hey beautiful ♫

"I will never be the woman with the perfect hair, who can wear white and not spill on it." - Carrie Bradshaw

We all need to take a look every now and then at those less privileged than us to realize how blessed we truly are. It gets us back on track, but sadly only for a short while.

That's what happened during a surgery lecture about burns we took last week. A plastic surgeon was showing us pictures of burn victims, explaining to us how this and that got burned, how she managed to save them, and how they recovered. Mind you, recover is a relative term here. Most of the people in those pictures will remain disfigured for life, but they are thankful for being alive and functioning.

The pictures were very disturbing and heartbreaking. Even after years as a medical student there are some scenes your eyes just can't get used to. One reason why I don't consider plastic surgery or dermatology.

Back to the lecture, I kept thinking how we complain a lot about how we look. It's a bad habit, but we all do it. We obsess over the monthly pimple, and God forbid we get more than one, the world would then have come to an end. We want to lose weight. Why isn't my hair voluminous enough? We hate the dark circles under our eyes, we call ourselves "zombies" and "pandas" and some other names. We want Gisele Bundchen's legs. Look how big my nose looks when I smile! And the list goes on...

But we are beautiful. We are, and I quote my lovely friend B here, beauty queens. We are smart, we are funny, we are kind, we are doing the things we love, we are surrounded by our amazing families and friends, and most important of all, we are healthy.

As I said, the effect only lasts for a short time. But I've decided I'll try to stop obsessing over how I look. No more magnifying the tiny flaws. No more staring at the the made-up, airbrushed models in magazines and sighing... I'm always told I'm beautiful, why isn't that ever enough?

So who's in with me?

♥