Learn to Look Past Your Imperfect Body

by Carla Hall

Some women conquer their self-consciousness by doing away with the object of their dissatisfaction. Caitlin Randall had her birthmark surgically removed ten years ago. “I was surprised by how easy it was,” she says. “But it was painful. There were stitches.” For Randall, this wasn’t giving in—it was taking charge of her body. “It was an act of coming into my own,” she says. “It was liberating.”

Stretch marks can’t be removed, but Sasha Dillon has cast off the cocoa butter and turned on the lights in her bedroom. She’s found security in her marriage of a year and a half to a man who, as she puts it, “doesn’t make me feel like I have to back out of a room.” But when the couple began to think about starting a family, she blurted out her worst fear about pregnancy: what if her stomach becomes riddled with stretch marks like the ones she has now?

Her husband looked at her quizzically. “Where do you have stretch marks?” he asked.