Okay, I said it. Nipples. There it is again. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate that word?
Nipples. So here we go. Class, I did not want to have to talk about this subject, but it has become necessary at this point to bring it up. No, "bring it up" is not a tongue-in-cheek reference to my nipples, so you can stop right there.
Nipples. Why am I talking about this? Why do I keep repeating the word nipples?
Well to be honest I am trying to psyche myself up into actually writing this bit about insecurities in general; Glaringly evil, wicked insecurities.
Maybe nipples are no big deal for you. Yours may be entirely normal and not obnoxious in the very least. Maybe they are just a little more relaxed in certain situations. Maybe they are relaxed most of the time until you need them to be there and then BAM... NIPPLES!
Me? You really don't want to know this, I know. Ever since I was a boy, I have been barrel-chested. I have a rather large chest that sometimes gets in my way.
I think because of this, my nipples always appear to be at the ready. You know prepared for the next great war, terrorist attack, ready to run into battle to fend of the alien invasion, or the zombie apocalypse, or well, whatever. It doesn't matter what temperature it is here, whether hot or cold; they are there.
Present. Available? On-the-ready. BOOM. I have been well aware of this ever since I was a boy and it has been the source of much embarrassment, insecurity and well, shame. For the longest time in my youth I would walk around with my shoulders hunched over to de-emphasize the pronouncement of my chest. Parents and friends always told to me to stand up straight and hold my shoulders back and use better posture for fear I would become a hunch-back. Until one day, when I got older I realized that I was not so different than others.
I convinced myself that maybe they weren't so bad. Maybe this is all in my head, this obsession with people making fun of me or noticing. Maybe the whole time it was just me be being silly. So from that point on I threw back my shoulders, and walked with my head held high and my chest out. This came as a huge relief to my back and neck which had been hurting due to the aforementioned hunch, and I again began to feel somewhat normal.
Normal that is until someone, usually trying to get a good laugh would say "is it cold in here?"
People
People don't seem to realize the power their words have sometimes. My friends would most likely never know that I had this strange insecurity about these obvious body parts of mine. So, they might not realize that drawing attention to that area of my body, be it negative or positive almost always makes me feel a little ill. It makes me feel noticed, strange, abnormal -- deformed even. The feelings I have towards my own body are startling at times - don't get me started.
To speak of them usually worries people or makes them realize they are not alone in their own self-judgement of their body. So for me, bringing up the fact that I have nipples is one thing you can do to really make me feel awkward and sometimes hurt me deeply, especially if you are someone I love and trust. It usually just makes me want to run and hide. Sometimes I do that in my head anyway when this happens.
Recently, I have been told the following:
"Is it cold in here?"
"Must have been cold over there."
"NIPPLES!" (as a one word comment on Facebook in regards to a picture of me)
"If you were gay you would have no problem getting men with nipples like that"
"Dude, you're nippin'"
In the past it has made me want to walk around wearing two shirts in the Summer. It has made me want to never take my shirt off. It actually did make me want to change my posture. But these days, I don't worry about it so much. Instead I just usually grin and bear it. Lately, not a lot can hurt me.
I have this person now who loves me in a way that makes me feel like I am alright. She is the only person that I allow to talk to me about my chest and she always makes me feel normal and happy and well not weird at all about it. In fact, her kind words and observations make me feel good about myself in general, and dare I say comfortable in my own skin? I have a new appreciation for my body because of it, and I am more resilient to the comments I hear.
That's not to say that the comments have no effect whatsoever.
Wrinkles
Funny thing is that as she feeds my self-esteem with her love for me, I do the same for her. She has these amazing lines on her forehead. She calls them wrinkles and relates them to being old. I don't see them that way. For her these wrinkles are as noticeable and as unwanted as my over-obvious nipples are for me. When someone notices them or uses them to make a joke or says anything about them, it sets off a score of insecurities in her, and it causes her to have a physiological reaction to those particular comments.
Sometimes she will spend an entire day stressing and feeling ugly and unattractive and weird because of just one comment made by someone she loves and trusts. I do the same thing when it comes to my chest.
And again for me, her wrinkles are beautiful. I love the way her forehead scrunches up when she smiles, for real. Because when she is completely relaxed, and at ease and in the zone, she smiles with her whole being. She is not worried about how she looks to me. She is just in the moment having fun, laughing and being herself. She lights up the world usually at those times.
Her face is this amazing projector of joy and giddiness and just awesome bright beauty. She is so beautiful when she lets go and just smiles like that -- her forehead wrinkled, her teeth showing, her eyes bright and wide and blue and her cheeks dimpled. This is usually at those times when she has not done her makeup and her hair is not styled in any way at all whatsoever.
This is real beauty, not some contrived, dressed up, over-glamorous attempt at beauty. Not some relaxed forehead, lips sealed, hair and makeup poised, put-on and forced attempt at prettiness, but a genuine explosion of life that is both outlandish and aggressive and soft and sweet and takes your heart by storm. She is all of that when she is not even trying. She is beautiful in so many ways and no one generally gets to see this but me, because she is afraid to show her forehead lines to others. So what do I do? I take lots of pictures. Lots. And I show them to others, usually on Facebook.
For other people (those with insecurities), it is their eye brows, their nose, their ears, hair, belly, butt, feet, breasts, neck, you name it. For some reason anything that we see as different than the norm, or even a little more noticeable than others about our face or body, we tend to obsess about. We fear others noticing those things about us. And we anticipate the comments that might come from those observations.
It's like we are all doing fine usually, but in the back of our head, is this ever-repeating mantra, "I hope they don't notice my nipples right now" or "is my forehead relaxed right now?" Or "Am I sucking in my gut enough?" Or "remember to keep your mouth closed when you smile, dummy" Or "I wonder if this jacket is covering my overly large misshapen hips." And so on and so forth. We are always stressed about people noticing, because people don't seem to realize when to just keep quiet about things.
What can we do to help those who are insecure?
I want to ask you to think about your own insecurities. Maybe you have something you don't really like people noticing about yourself. Maybe you think you have hidden it well and that no one really sees it the way you do.
Now imagine someone noticing and making a comment to your face about it. Imagine how that might feel. So the next time you are looking at someone's picture on Facebook or you see them in real life, don't say anything to them that might point out their obvious differences.
Chances are they have already heard that joke, that line, that particular critique of their body or face. Just keep it to yourself. Say something else. Say something nice about something you think they may want commentary on.
Use your mind and remember, we all have things about our body and our face that we care to keep to ourselves. Don't make it your business to expose those things for others.
If you have recently said hurtful things to someone even unwittingly, then find them and let them know about your insecurity and tell them you are sorry. If you are one of my friends and have said one of the things above about my chest, don't sweat it, I did not expect you to realize that these comments would forever be engraved in my mind due to my particular insecurities. Just, watch that stuff in the future would ya? :)
