I love the Muppets. I remember watching the 2011 Muppet movie when I was a kid and loving it. One of my favorite Christmas movies is The Muppet Christmas Carol. I got a banjo partly because of Kermit the Frog. I’m not like an obsessed fan or anything like that, but I’m a fan none the less. Not only are the Muppets hilarious they also have great songs, like from the original Muppet movie with “Movie’ Right A Long,” “Can You Picture That,” “Rainbow Connection,” and so many more like in The Muppets Christmas Carol, “Scrooge,” “One More Sleep Till Christmas,” I could honestly go on and on. However, my favorite song from the Muppets is “Bein’ Green.” To me that song just perfectly encapsulates things that I’ve experienced. To quickly summarize the song, its basically Kermit singing how hard it is to be..well…green. He starts off with the oh so familiar “It’s not that easy being green,” later saying how it basically it makes it harder for people to see him, that he’d be better off being some other color. The magic happens when he gets nearer to the middle of the song, whereupon he states that green is THE color of spring and declares things that the color green can become such big or important, things of that nature. You start to notice that he isn’t necessarily just talking about the color green. He comes to the realization saying that “I am Green, and it’ll do fine. It’s Beautiful. And I think it’s what I want to be.” Just wow. How powerful, right? This song that talks about insecurity, but ends with learning to love and accept yourself. It’s a great message. For me and how I relate to this song is very on the nose.

It’s no lie that I have some self-esteem issues they were a lot worse when I was younger. I often hated the way I look, I stressed about my weight, and overall did not have a very positive image of myself. I don’t know why it was like that for me; it had been going on for so long that it felt like I’d always be that way. When I say I hated the way I look, I meant it. I remember in my high school years specifically my sophomore year,I was probably the heaviest I had ever been(I’m not talking like majorly overweight, but still). I used to avoid looking in the mirror. The sight of myself made me sad to be honest. My junior year of high school is where my weight dropped significantly mostly because I would barley eat or tried not to eat as much. I was also going through some depressive episodes at the time, which more than likely attributed to the fluctuation in weight throughout my life. The issues didn’t stop at the weight thing though. I have some discoloration on my brows directly above my eye. It has always bothered me. I used to think it made me unattractive. So that on top of the weight problem, yeah I really hated my looks. To this day I don’t think of myself as an attractive person, but hey maybe someone does. All this to say that I have made progress in this self image of myself. It’s not that I don’t care about how I look, to an extent I don’t anymore. There are certain things that I can control and some that I can’t. I’ve accepted that. Weight I can work on, I can work out, eat a bit better, lose some pounds no problem I’ve done it before. The discoloration doesn’t bother me anymore. Do I like it? No, but it’s still a part of me. To me I don’t take the word “green,” in the context of the song, just at face value. I mean I very much could easily talk about my experiences with skin color and how I was told by my dad (well meaningly might I add) when I was a kid that I couldn’t be Batman because I wasn’t white, or how someone laughed at me one time at the bank for wearing a Captain America shirt because I didn’t look “American” enough apparently. In fact when I was younger before high school I hated my skin color too. I wanted to be Batman, I wanted to see heroes that looked like me, I didn’t want to be me. Now though? I love my skin color, I love my heritage, I don’t love every aspect of how I look, but now I wouldn’t want to be anyone other than myself. To be anyone else would be inauthentic. I don’t have the same experiences as anyone else, I have my own. Yeah they can be similar, but they are not entirely the same. See I truly believe that the things we see in media, in advertisements, and within our communities, shape the way we view ourselves. There are always products, or procedures, or trends that people do too otherwise change themselves. Obviously I’m not saying don’t do these things if they help you feel like the most authentic version of yourselves, if you want to do those things, without causing harm to your overall health and mental well-being, then by all means be yourself. It’s more so that when we glorify, as well as criticize, things such as weight, skin color, blemishes, and so on and so forth, that we feel like we are less than. In reality the more you try to conform you just end up losing yourself more. I know that from my experiences I’ve come a long way and I’d like to be there for those who are on their own journeys of self acceptance even if I myself am not done with mine yet. Just remember, you are who you are, I am who I am, and it’ll do fine, it’s beautiful, and I think it’s what we want to be.