Author: Skylar Witte

Actress

Just Life: Being a size 0

I like to share different stories/experiences on my blog and this one is difficult for me to share, because it’s difficult for me to admit. The other day I was at the mall with my mom shopping for an event. I was trying on all of these adorable outfits yet nothing fit right and made me feel great (like any good outfit should). That entire week I had been struggling with my body in general, I just felt like each time I looked in the mirror I was unhappy with what I saw. That shopping trip to the mall ended with me in tears and my mom attempting to comfort me by saying “honey, you are a size 0 why are you self-conscious there’s no reason to be upset, you literally can’t be any skinnier, or you will have to buy kids clothes!” She was right but it didn’t make me feel any different in that moment.

I want to take a minute to discuss body image with you all because I think it’s important and I hope that everyone I know can read this and take what I learned that day and often have to remind myself. No one can be confident 100% of the time. Fat shaming and skinny shaming don’t help. People judge you no matter what you look like and it is OK to look in the mirror and not love every ounce of yourself (every once in a while). Love the skin you’re in is a great and wonderful tagline in the world but the reality is no one, regardless of size, is without flaws. You are always your harshest critic.  People can be horribly mean and tactless and it’s ok to not love all of you all of the time.

After all was said and done I look back and think how silly I was acting, but you know what…it happens. Everybody has off days where they just don’t feel they are looking their greatest or their body is in the shape that they want it to be. A part of life is moments where you are self-conscious, and that’s OKAY! And it doesn’t matter if you are a size 0 or a size 24. Moving past those moments is where strength and confidence converge. Being able to brush off a horrible criticism….She needs to eat a burger, she looks sick….She needs to workout, look at how fat she is…these words sting, and man do we all hear them, and sometimes they seem impossible to move past.

When I decided I wanted to model on a regular basis it was the acceptance that my healthy lifestyle now had to become my permanent lifestyle times about ten. It is more pressure than I could have imagined when the decision was made. Not only do I have to stay thin and fit but I have to make sure I don’t get too thin or too muscular. It is a wild balance and it takes a lot of time. That being said, I am not even close to perfect and nobody is, who the hell is to say what perfect is anyhow!!  And sometimes with all the pressures I face, I break down and after that mall catastrophe I want to say a few things to anyone out there who has felt the way I did that day:

You are beautiful because you are you. I have talked about this previously,  but at the end of the day I am the best Skylar Witte that I can be. It’s okay to have imperfections, but embrace them and remind yourself why you are beautiful…I guarantee there are an infinite amount of reasons. Work for the things you want (in my case lady abs) but love what makes you–you, and I guarantee it will never be lady abs. I think I am kind and compassionate. I would like to say people who meet me enjoy my company, I am extremely outgoing and my smile is often both made-fun-of and complimented because it is unique and frankly I love it, I think it is my favorite feature. I know I work hard and have a lot of work ethic because I wouldn’t be doing what I am today if that wasn’t the case. Lady abs are completely unrelated to any of those things which I am confident make me beautiful. Your beauty is not found on you it is found inside of you, plain and simple.

Respect your body and accept the things you have, be able to separate who you are from how you look, even on the bad days!

 

Dream Big, Skylar

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Just Life: Mean Girls and Middle School

If I could go back and share secrets with my middle school and high school self it would be this simple piece of advice: Don’t worry it all shakes out in the end. 

When I think about the amount of time I spent worrying about what others thought about me, were saying about me and their overall opinions of me, it makes me both sad and angry. Not at those people but primarily at Skylar Witte. What a waste of valuable and precious time! My mother must have told me a million times over a tear-filled pillow that those mean girls who made fun of my squinty eyes or gummy smile didn’t matter and that they were likely jealous or self-conscious about their own lives and their own smiles.  I guess becoming an adult is accepting that my mother was right.

The same holds true for the boys who rejected me, made fun of me on the playground and were overall jerks. I have made amends with those boys and come to realize their motives were often the opposite of what I thought. Boys tend to get a girls attention in the most ridiculous ways possible. Again this discussion was had in my household a million times and I never accepted it until now.

I am now dating the boy who made my life complicated (and sometimes tear-filled) back before either of us knew any better, when we reminisce now we can’t help but laugh. Those early years make for the best stories and even though it was painful at the time it was part of the growing-up process and honestly at least for us, it is the reason we are who we are and we are perfect for each other. It’s like all of that struggle in our relationship made us the two strong individuals we are and we really were just creating our ideal without even realizing it at the time. We had to grow up to realize we made each other crazy because we are so similar.

But the same isn’t necessarily true for those mean girls. I have found that sometimes those mean girls just grow up to be mean women. They still talk behind your back, they are still self-conscious of their own shortcomings and rather than work on improving themselves they find some sort of joy in identifying others flaws. I don’t understand these women. Really I don’t. Instead of crying in my pillow I chose a different path and just don’t associate with these types of people. It is hard. Like everyone, I have gotten caught in the trap and talked poorly about others, but it never made me feel any differently about myself, actually it made me feel awful.  Looking back cutting ties with mean girls is something I will never regret.  I just can’t do it. There is no joy in causing others pain, pure and simple.

I have to believe as we all get older we find those who are most like us and they make-up our circle. I think women who are filled with negativity find others like them and ultimately in the end they will all turn on each other.  Women who are filled with kindness and joy build a stronger more lasting circle.

I will admit it, right now my circle is small but it is filled with the best people I know and I am finding my way with the right kind of friendship and a great support network. My favorite girls are those who find the beauty in others and loudly express it, and they don’t wait until she turns around to say something snarky, they mean it.My roommate and I tell each other how beautiful and amazing the other is several times a day, I am not joking we tell each other we are cute so often sometimes we laugh at ourselves. (I mean have you seen her she is stunning)

A small part of me still wants to call out every single mean girl who ever did me wrong and tell them my gummy smile and expressive ‘smiling’ eyes are the key to all the great things that have been happening to me, but it won’t matter they will still find a reason to hate, they will still find a reason to be jealous and they likely won’t change their catty ways.

A simple message I have come to take to heart these days was a virtue of my late Nana, that she passed on to my mom and I hope to pass on to my children someday; ALWAYS TAKE THE HIGH ROAD. No good comes of talking poorly about those who talk poorly of you. So instead I will just have to live with the reality that I’m living a pretty dynamite life with some really awesome, kind and caring people and eventually those mean girls and their evil circle will come back and bite them in the butt. It always does.

So if I could go back I would tell that awkward 13-year-old girl, don’t worry it shakes out in the end. Eventually you get the friends, the boy and the life you dreamed of, so don’t cry over people who will someday become irrelevant, they will have to fight their own battles and most of them won’t be pleasant. Take pity on their ways because people who work so hard day in and day out to bring others down have a truly miserable existence. When your mamma says, “Be the bigger person!” believe her because she knows.

Dream Big, Skylar

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Pageant Life: Competition

 

People don’t often believe me when I tell them I am not a competitive person. A model and a pageant girl, I must believe in competition and I must want to win. Half of that last sentence is true. I like to win,who doesn’t, but I don’t consider other women my competition.

Here is what it has taken me 18 years of life to realize, in subjective activities in which you can not control the outcome being competitive is both counter productive and exhausting. Both modeling and pageants are just such types of activities. The outcome rests solely on a set of judges or a client/agent who has a very personal and very embedded view of what they are looking for in a model or a queen. So knowing that there is not another Skylar Witte out there in the world I truly have no one to compete with but myself.

If a client is looking for a 5’10” Hispanic model to promote their new line, I will not get the job. Chances are they won’t tell me that is specifically what they are looking for but if they are there is nothing I could have done, said or changed to land that job. If I knew they were looking for that I would have them contact my friend Vielka down in Texas because she is that girl, I am not. Chances are as I stood in line with the 200-300 others at that audition everyone else in line was comparing themselves to each other and to me. “Oh she is pretty, oh she is tall, oh she came equipped with a huge portfolio!” I have given up on these comparisons long, long ago. Because if they are looking for Skylar Witte, I will get the job, if they want Vielka, well hopefully she is in that line somewhere too 🙂

The same holds true for pageantry. A long time ago when I was much younger and devastated over not placing in a pageant someone told me, different judges, different day, different outcome. It is probably one of the most real things I have ever heard. Judges have a job to find the best representative they can, they are given a loose outline of criteria. Can she talk, walk, is she representative of today’s modern woman…so on and so forth, but in reality everyone’s ideal is going to be different. So my approach to my life is to continuously better myself and worry only about the things I can control. I work on my physical, mental and emotional well-being. I am not afraid to help others better themselves. I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I was worried about giving away some big secret that was going to make someone ‘beat’ me out for a title. The whole concept of a pageant being some sort of a race is ludicrous to me.  The girl who walks away with a title did not win her way to a crown by elbowing out other girls along the way, that isn’t how it works!

There are competitive girls in both fields, some but very, very few are downright mean. They will try to tear others down, they will talk poorly behind your back and they will just not be kind when given the opportunity to be kind. I feel bad for those girls, they are missing out on some of the best things that both modeling and pageantry have given me. Lifelong friendships with cool, motivated, beautiful woman inside and out who I want to have by my side. Sometimes those girls will win, sometimes those girls will get the job but I never cry about those girls because in the end they had an opportunity to build a kingdom much more valuable than any crown or job and they blew it!  That 1% has given both industries a bad name.

In reality, most of the women I have come across are supportive and kind. They have also learned along the way that there is endless value in building others up and very little value in trying to tear them down. I don’t necessarily believe in destiny but I do believe in every moment having its ‘time’!

Last year I was 1st runner-up to the title of Miss Wisconsin Teen USA and after the pageant I did not feel even the slightest let down by the outcome. It simply wasn’t my time and I look at what this year has brought me and every day I am reminded of it. It was Karly Knaus’ time and that girl is killing it! I am proud of her, I am thrilled for her and I am honored that we became friends, not because we were ‘competing’ against each other but because we are two motivated women who have a lot in common. I did well that day, I talked the right talk, walked the right walk and was the most confident I have ever been. When we were standing up there in that moment I was truly and genuinely happy, for both Karly and for myself, I was the best Skylar Witte I could be that day and she was the best Karly she could be.  We are now friends and will be friends for the rest of our lives and that’s probably the best ending I could ever ask for!

 

Dream Big, Skylar

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