Recently, I was bitten with the desire to update my current website (www.chantelleconstable.com shameless plug!) and so I asked my boyfriend, who (I say with no bias!) is quite handy with a camera, to take some new “publicity” photos for me. Got to keep the fans happy with recent content on the ol’ interwebs, right?

Well, I sat down to my laptop and began scrolling through the pictures, giddy with excitement, and my very first reaction was, “Ewww! Am I really that THICK in the middle?!”

Well, boyfriend patting me on the head and assuring me of my general loveliness aside, I have decided as of this moment that, as someone who aspires to be a musician and a public figure, I don’t care.

I don’t care. I don’t care if I wear a size 14 (who’s to say that’s not beautiful anyway! It would just be rather extreme for me, considering I’m only 5’1”) and if my complexion looks like the surface of the moon and if my hair is grown out all funky. (Okay, I do care about that. If only for my personal sanity, not appearances’ sake!)

But no, seriously. Yes, there is an element of looking polished and “appealing” to the public eye. Hello, I’m the one being vain and getting my photo taken here! I realize there’s an aesthetic “medium” to be met, if not exceeded.

But here’s the deal: I would rather be the artist, the public figure, the woman with a friendly smile and a twinkle in her eye, the woman with a sense of humor and an intelligent mind, the woman with TALENT than a woman and “artist” whose every media article begins with some variation on, “The classical singer, in a salmon-pink Victoria Beckham dress, appears to be getting over her broken heart as she celebrates the end of her sell-out tour.” When did glamour become so insidiously important, that it becomes the very foundation upon which all other information is construed, the context in which we appreciate or reject a human being?!

My external appearance does not define me — it’s mighty fine to look at, so I’ve been told — but it doesn’t define me. Who I am inside is not only what defines me, it’s what shapes the world that I live in.

So I’m not a size zero. But I don’t care, because I’ve got a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

(And if anyone responds to this with a “Oh, but you are skinny!” comment, I will personally hunt you down and smack you. Lovingly, but I will smack you, because you’ve missed the point entirely.)