O.P.P.

No - this isn't a throwback to Naughty by Nature and their song, "O.P.P." so you can stop waving your hands in the air...waving them like you just don't care...

O.P.P. here is other people's perception....I've often wondered if the way I see something is the same way that someone else sees something. Something as simple as looking at myself in the mirror. I could see myself in one light but then someone else could see me in a whole other way. I remember WAY back in the day, Oprah had this guest on her show that refused to go out in public because she felt like she was hideous looking and didn't want people staring at her. She actually was an average looking woman - she wasn't ugly and she wasn't a drop dead beauty. But the way she perceived herself was so drastically different than what others were seeing that she felt that if she went out in public, she would get stared at and whispered about so she became a recluse.

When I was at the gym yesterday, I was looking in the mirror and I thought, "Huh....I look like I've lost a little weight." But then I was wondering if the mirrors they had installed in the Women's locker room were those mirrors that make you seem skinnier than you really are...kind of like trick mirrors. Although at a gym, you would think they would install those mirrors that make you look a little chubbier so you get out there and hit those cardio machines harder. But I digress. In looking at myself, I was wondering if other people see me the same way I see myself.

Growing up, I've always been bigger than the average Asian female. But I'm also more athletic than the average Asian female. I've got football player shoulders, child bearing hips and soccer player calves. But it's all proportionate (don't want people thinking I look like a total freak). People in my life, growing up, would make fun of me for being a bigger girl. In high school, I thought I was pretty average but I was never petite and in college and right after college, I gained some weight that made me kinda big. But now, I'm probably more fit than I have been in years - I played soccer and softball all summer, started taking hip hop dance class since February and I work out at the gym several times a week. Some days I feel like I'm in really great shape...other days, I feel like I've really let myself go and I feel really fat. And when I'm having those "low" days, I wonder how other people perceive me?

I guess it's the same for anything - how one person perceives and object, a situation, a person will always differ from how another person perceives the same things - but is it drastically different or are we all seeing the same things, for the most part?