“All the time wasted, caring about this shit.”   Jacky O’Shaughnessy

Yesterday I watched Jacky O’Shaughnessy’s contribution to the Style Like U “What’s Underneath” project (link below), a series in which people are asked to tell their story as they undress.  All of the interviewees reveal poignant experiences, and this one really made me stop and think.

Jacky is in her sixties and new to modelling, having recently been discovered by American Apparel.  Some of her words deeply resonated with me, particularly as she described asking of herself:

“When are you going to be okay?  You’ve been spending nearly fifty years trying to get thin enough, trying not to have cellulite, or ankles that swell … when are you going to be okay?  And I finally said:  Today, you’re going to be okay today.”

So I asked myself, how authentic can you be if you don’t accept yourself totally?  Can you have one without the other?  As I sit here and think about it – again – I don’t think you can.  I do believe that you can be authentic and feel insecure, but only if you accept those insecurities as part of yourself.  You don’t have to be super-confident, but you do have to have the courage to be accept all of you, including the messy parts.  This must be a truth I’m struggling with because I keep having to remind myself, stumbling across this thought again as if it’s new.

Acceptance doesn’t mean you can’t change, and it doesn’t mean you have to love all of you.  Sometimes love can be too big a place to start, liking is a good start.  Authenticity isn’t a static thing, it’s fluid and what being true to yourself is in this moment may be different in an hour, a day, a month.  Whatever it may be, you know it when you feel it inside, it feels like peace.

Am I there yet?  Only in brief flashes.  It does easier with practice and consciousness, which is what this year of trying to live more authentically has brought me, an awareness.  It’s somewhat sad to me that I find it easier to accept the messy parts of my personality than to make peace with the way I look.  There’s something a little screwy in the power we give that mirror.  I value my personality more than I value the way I look, so why is it so much harder to embrace those physical flaws?  And why have I wasted all this time, caring about this shit?

As Jacky said, “Learning to love myself was very hard; it took intention and practice.”  Thank you for the inspiration.  I know I’m on the right path, I’m practicing.  And I hope that some day soon I will be telling myself “Today, you are going to be okay today.”  That is what is underneath for me.

 

Link to the Style Like U interview  http://stylelikeu.com/themes-2/body-image/jacky-o-shaughnessy/