Let’s break Emma June into the parts of her whole. 

Ew. Let me try again.

Let’s look at the different parts of Emma.

Hmm, nope. That’s not it either.

“Head, shoulders, knees and toes?” 

Okay, I give up. What I’m trying (and failing) to say in a normal, not-weird kind of way is that body acceptance is much more all-encompassing than what we sometimes think about. I know that I write about my weight, my stretch marks, my cellulite, and my general squishiness in the realm of self-acceptance, but there’s more to it than that. I have some physical attributes that I’ve been trying hard to accept for the LONGEST time that don’t have anything to do with the afore-listed qualities, and I want to point them out now.

Why? Because maybe you guys also have been struggling to accept these parts of your body. I feel like if I say it out and open that discussion, we can get going on that acceptance train together.

Choo choo.

What’s Up, Doc?

One of my friends once lovingly called my teeth “Bunny Teeth,” and while it DID stick with me, it surprisingly didn’t traumatize me the way it could have. 

Look, I have big front teeth. I used to be a little bit self conscious of them growing up, but hardly anyone in my family has “perfect” teeth, so I never really thought much of it until, of course, I joined the throngs of young women on social media. 

And then, celebrities and all of the Beautiful People had straight, white, normal-sized teeth. Every once in a while you’d come across someone with a gap between their front teeth, and they always made it so damn sexy. 

So I decided to embrace my bunny teeth. They’re kind of unique, right? They make my smile stand out? Also, bunnies are cute, right? So, that must mean my teeth are cute, right?

Look, whatever conclusion I come to, when I was at the dentist last week, the man said I had “beautiful teeth,” and he was a medical professional.

So take that, societal beauty standards. My bunny teeth are out here being BEAUTIFUL. Nanny nanny boo boo. 

The Wookie (starring Dennis Quaid)

I’ve written about this before and watch me do it again: I’m a hairy gal. 

That’s that. 

I’d rather suffer through my intensive hair removal routine rather than grow it out (a choice I have made, and I am more than happy to lie in the bed I’ve made for myself, as long as I can do it with silky smooth legs on the sheets), but still. Sometimes it’s a little dicey between shaves. 

Once, some loser I don’t know commented on an Instagram post of mine about how I should shave my arms. 

Sir. Do you know how much real estate on my body I have to shave already? I can’t add my arms to that list! Shaving already takes two forevers! 

Some people, I swear. 

Anyway, I’ll just say that the hairiness builds character and discipline. So while I’m not embracing the hair, I am, however, embracing the removal process. It’s okay to be hairy. It’s okay to want to shave it off. It’s all okay. That’s the great part about being able to choose what to do with your body. 

Knock, Knock

I have knock knees and pigeon toes. 

A lot of times in pictures you can’t really tell because, for some reason, my go-to pose is popping my left leg practically until the hip is out of its socket, but I do. When I used to play basketball I was super self-conscious about the knees, but I decided a long time ago that I was just going to embrace them.

They run in my family, too. I have at least 4 cousins who share the knock knee gene, and so I’m taking it as a unique characteristic that we can all bond over. See? See how easy that was?

No kneed to make a big deal of it. Don’t knock it till you try it. 

Okay, I’m done.

What the Cluck

I have keratosis pilaris (sometimes called chicken skin, which I don’t really understand, but then again, no one asked me), a super-common skin condition where you develop raised red bumps, usually on your arms, and they can get angry or itchy. 

I’ve never seen a chicken with red bumps on its arms, but who am I to ask questions?

I used to wonder what the EFF was going on with my skin, until I saw a post that model Iskra Lawrence made on Instagram talking about it. She had it too. 

I like to talk about keratosis pilaris because I feel like a ton of people were like me: they felt like something was “wrong” with their skin and they didn’t know what.

Well, nothing is “wrong” with your skin. Write that down. It’s common, it’s normal, and skin isn’t supposed to be smooth and perfect. 

Pore it Up, Pore it Up

I have very large, defined pores. This is definitely something I work on accepting every day, and it’s pretty tough since you see people with smooth faces and flawless makeup everywhere you turn on TV or on social media. 

Yeahhhhh, that’s not me. 

I have big ole pores, and there’s no disguising them. But, again, I feel like if I say it out, we can all try to accept our skin, regardless of the size of our pores because, again, skin isn’t perfect and we shouldn’t act like having stuff like acne, big pores, hyperpigmentation, etc. is “abnormal.” Skin is supposed to have texture, and this is a hill I am more than willing to die on. 

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. 

That’s just an intro list to my physical qualities that I don’t usually talk about, but who knows? Maybe now I WILL talk about them. A lot. So we can all be on the same page about the fact that we can be insecure about teeth, skin, knock knees, blah blah blah, and that’s okay. 

It’s what makes us unique, right? 

Your Knock-Kneed-Big-Pored-Bunny-Teeth-Chicken-Skinned Servant,