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I used to think that stretch marks only happened when you gained or lost a significant amount of weight in a relatively short period of time. Hence why beautifully pregnant women are especially prone to getting them, what with their bodies expanding to sustain life and all. No biggie. But I was naïve, clueless to the fact that one day, stretch marks would learn my a**.
My upper thighs and the back of my calves, too.
The sight of stretch marks on other people’s bodies never bothered me. Why would it? But on my relatively small, childless body, in my hyper-critical, self-conscious skin, I hated them. Hated them with a capital H. I got my stretch marks as a teenager, a funky, odd time as far as body image is concerned. To me, my stretch marks resembled age rings on a tree, only they were nowhere near as uniform or symbolic. There was no method to their madness, no precision to their design. Looking at them was like reading an unfinished map to nowhere. They were like nasty, furrowing worms that couldn’t quite reach home, so they settled on the surface and baked to death under the hot sun. If that last description sounds ugly, good, because that’s truly how I felt. Unattractive, marked, permanently disfigured, embarrassed and ashamed. But I didn’t go out of my way to hide my stretch marks, mind you. The ones on my legs especially, because humidity trumps stretch marks any day of the week. But in those private moments when I saw my nakedness in the mirror, or while I was showering and getting dressed, I didn’t like what I saw. And it’s a heavy burden to carry, not liking your reflection.
So I did what many other women have done. I tried to rid myself of my stretch marks with cocoa and Shea butters. Needless to say, I saw no signs of improvement. Palmer’s has us all fooled. I even tried Mederma, which made my money disappear quicker than any scar could. Swimming in a dense vat of any of that stuff didn’t change a thing because, as I eventually learned and came to accept, the older I got, I noticed that my stretch marks still wouldn’t go away. If anything, they called their cousins and ‘nem to join in on the fun.
Since stretch marks took up permanent residence on my body, I had to learn to accept them and devalue the ridiculous importance I placed on them. Over time, I cared less and less and realized all the fuss I was making over a bunch of squiggly lines was a bit over the top.
I know I’m not the only woman who has had this kind of relationship with stretch marks, and a social media campaign I recently came across proves just that. #LoveYourLines was created by two women, both mothers – writer Alex Elle and photographer Erika Layne Salazar – to celebrate “real women, real bodies and real self-love.” The #LoveYourLines Instagram and Tumblr pages are filled with mostly black and white images of women embracing their stretch marks. Some are full-length head-to-toe shots while others are snippets, little cross-sections of body parts. Browsing through the photos, it’s clear that stretch marks don’t discriminate. Any woman of any race or skin tone can get them, and at any age or size.
A genuine homage to the inherent beauty of the female body, the pictures submitted to the #LoveYourLines campaign are coupled with brief passages written by the women about their path to accepting the skin they’ve been gifted. The stories are empowering, beautiful and just as profound as the images. They’ve helped to further shift my perspective. I’m beginning to see my stretch marks as personal history. Proof of life. I look at them now and see vast stretches of sand shaped by the wind. If I look hard enough, they resemble the Nile from space. On a good day, I see my stretch marks as absolutely beautiful and laugh at the time when I saw them as anything but.
