Is this a thing?

 
Something weird happened this week that I haven't really noticed before and I don't know if I liked it.

Basically, I took a picture of myself to update my photo diary and when I looked at it later I had a moment of actually kind of liking what I saw. Weird. I originally put it down to loosing nearly a stone, so I pulled up the original before picture from a few months ago expecting to see a clear difference between the two.

This is my confused face.

No. That's not what happened. I looked at the original photo and ended up wondering what the hell I was on about calling myself an oompa-lumpa. It seemed fine. I thought I looked okay in both of them.

So what was going on? The only thing I can think of was that I'd had some really nice, positive male attention that left me feeling that perhaps I'm not the physical carcrash I normally think I am.

A few days after that, I'm looking at both the pictures again and I'm back to my original oompa-lumpa assessment. Clearly the pictures are the same but I have changed.

Now in theory, of course I know that perception can change depending on your mood and other factors. Looking in the mirror from one day to the next and seeing a better/worse reflection of me does make sense - I've said before about the way photos and the mirror seem to be different to me. But surely photos are fixed and I never expected them to actually LOOK so perceptively different to me.

But they did and that leaves me with one major head-fuck. What's real?

Is it the oompa-lumpa or is it the okayish girl? Perhaps it's neither. And how do I know?

The other thing that really freaked me out was this: I though I was better looking when a man treated me like I was.

I consider myself to be an intelligent woman and pretty reasonable but somehow my brain is working against me. What am I supposed to do with this knowledge? Flirt (ha!) with men to try and get attention so I feel positive about my body? Because, it was kind of nice while it lasted. The thing was it didn't last so it's not a great long term plan even if I didn't have an issue with basing self-esteem on other people's opinions.

Also, I feel as though I've somehow betrayed myself. I honestly never thought I was that person. I don't want to be that person.

Bloody hell!