Lots of folks worry about their stretch marks, especially women. The worry isn’t unfounded, however, because of the society we live in, where women are expected to have the perfect bodies, where there’s a narrow definition of what beauty actually is, and where not all bodies are celebrated. There is nothing wrong with stretch marks. Rather, there’s something wrong with the myopic lens through which they and other parts of our bodies are often seen and expected to look like (by the media/magazines, for instance).
Your Body Knows How to Accommodate Change
Stretch marks are your body’s way of communicating with you that it knows what to do when there’s change. Your skin stretched. It accommodated that change, visually.
Your Body is an Artist
The only difference between your stretch marks and linear art is you wear your linear art on your skin. You wear your own tattoos. Your body decided to create art from change. It decided to document your skin’s stretches in the form of art.
Your Lines Tell a Story
Your stretch marks are where some of your stories/memories are kept. Stories of growth, weight loss, weight gain, pregnancy, illness, survival. Like centuries-old etchings on a wall or on a tree. They are a form of glyphs.
The Sun Shines on All Bodies
The sun doesn’t shine on a body with stretch marks any differently than it does on a body without. The sun doesn’t mind. It shines regardless. It doesn’t say, “According to this here definition of beauty, that body’s beautiful, so I’m going to go ahead and shine on it more than that body over there that I’ve been told not to shine on so much if I want to keep my royalty checks flowing. ‘Cos I need those royalty checks. Lord knows I need ‘em.”
The Sky Has Stretch Marks
There are stretch mark-looking lines in the sky sometimes, in the galaxy, the desert, on the beach when waves leave the shore, and even on some fruit. And they all mark some sort of change, evidence that something happened. Lines are everywhere else in nature, and you’re part of nature.
If the lines on a shore are beautiful, and the lines in the sky are, then why not on you too? The only difference is the canvas on which the lines occur. You are a canvas.
Regardless what the writer of this article thinks about stretch marks (points at self), this writer also believes that if a person of adult age is carefully considering doing something about their stretch marks, such as using certain creams or possibly going for skin needling treatment like the one offered by the London Dermatology Centre, then it’s totally their right to consider that.
Above all, this writer wants to live in a world where all bodies are celebrated, where all bodies are accepted for their right to exist as they are, where beauty is seen and appreciated for the wide expanse and endless variety it actually is.