I am still worthy. I am still capable of being number one. I'd guess that most people think stretch marks only happen to women, but I'm a guy with stretch marks on my hips. I'm too old to remember when it happened, but I've got them. I grew quickly after being short for most of my adolescence. But I don't care. I'm still handsome. This picture is from when I was pregnant with my quadruplets.
At 26, I gave birth to my first son with a little help from fertility meds. Fast forward two years, and I wanted to give my son a sibling. After a miscarriage, I conceived quadruplet boys. I carried them to 33 weeks and delivered all four safely, with no complications. I was left with what I call "battle scars," and I wear them proudly. They are proof that my body was capable of doing the one thing I was convinced it couldn't do, and not just once, but twice, and in ways I never could have imagined.
I was severely anorexic 10 years ago. My organs started failing and my body hair was falling out. My family was very supportive and helped me recover really healthfully.
I have stretch marks on my hips, thighs and breasts. They remind me that my body is impressive. It lifts tractor tires and runs half marathons. I have pushed it to the limits, good and bad. But I cherish my body, scars, stretch marks, body hair and all. I just think they're beautiful. The way my skin looks almost like a dull opalescent is kind of bewitching. My stretch marks come from a very difficult time in my life.
A few years ago I was diagnosed with lupus and put on steroids to treat it. Steroids thin your skin and cause weight gain, which often leads to bad stretch marks. I fought hard for a few years, and finally got taken off of the steroids a few months back. To me, my stretch marks mean I am stronger than anything life throws at me, and that no matter how bad things may seem, I can persevere. I am proud of my battle scars!
I know some people need to think of them that way, but I wish we could all stop making them seem larger than life, either positively or negatively. I just want to think of them as a regular body part like my ears or my knees.
I want them to become something so regular and boring we stop noticing at all. I never noticed my stretch marks until I was 16 and my friends started commenting on theirs. After that, I remember looking at my hips in the mirror and thinking that my stretch marks looked like lightening bolts.
Add Opinion. Kinggot Xper 5. Be proud show em off say, look how far I came!!! This was something I struggled with but I overcame, I defeated it. I am a man. I set a goal and then I accomplished that goal. No one but me. Every mark on your body is a story and you get to tell how its told. I'm not talking bout lying. I'm talking bout confidence, I'm talking bout pride, strength.
Is this still revelant? Wear them proudly! I had streatch marks on my sides, my boobs, my arms, ass and thighs due to puberty and weightloss. But they are completely gone now. The ones on my sides, you can still see if you stretch the skin, but other than that, they're gone.
Point is, stretch marks faith away. Also, who cares if you have stretch marks? It had been the night before a family cruise when I had been shaving under my arms and ran my finger over one, feeling the familiar soft groove. The stretch mark was all the proof I needed that I had failed at my lifelong goal to lose weight—to become smaller.
These were people who proudly posted on Instagram about their bodies and their insecurities. They taught me that I could be happy at any size—that I deserved to be. But as I continued to follow these body positive influencers, there was one narrative that got under my skin—one that made me question if I was really allowed to be OK with my stretch marks.
And that is the one that ties into pregnancy. Creating new life is beautiful and therefore, my stretch marks are beautiful. Pregnancy made the stretch marks beautiful, natural, acceptable. At this point, I had stretch marks across my stomach, hips, arms, and rib cage, and not a single one of them resulted from being pregnant.
As happy as I was to see other people being confident about something I had felt insecure about for so long, I wondered if that narrative included bodies like mine at all. In fact, I have vivid memories of her telling me how beautiful my skin was, how gorgeous my hair was, and how good I looked in the variety of outfits I wore. But stretch marks on someone my age — and really, probably anyone of any age — weren't represented in the magazines I devoured or the TV shows I watched.
I hadn't seen them on anyone's body but my own. As Summer approached that year, I chose a modest bathing suit consisting of boy shorts and a tankini — a style I continued to wear well into adulthood. Early on I had learned that flaws were expected to be covered up from a society that decided perfection reigned and anything less wasn't worthy of being seen. Those with perfect skin had permission to flaunt it.
But those with imperfect skin? Well, they must surely hide it. And for so long, that's the rule I lived by. But something changed after becoming a mother. It didn't happen immediately or painlessly though. Honestly, I spent the first two postpartum years loathing the scars that had claimed my once flawless abdomen. Every time I saw them, I was reminded that I was getting older.
That there was no going back to a more youthful body. And that I would never look the way our culture expected me to.
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