A woman called me ugly and this is how I responded

Somebody wrote to Jordan last night to tell him that I was ugly and to ask why he kept posting about me.
This woman has based her career on being a model (and is now a dating coach).
I spent my entire teenage life thinking that my looks were the only source of my value.
I spent so much time and energy that I wish I could have back, thinking I was ugly.
But here’s the thing I want you to know: those standards I was taught to see my beauty by?
They weren’t real.
I dropped those, 7 or 8 years ago.
Today I compare my beauty to the ocean and to the dirt and to storms and the sunset.
I don’t compare my beauty to photos in magazines.
My hope is that you look at me and think: Wow, she doesn’t play that game.
I hope you think: She has the most incredible relationship and is so loved and has everything she could want in the world, and she is still not “model-pretty.”
I hope you think: She is so secure in herself, and she posts her scars and cellulite on the internet and rarely even wears makeup.
And I hope you take that one step further – a step further than this woman did last night – and I hope you say…
“That must mean she found something within herself, in her connection with the world – and that must mean I can find that too.”
I’m looking out at the ocean and I want you to know: the ocean does not care about how beautiful you are.
The pleasure you can experience in your body is not dependent on how beautiful you are.
The intensity of your orgasms? Your magnetism? Your magic?
Not dependent on how beautiful you are.
I’ve found so much joy, actually, in embracing my grossness.
Because when you realize that you can feel gross and things about you are gross and yet you can get off on that and love every single thing about existence?
That is the most freeing feeling in the entire world.
I wish that for you.
And I wish that too, for that woman messaging my partner.
If you liked this piece, you might also enjoy:
– Watch the stories your mind creates
– Shunning makeup is a sign of wounding with the masculine
– How to stop thinking about your body during sex
– The way you have been taught to feel is wrong
– You can get wet every single time you have sex