Hello gorgeous! Yes you!

“Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.”

Sophia Loren, academy-award winning actress, beauty icon, and one of Italy’s greatest exports after pasta, said that quote. If you don’t know who she is then I suggest you watch “Arabesque” and then the more recent movie “Nine” in which she shows that you can be gorgeous at any age.

I’m offering this section on beauty and makeup this week because it is fun. But also so I could write this column and tell readers that they are beautiful- or for you men-handsome.

Beauty is not a word society can define so I encourage you to feel it inside yourself and to remember everyone is beautiful in his or her own way. And the most important thing to take away from this is that being healthy should be the goal.

Glamour magazine conducted a survey, which they explained in March’s issue. It said 97 percent of women will be mean to their body today. Being mean to their body could mean any type of behavior, but specifically thinking negative thoughts about their image.

I’m admitting now, that I am one of those women. I have always been my own worst critic and at the same time relying on others’ approval for my happiness.

One of the powerful things about being a writer is that I can reach a fairly large number of people with my message. I’ve recently realized this, and so I’ve made it my goal to let every woman know she is beautiful no matter what size she is whether it is a size double zero or size 28.

From personal experience it has taken me seven years to reach this conclusion and I’m still working on it. I’ve been on every diet imaginable, but the one that I practiced most was eating around 500 calories a day. That’s not exactly healthy. The suggested number of calories for a balanced diet is 2,000 and most doctors recommend cutting out at most 500 calories to lose weight.

I thought I would be happy when I finally reached that size two goal of mine, as you can probably guess, I was not. My weight wasn’t the problem; it was my confidence.

Reading Crystal Renn’s memoir of transforming from anorexic model into a plus sized model helped me realize that our bodies are supposed to be one size. Most people go on a diet only to come back to about the size they were before, which is healthy for them.

I wasn’t meant to be a size two. I am meant to be a size six to eight.

When Loren said “beauty” I think she meant the confidence you feel inside. Cut back on the negative voices inside your head so you can see yourself for who you really are, a beautiful person.

I told myself that I was ugly and fat all the time and I would harm my body in other unhealthy way. Now I try to compliment myself, not in a vain way, but just in a realistic and loving way. It’s not easy and don’t get mad if you can’t do it right away, it takes time.

I hope that you will join me in my quest to tell everyone that they are beautiful. Start with your friends. My high-school friends and I would talk about how fat we were all the time. It might feel like you’re bonding, but you end up resenting them in the end. So be positive.

You need to be happy with yourself by yourself, but it always helps to give and receive encouragement.

I’m not going to rant about our society today and our idea of the “perfect size.” Instead, I want to say you should pick role models to look up to in how they embrace their size, skinny or curvy. But never compare yourself to anyone. That’s when we fall into that self-hating downward spiral.

Face it there’s no one in the world like you and that’s a good thing.

Posted by Danielle Paluga on Feb 10 2011. Filed under Close Up, Special Sections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.