When the movie Pretty Woman came out, I remember the shock of hearing that Julia Roberts' gorgeous head had been placed atop another woman's body for the posters advertising the movie. Even Julia's body wasn't deemed perfect - enough.

For many women, identity is a lifelong struggle focused around the desire to be somebody other than who we are. Nowhere is this more obvious than in our efforts to achieve a certain standard of physical beauty handed to us by advertising and the media. We long to be impossibly thin (most models are thinner than 95 percent of the population), and we spend $1 million an hour on skin-care products and cosmetics in this country!

Let's face it, the standards of perfection we're given defy attainment.

I have personally struggled with this issue my whole life. As I entered my teen years, I was stricken with a terrible case of acne that lasted for many years, well into adulthood. I felt hideous , and terrified that not being attractive made me unworthy of love, or anything else, for that matter. My fears were constantly validated. I remember the day I came home from school and found a pale blue strapless organza prom dress covered in ruffles, which my mother had bought for me to wear to my junior high prom. I never got to wear it, though, because I wasn't asked to go (girls didn't ask boys in those days). In high school, I didn't date either. I was friends with the popular girls - all cheerleaders with football player boyfriends - but not pretty enough to really be one of them. I longed to fit in, to be like them.

I still have scars from that period, literally and figuratively. For forty-two years I wore makeup every day of my life - foundation, mascara, lipstick, the works even on days when I wasn't planning to leave the house or see anyone. Otherwise, I couldn't stand to see myself, even in passing, in a mirror. I couldn't bear my ugliness, and I wanted to hide it. It didn't matter that others didn't even notice my skin most of the time.

Then one day, while working on this book, I just stopped. I looked at myself in the mirror, noticed that I wasn't wearing any makeup, and just could not be concerned about it. I no longer identified 'who I was' with 'what I looked like'. It seemed that, along with my growing authenticity, self-acceptance had suddenly become a natural experience. I had become passionate about my vision as it related to this book and the simultaneous emergence of my own soul discoveries. I see now that when we are in touch with our own soul-knowing, not only can we accept ourselves, but also find the deepest love imaginable within ourselves. Not accepting ourselves then becomes impossible.

I was struck by something I read about Bette Midler, who said she had always been bothered by the feeling that she didn't belong as a kid: "If only I'd known that one day my differentness would be an asset, then my early life would have been much easier." In my own case, my 'diferentness' also became an asset, because overcoming my own self-doubts force me to go deeper than my body to find my
value.

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Jennifer Read Hawthorne is the author of Soul of Success: A Woman's Guide to Authentic Power. She has co-authored such bestsellers as Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul and Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul. See www.jenniferhawthorne.com.

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