Admittedly, this post is a little dim the lights, don a beret, and go all out Sharpie with your lower lid liner, but sometimes when it rains all day every day fora week straight you tend toward a little drama.

My perception of beauty has always been tied to weight. It’s not like I had a specific experience that made me think ohhh, skinny is pretty, not skinny is not… I just knew.

It was as innate as green meaning go. Sure, somebody must’ve decided it at some point, but I never gave it much thought. I just absorbed it as an aspect of society.

It pains me to look back at photos of my high school self. The face in those photos believed with every iota of her being that she was fat. Fat, and therefore ugly. Worthless.

In high school I was mayyyybe 110lbs soaking wet. At 5’9”. I wasconvinced that being over 100lbs made me obese.

I was thin and lithe and had absolutely no clue.

via mybodybeautiful uk

By my understanding of the world, I should have felt beautiful. I was SO thin. Painfully thin. Awkward, are-we-sure-she-doesn’t-have-an-eating-disorder, thin. But I didn’t.

I’ve been a size 12 and felt fat and ugly. I’ve been a size 2 and felt fat and ugly. Something wasn’t adding up.

During my training as a pediatrician I started seeing gorgeous young women starving themselves into skeletal husks of human. I’d care for these teens, young women mostly, but a few young men too, who so desperately wanted to fit their ideal of beauty they were literally risking their life.

The scariest part? I kind of got it. I understood where they were coming from. And that’s when I knew I needed to reexamine things.

There is more to being beautiful than weight. So so so much more and I’d like to take the next few weeks of this column to examine some beauty regimens that have nothing to do with our exteriors.

I recently came across a quote that is just begging to be embroidered onto a pillow:

You’re not fat. You have fat.

You have fingernails. You are not fingernails.

Fat is not a feeling.

Nancy Novak, MD