Am I Pretty Enough to be a Baker?

Yikes…

This question sounds so trite and shallow, and yet it is a question that has popped into my mind multiple times lately! I have in my head this cute picture of myself in an apron, twirling and laughing as I’m baking, but in reality, I’m sweating, my hair is pulled back into a hasty pony tail and I’m borderline crying! Okay…I’m not always borderline crying, but I have been at that point multiple times in the last 3 months since starting this business.

I have a desire to be authentic and vulnerable in all that I do, including this business, but when I put myself out there, especially on social media, I can get extremely self-conscious as I see or listen to myself on a recording or out at a market. I think to myself, if I am beautiful, then people will come.

Let me say again…

YIKES!

How tempting it is to cater to the patriarchal tendencies of our society and the unreal and frankly stupid standards of beauty we have! I’m saying this to myself as much as I am to our society as with these thoughts and this question – am I pretty enough? – I have bought into these lies that I must look or act a certain way as a woman to be accepted and desired.

There is a fine line here at times because I do want to be clean and to appear clean as that could actually take away business when I am trying to sell things for people to eat, but I don’t want to be inauthentic or let this fear of not looking good enough hold me back in my business.

That’s important to repeat. Living into these unreal beauty standards and belief that I have to be pretty enough for my business to thrive is holding me back! It’s preventing me from being vulnerable and real because I don’t think that my realness is acceptable.

Really, my desire is that I can present my baked goods and my business and myself without having to battle these thoughts or really even think twice how I look that day.

So, how do I do this? I think I just have to do it! To be who I am and to show people who I am and to bake. Bake in the freedom of knowing that I am learning and growing into who I am created to be with each moment, make-up or no.

And when the inevitable spiral comes, to be sure I have a community around me to lift me up, brush me off, and snap me out of the circling thoughts around that pesky question.

So…Am I pretty enough to be a baker? Who the eff cares.

This is the image I was too afraid to post. It is me showing clean teeth after eating a black frosting.