old me come back and tell me now. Probably think less about your appearance and more about your health and enjoying life etc. Not sure it will work but would hate to read my diary in another 25 years time and think 'if only'.

I guess "do you like how you look" can be interpreted in different ways, but for me, trying to be what society perceives as 'attractive' (and this does usually mean thin) has always been intrinsically bound up with how much I like how I look, and I can't be comfortable if I don't like what I see in the mirror. I wish I could separate the two, but I doubt many modern Western women can.

I have a daughter with an eating disorder and severe body dysmorphia. At her worst time, she weighed six stone, you could see every bone in her body and I was afraid to hug her in case she broke in two. She still thought she was fat. She still thinks she is fat now after six years of this awful illness. I don't care what size she is, or what she looks like - she is my daughter and I love her no matter what. Thats why I don't worry about how I look most of the time. I know it isn't looks that matter and although I do want to lose weight, that is purely to ease the osteoarthritis pain. When you look in that mirror and don't like what you see, could you all just look behind you and say ah, but here I am with someone who loves me, I'm healthy (even if comoaratively) and I have friends and a life to live. Now slap on a smie girl and enjoy it!!

If my daughter could go back and change things, she would x

As the op my post was around the fact that I don't like how I look but I can't find the motivation to do anything about it. Liking how I look IMO has no basis on a conventional idea of beauty, especially one perpetrated by the media. I'm crap with even knowing who celebrities are let alone wanting to emulate them.

My body hang ups are more based on my scars, my pregnant looking belly, my hair that won't 'do' anything and my dreadful skin, not the fact I don't look like someone in the media. I've never ever been on a diet and I certainly don't want to start now- so I guess I need to learn to be happy in the skin that I have.

But who's telling you scars can't be beautiful? Where did the idea come from that a belly has to be flat? It's not about wanting to emulate celebrities directly, it's more that they perpetuate a beauty ideal that already exists and has done since before most of us were born. I completely understand your feelings cos mine are often the same - not about my scars, I love them now, but it isn't an easy process at all. There are no positive role models with such big keloid scars like mine.

You're very lucky to have never been on a diet though - my mum put the idea of diets in my head while I was still in primary school, and I don't think I will ever escape it.

When I've spent some time on my hair and makeup, and I'm wearing something flattering, then yes, I am actually happy with the way I look. It takes an awful lot of effort for that to happen though.

Day to day, I'm not particularly enamoured with my appearance. Although I'm generally happy with my weight at the moment, I've still got a flabby tummy which I never had pre-baby, my hair is really frizzy and my skin is uneven and blotchy.

When I have done my hair, and put my face on, I am "OK" with how I look.

I have trashed my hair with so much bleaching, so I am trying to keep it as natural as I can atm, and I HATE it, I feel so meh.

I don't think the media is to blame for our insecurities. I'm fairly certain people were insecure long before the papperazi (sp?) arrived.

Definitely. Women in particular have been told how they "should" look for centuries. The media does tend to magnify these things though.

I haven't responded to this yet as I don't really know how to answer. I think realistically - no I don't like how I look but I don't hate it enough to really make an effort.

I am always making a 'bit' of an effort but I know I really need to step it up and stop eating cake if I'm going to make a real difference.