I love my body with all its imperfections.

There is a scar on almost everyone's knee from around the age of nine — a bike, a wall, a bad landing. Nobody hates that one. It came with a story, and the story is affectionate.

The imperfections that are harder to love tend to be the ones without a story, or with a story you did not choose.

Loving them need not mean calling them beautiful. It can mean something closer to loyalty: this is the body that showed up for everything so far, marks included, and it is not going to be traded in for a better one.