“Darling, I never step on the scale because the scale doesn’t measure sexy.” ~ Bella Dolce

Hating our bodies is so last year.

This is for every single goddamn woman out there who looks in the mirror and loves what she sees.

The women who are size 16 or 2 and every beautiful number in between—because beauty can’t be gauged by any number, whether it’s found on a scale or on the tag of our favorite dress.

We are gorgeous creatures because we are women—plain and simple.

This is for women who have hips that sway and pulse, dancing with our children in the kitchen or riding the pleasurable waves of our lover’s body. And it doesn’t matter whether our hips have bones that protrude or we’re a bit soft and rounded—what matters is that we flaunt it because we know we’ve got it.

You are beautiful—but sister, please, you already knew that.

It’s evident in the way you toss your hair as the afternoon sun shines on it or the way the moonlight streaks across your braids, as you venture out to meet friends under a starry sky.

Because when you move, the whole world shakes.

You walk with confidence, with the stories of your mothers and sisters, aunts and grandmothers all interwoven into your footsteps. You use your past and create webs of pearls and sapphires that you wear upon your gorgeous body like the glorious queen you are.

This is for the women who choose to not have children or those who struggle with infertility. And it’s also for those who have the scars of stretch marks crisscrossing their belly reminding them of a time when life pulsed beneath their tender skin. Because regardless of the choices you make about your body, you are amazing just the way you are.

You’re beautiful because you have learned how to rock the gorgeous mess you are at times.

Beauty standards surround us, yet we’ve still thrown up our hands and decided that our unique kind of beauty is the one we really love.

There is just something about a woman who walks as if she is the most beautiful woman in the room no matter where she goes. The kind of woman who rocks her heeled booties in winter, bare feet in summer and her jeans hugging all the right curves year round.

This is for the women who embrace themselves softly as they go to sleep each evening, loving the way the silken sheets slide over her skin, making love to the body she adores. Because we know that we never need to wait for a man to tell us what we already know—that we are at our sexiest when we are just being ourselves.

This is simply for the women who rock what their momma’s gave them every single damn day.

The women who wake up and decide that it’s self-love that she’ll first adorn her body with because she’s learned she is a treasure, and that her gift is that there is no one else quite like her in the entire world.

You revel in your uniqueness and soft belly. But you also may love running your fingers over your perfectly carved abs–regardless of what kind of body society tells you that you have, you know that you have the body that you love.

Because you are the one who sends ripples out in the world simply by smiling at a passing stranger.

You have the magic of beauty moving in waves underneath your skin, and you know that you don’t have to be a size six in order to sizzle in that bikini on the beach—because the real secret is that you know if you’re happy with yourself, then no one else’s opinion matters.

This is for the women who know that they are sexy.

This is for the women who know that it doesn’t matter if their lingerie hangs daintily upon their delicate frame or if silk hugs their rounded, dangerous curves—what matters is the way we feel in the skin we’re blessed to be in.

We are beautiful women, each and every one of us.

But, we aren’t attractive simply for the cut of our clothes, or the length of our legs—no, we have something much richer than that, glowing beneath our skin.

We have stumbled across our self-worth, and desire to revel in who we are rather than pass our days on crash diets or in the rooms of plastic surgeons trying to turn back time and erase the beauty of our stories.

No, we aren’t perfect—but we also don’t want to be.

Because we have lived, we have touched ourselves feeling the softness of our skin that is only matched by the softness of our hearts.

And there isn’t anything more beautiful than the love our heart holds. Our secret lies in the way we radiate our love out to the world.

We rock what we’ve got, but it’s because we know we are so much more than our body.

We are ink stained fingertips, and morning pancakes in rooms filled with laughter. We’re shots of fireball and black lace, and maybe just once in a while, we are silence and the glowing full moon.

We are women and we are beautiful.

So, this is for every single queen who already knows about the truth I speak. The women who’ve embraced their bodies and loved them because we know there is no other body like ours.

This is for my sisters, I see your beauty and I just want to tell you that you are setting the world on fire with your sensual originality blooming from self-confidence. I’m proud of you. I salute you, because a true goddess knows that this isn’t a competition, but a celebration of womanhood.

So, you do you—and keep rockin’ the amazingness that your momma gave you.

Bonus, super inspiring fit girl on Insta, Hannah Bronfman:

A photo posted by Hannah Bronfman (@hannahbronfman) on Jun 11, 2015 at 2:01pm PDT

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Author: Kate Rose

Image: flickr/Gisela Giardino

Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock