I can still vividly recall a conversation with my husband last June. I was sitting with him at a restaurant, barely able to breathe through my Spanx, still carrying 20+ pounds of baby weight and feeling frumpy and gross.

He scolded me for my insecurity. “You’re beautiful.” he told me. And he went on to say that I could weigh 100 pounds more and still be beautiful. “It’s all about how you carry yourself. If you walk around like, ‘This is me and I don’t care what you think’, it’s sexier than a girl who’s skinny and gorgeous, but insecure.”

He then dropped a whammy on me: The way that I carry myself, talk about myself, and think about myself is going to be passed on to our girls. The way that I carry myself should be the way I want them to view themselves.

Whoa, man. I didn’t even think about that. He was so right. HJ was already mimicking my every action as I got ready in the morning. From brushing my teeth to putting on make-up, she’s right there watching. She copies it all. I’ve even caught her checking out her own butt in the mirror.

As a mom of now two girls, I think a lot about how I can help them form a healthy self-esteem and a positive self image in this world. On one hand, there are the Miley Cyruses who take it too far and then there are the girls who develop unhealthy relationships with food and themselves to reach a standard of beauty that is unattainable.

It’s hard. I want them to be confident, yet humble. I want them to love themselves, but not be vain. I want them to have the balls to walk away from someone who puts them down and hold their heads high while saying, “Whatever. I’m awesome.”

The truth is though, it’s hard to teach that when you yourself aren’t built that way. As a ginger (I’m a natural redhead), I got teased a lot growing up. I was pale, freckled, and had a last name that didn’t help that teasing subside (Heffley sounds too much like a Heifer cow to small town kids in Kansas, apparently).

I always wanted to change my appearance. I wanted brown or blonde hair (the societal norm) and tan skin. In fact, I lived in a tanning bed the last two years of high school and now I’m paying the price with annual skin screenings and mole removals. I don’t want my girls to go through that. I don’t want them to want so desperately to change they way they look that they ruin their body.

So since that conversation with my husband, I’ve been working hard to love my body just as it is. Yes, I’m pale. Yes, I have no butt. And yes, my body is even more flawed than it was before I had these amazing girls. But, I’m going to rock it. Because how else are my girls going to learn that true beauty comes from your own confidence?

Plus, someone needs to make pasty paleness the new trend. I’m a trendsetter right here, folks.

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