I was born an amputee and therefore only have one leg. Growing up, I wore a prosthetic leg. As I got older I came to realize that I wore the prosthetic merely for cosmetic reasons. After high school, I stopped wearing it. Do people sometimes stare? Yes. While others may view my amputation as a flaw, I do not. Maybe at one point I had that mentality but not any more.
Personally, I have an issue with the word “flaws”. Flaws has a negative connotation about a mental or physical trait where as it should just be viewed as a distinctive characteristic of that individual. It is what sets someone apart from others and what makes them unique. It is important to embrace these things as a part of our identity.
I think our society has trained individuals to find our flaws and always think there is some part of ourselves that we need to be “fixing”. We should embrace our flaws as a part of who we are. It is a different story if we want to change something about ourselves for our own wellbeing, but we should not be changing things out of fear of what others think.
If we focused on everyone’s individual beauty versus their flaws, we as a society would probably have higher self-esteems, better relationships and more organic interactions. We could begin to change our mentality to accept ourselves and all others for every part that makes them unique. This way we can teach future generations that flaws aren’t bad. They make you who you are and that is beautiful; it is okay to accept them.
Once we truly come to this point of embracing our flaws we will truly see a difference in our lives. In order to see the change you have to be the change first and start learning to embrace your flaws and then maybe we will start to see our own true beauty.