Woman pens viral post on happiness with 'frankenboobs and cottage cheese thighs'
Ask a woman her age, and you might get a dirty look. Ask her weight, you might get a lot worse.
But for Mary Katherine Backstrom, she's happy to share those numbers and many more.
In a viral Facebook post, the woman behind the popular site Mom Babble discusses her own body, and the way society makes women feel bad about themselves.
"I am here, enjoying my life -- with crows feet and frankenboobs and smile lines and cottage cheese thighs. 185 pounds. Size 14. 35 years old," she wrote.
"[T]hese numbers do not matter," she writes. "They never did."
"I never realized that my arms jiggled when I waved," she wrote. "Maybe an arm lift would fix that. I never realized I had parenthesis on my face. God, can you really actually smile too much?"
The post, which has been shared several thousand times, was written after Backstrom returned from the plastic surgeon's office following a mastectomy.
"I knew that beating cancer would require some sacrifices along the way, but when I saw myself in the mirror, I was shocked by how much my heart hurt at my own reflection. This feeling of shock was compounded by the fact I had just read an entire wall of pamphlets which advertised multiple ways I could 'fix' my imperfect body," she told "Good Morning America."
But Backstrom feels it's society that needs fixing.
"We need to start pushing back against that hateful voice inside our heads that says we are not enough," she said. "We are more than enough. And maybe we have reasonable goals of getting more fit, or wanting to get stronger, that's fine."
She told "GMA" that the feedback to the post showed her that while most people have no problem finding beauty in others, they struggle to do the same for themselves.
"Aim that positive lens inward. Find the beauty in you. Start loving you. It’s sounds like such a small thing, but really -- it’ll change your life," she said.
