FOR YOUR INFORMATION, EVERY CULTURE OR SOCIETY DEFINES BEAUTY DIFFERENTLY

As a young girl growing up beauty and body image is always defined by the culture you are in. When i was growing up in a small tribe in Uganda, my tribe had their own way of defining beauty. They still do. As a young girl in that village, your world is so small that being accepted and looked at as beautiful girl was very important. As a matter of fact this had a huge impact on my adult life when it came to dating. I remember my family members making big comments especially from my mom about who will ever marry me the way i looked. As far as i remember i was a very skinny little girl and as i grew to be a teenager i still was a size zero.

Women from my tribe genetically are very fat. Every school i went to i was always the skinniest amongst my age mates. This was one of the most depressing time of my life. I was bullied and teased for being my size. To make matters worse as a young woman i developed really late compared to all the girls my age. I remember i would pray to God to give me stretch marks, fat legs, a fat behind and an inner belly button. All these were and still are the greatest signs of beauty on a woman in my tribe and i had non of these by the age of seventeen. I never received any attention from boys like most girls this age. Oh God , i was so miserable. I hid it very well though because God had given me a great personality and my smile and laughter was infectious. But this did not stop people in my school to openly say that my face was wasted on a terrible body like i had. I remember, There was this girl that used to like me because of my personality and i was two classes a head of her. One day she mentioned that she wished she could take my head off and put it on a different body type that fit the good futures of my face so could be beautiful. When i asked what she meant, she listed all the good futures on my face and the terrible futures on the rest of the body. I felt like i wanted to die. In my tribe your body type defines beauty more that your face.

Another story i remember vividly was one of our neighbor's daughter's comment that used to walk with me from school. This was like a four miles journey to my house. She asked me to wrap my sweater tight around my waist and as i did this she was dying of laughter almost the whole journey about how small my butt looked. When i was in middle and throughout high school i attended boarding schools. And this was a nightmare. We had a few bathrooms and most of us would bathe out in the open but our dormitories were safely and privately secured. This was so hard for me because all the girls would be laughing at me asking whether i was a girl or a boy. I always laughed along with them just to put on a cover and ease my pain. But it was not funny. It hurt so bad.

However, it was very confusing when i moved to London at twenty one, and i couldn't understand why everyone was fussing about how beautiful and what a great body i had. Having grown up knowing that you will never be beautiful and that you have such a bad figure had had a toll on me and i had given up on any man ever being attracted to me. So now, i am in England and i cant keep all these men away from me including surprisingly those from my tribe too. I guess they had been exposed to another culture now. It was confusing. And i loved the attention and did not care who gave it to me. It didn't even occur to me that i had a choice. This eventually brought so much heartache to my life. I didn't know what to do with the attention.

Then as i came to the USA, i was even more shocked to find out how fat people are treated here. Especially with the young people in schools today. I realized that what is happening to the fat people here is the same as what was happening to me growing up. Are you kidding me, I remember wishing if i could find ways of taking all the fat people to my tribe and bringing all the skinny people from my tribe to this culture. My mind was blown away and it still does sometimes when i see a beautiful talented woman shut down and hopeless because of how the people and the culture defines her body image, it breaks my heart. A lot of people don't understand that this can take your life away from you.

So, to everyone who is reading this and know that you have treated or thought of someone else differently because of their weight, for goodness sake allow me to give you some education. Travel, Travel, travel and then you will know that your culture is not the final definition of what other cultures are. Let us stop causing pain to other people because of our ignorance. Did you know that some centuries ago, being full figured was extremely beautiful in this same culture? And to those of you fat beautiful women out there, did you know that being fat is to die for in other cultures? Love yourself girl and don't let any culture or society define your beauty.

Thank you God, now i know that i am truly beautiful. Not just beautiful from the out side which is only defined by just man who is confused any way, but from deep inside I know who i am and that i am beautiful. And please ladies, take your life back and get to know who you really are, girl. It makes me laugh even today to know that i had given my life and my power to the people from just one small tribe who are not aware of how big this world is. DON'T DO THAT TO YOURSELF. YOU MEAN ALOT TO THIS WORLD. DO YOU GET IT???????????????