What do you have?

Many people (including myself) spend a lot of time focusing on what we don't have when it comes to our looks.  We want some parts of our body to be smaller, other parts to be larger (usually just one part), if our hair is curly we wish it were straight and vice versa.  We look at the celebrities and the models in magazines and wish that we looked at least somewhat like them.  We want to have lips like them or hair like theirs or their figure.  Rarely do we spend time thinking about our own assets as far as our looks go.  I've read, and I'm coming to agree, that having confidence in yourself, and being proud of what good looks you DO have goes a long way towards being attractive.
I was one of those tall, skinny awkward teenagers that never realized the good parts I had.  I had inherited my father's beautiful blue eyes, but all I thought about was the fact that I needed to wear glasses and how unattractive that made me (this was before glasses were trendy and cool like they are now).  I also inherited my father's full lips and my mother's beautiful smile.  I didn't even notice those things.  I was obsessed about my large nose (inherited from my Dad, again.  At least there was no doubt that I was his child!)  My hair was curly and often frizzy, living in humid Pennsylvania.  My sister and I spent sooooo much time trying to straighten our unruly, frizzy hair (flat irons hadn't been popularized yet).  I was tall, thin, had perfect teeth, but I didn't notice that much at all.  My mother was beautiful and my sister and I always wondered why we hadn't inherited her beauty.  So many years were wasted feeling inferior.

Lately I've been looking at myself a lot, in detail, when I edit the photos I take for make-up tutorials.  I see how many assets I have.  I can't believe that I've spent my whole life never really noticing these things.  Of course, once I got out of my teenage years I was a little more aware of my good points, but not nearly enough. So if you're longing to look different, better...  Start taking self-portraits of yourself.  Do it when you're alone so you don't get interrupted or asked "what are you doing?"  Try different angles, different poses, different make-up and hair styles.  You can take as many shots as you want with digital cameras.  Then look through them.  Of course there will be some bad ones, but my bet is there will be many more good ones and you'll learn what your best angle is, and what your best features are.  And I hope most of all that you realize how beautiful you really are, and you're proud of that.

This picture was edited in Photoshop, but only the overall color was changed.

no editing on this one - just me