Dress your best!

This week the lovely bloggers at academichic has challenged other bloggers to dress to show off our best body parts. We must each make a list of the five things we love the most about our body.

Sadly it's so much easier to make a hate list, and a long one too!

Now, shouldn't we always dress our best, I immediately asked myself. Yes we should. And now I have a nice "love list" to go by. But I only have five things on that list, and finding those was hard enough. The overall problem is that most women will focus solely on their problem areas and forget their perfectly shaped parts. What if we were to make a list of a hundred things we love about our body?

When I look into the mirror I always see the dark circles under my eyes instead of the beautiful dark teal colour that they have. That's just so negative! From now on I will make one day a week a dress your best day - and try to find new body parts for my love list.

In late August I will be starting a new education, with lots of students much younger than me -  a terrifying thought. So I will need all the self confidence I can get. Having a weekly dress your best day I will be forced to focus on my assets and get a more positive attitude. That will most likely free some energy to be spent on learning new things instead.

I don't think we can loose the hate list completely, but I do think we owe it to ourselves to minimize it. Both in our inner dialogue and when gossipping about other women, which most women do! What if we all started looking for five things we admire in a woman instead of looking for what makes her look "worse" than us?

Anyway, this is my love list:

1) My smile - it says speaks more than words, instantly connects me to others, makes other people smile back. It also makes me look prettier. During the dress your best days I will do my best to wear lipstick to bring focus to my smile and I will SMILE a lot more!

2) My waist - even with my expanding size it's still there. Depending on how I dress it allows me to look slimmer than I actually am. I will wear fitted clothes to show off my hourglass figure and ignore the fact that loose fitting clothes are so much more comfortable in hot summer weather.

3) Bust! When I was younger, untill I got pregnant (1999), I had NOTHING. I would try on the smallest bras and I could never fill them. Now I'm a DD, and I love it! Over the years I have experimented with various ways of showing off cleavage and found that it's not so much about how much is on show as how nicely they are "wrapped". In other words: Fitted tops and dresses!

4) My nose - I like the shape and size. I think it's cute. It's also where my glasses are sitting. Lots of people have issues with their noses. Sometimes a nose is so eye catching that it takes away the focus from the owners lovely personality and otherwise beautiful appearance. I count myself lucky to be blessed with this one.I will honor my nose by wearing glasses with a bit of colour or decoration.

5) My forearms - they always look slender in comparison to my enormous hands. My fingers are so thick that I can only wear mens size rings, like US size 11 ½. Therefore I really enjoy wearing bracelets especially bangles, and lots of them. It's hard work to find some that will go over my big hands, I need a diameter of 2,5". But I have a nice little collection now that I use all the time.

Finally, a big thank you to Academichic! I love this project and can't wait to share it with my friends.