CHEREEN STRYDOM!
Below is Chereen’s winning comment:
I hit puberty quite quickly and went from flat-chested to a 34C bra size virtually overnight. As a result, I have stretch marks on my breasts, and I also have stretch marks on my upper thighs. The stretch marks didn’t bother me much when they first developed; to be honest, I don’t think I really knew what they were and my mom had them, too, so I saw them as marks of womanhood in many ways. I was growing and becoming more like my mom, and that was ok by me. I also distinctly remember sitting in my swimming costume beside the pool and noticing that my stretch marks looked a bit like the patterns that the light caused on the bottom of the pool… to me, stretch marks were never a ‘bad’ thing, until I hit my early 20s and started dating, that is. For some reason, boyfriends believed that it was ok to comment on my body and stretch marks, and I started feeling self conscious. Cue many years of crash dieting and slathering stretch mark creams all over my body to help get rid of my marks of change. I used Bio Oil on my chest, tum and thighs throughout my pregnancy, along with a few other targeted stretch mark creams and butters (I used to layer them – Bio Oil first, topped by my butter or cream of choice) and was very happy to find that I didn’t get a single stretch mark, despite a predisposition to them. I believed in the power of Bio Oil so much that I started using it on my c-section scar, but soon realised that, actually, my scars and stretch marks tell a story! I can’t wait to show Noah my c-section scar and explain that that’s where he came from; that he lived in my belly for 9 months and that he was so teeny that he could fit out of that small little cut. So now, as I approach 30, I’m finally starting to forget about all those critics that told me that stretch marks were bad or ugly, and embracing my body – scars, stretch marks, flab and all.
