Sexual Health » Body & Body Image; Society » Culture, Fashion & Beauty: "Summer Love (For Yourself)"

When I was a teenager, on many summer afternoons I would stand in line at the cash register in flip-flops with a sun dress over my bikini, waiting to purchase a cold drink and a salty snack for an afternoon of reading by the river. The glossy faces of celebrities beamed at me like the baking sun from the magazine racks. Nearly every one had a blurb on the front cover involving the words "bikini body" - Five Moves to Get Your Best Bikini Body Fast, Ten Superfoods That Will Drop Pounds and Reveal Your Bikini Body in Time for Summer.

Summer was the only time I bought magazines. They were suitable for reading with hands that were oily from sunscreen. Unlike books, they were disposable and it didn't matter if I ruined them with greasy fingerprints. Magazines were an ideal read for a lazy summer afternoon by the river, in the park, or at the beach.

The idealized media images of summer in the magazines led to many guilt-inspired dinners of salad, attempts at jogging, and cheap make-up purchases at the drug store. Teenaged me saw the skinny bodies and bold, colorful summer clothing and cosmetics as accessories that gained one acceptance to a lifestyle of never-ending beach parties, torrid summer romances, and perhaps even a popularity that would last into the school year. Summer was the season of reinvention. In the liminal space between school years, I could become someone who got invited to parties, someone my school crush would give the time of day to, someone who was a good kisser.

I studied the advertisements and articles, compiling endless lists of the steps towards my reincarnation as someone who other people would like. Unrealistic workout schedules, time-consuming beauty regiments, music playlists of the summer's pop hits. The question I didn't think to ask myself yet was: how do I become a person that I like?

This question has become my answer to the lurid undermining of self-esteem promoted by the unrealistic ideals laid out in the glossy pages of those magazines. How do I become a person that I like?

Basing one’s sense of self-worth on aesthetic appeal and a high-school concept of popularity is frivolous, at best. During a winter of existential crises (those early twenties years), I compiled a list of traits I wanted to see in myself before the age of thirty. Among other things, I wanted to be a well-read, multi-lingual, bicycle-riding woman who’d written a novel and left the country at least once.

Those were goals with which I could make tangible progress, and the process of accomplishing them is its own reward. Reorienting my sense of self-worth away from my appearance to my accomplishments was a healthy and needed outlook change. The “popular crowd” whose approval I once sought seems boring in comparison to time spent pursuing my goals or time spent with people who share my interests. Riding my bicycle has given me more confidence and love for my body than any diet.

As an adult, I rarely have time for lazy summer afternoons soaking up some rays in my bikini. Even when I do have time for a few hours of reading, I don’t give that time to reading something that tells me how to be someone I have no interest in being. I’m too busy being the me I love to be someone else too.