Pink Ginger Lingerie

Once I was Beautiful, Now I'm Me

It’s amazing to see the power of the web. People link to us from around the world. I don’t often get a chance to go back and see where the links come from, but last night I had a minute, so I traced back a link. It was to a woman’s blog down in the states. The title of her blog was “Once I was Beautiful and Now I’m Me”. I didn’t have time to read her blog.

This morning, I was still thinking about those words. 10 years ago, I was battling myself. I’d have to say, I didn’t get too carried away because I always had a quiet acceptance of who I was. That being said, I was definitely prettier and youthful. I didn’t carry the battle scars of birthing four beautiful children. I didn’t have the lines on my forehead, or the subtle grey hairs which I’ve noticed recently.

Today, I am me. I feel quite grounded in who I am. I’d rather be me, than fighting for ‘Hollywood Beautiful’. Yah, I still have those bad days. I have the days that I think …if I was better…if I was botoxed… but at the end of the day, I refuse to spend an unreasonable amount of time worrying about food, weight, wrinkles or grey hairs.

And you know what? As I’ve accepted myself, I’ve also accepted others. In Pink Ginger, we really celebrate and appreciate natural body shapes and understand that physical appearance says very little about who people are, about their character or their value as a person.

We struggle in the store. We refuse to perpetuate the “Hollywood Beauty” but even the images of lingerie we have on our website are fake-breasted airbrushed models.

I get asked often about boob jobs by women, particularly after they’ve had kids. I see a number of boob jobs. (Again, we do have great lingerie, so we’ll see an escort in the store about once a week. And yes, boob jobs seem to be a requirement for the job.) Plastic boobs just don’t do it for me. If we ever watch porn, we choose ones where the girls are real.

My answer to the women, particularly mom’s, is that I don’t like boob jobs. Very very few don’t look fake. I also rarely see a set of new boobs actually improve body image over the longer term. Generally, they were looking to fix a problem that surgery couldn’t fix.

More importantly, I always worry about the message we send out to our daughters. If your daughter was 17 and wasn’t busty enough and had a floppy tummy, would you suggest she go in for a set of boobs and tummy tuck? I wouldn’t. Getting your boobs done sends a message that our bodies aren’t good enough. I want my babes to love themselves and their bodies…just as they are. I want to let my girls just be who they are.

So, this week, I would encourage everyone to “just be me”. Funny enough, you may just see a new definition emerge.

Oh, yah, and did I mention sex is just that much better when you feel great about yourself?