A woman’s worth, it seems, is measured in how attractive she is to the public at large. I never noticed it when I was young and unmarried. I knew a lot of women suffered from body image issues, but I couldn’t understand why. Who cares if you look like some stranger in a magazine or not? I shrugged it off and went about my business.
Fast forward to after I got married and had my first child. Body image issues hit me like a ton of bricks. What had happened to my youthful appearance?! I had stretch marks etched on my hip (just one hip, so it wasn’t even symmetrical) a dark vertical line running down my midsection, and I looked like an overstuffed sausage in all of my pre-pregnancy clothing. I panicked. What was my husband going to think? He is going to be so horrified and wonder what happened to the girl that he married!