As much as I try not to be, I am still a victim of society to a certain extent. Like every person, I have my insecurities and doubts. But recently, I've really started to wonder what it would be like to see myself through someone else's eyes. See, until this point, I assumed that everyone outside of my closest friends and family saw me as fat, ugly, or at the very least, plain. My friends and family have always told me differently, but I was convinced that as people who loved me unconditionally, they would automatically just see me as beautiful; and while they did, that wouldn't make it true.
If anyone said anything different, I would assume it was because they either wanted something from me, were somehow impaired, or had some sort of a fetish for non-beautiful people. Wow, I think highly of other peoples' tastes, don't I? When I look at myself in the mirror or in pictures, I don't necessarily feel ugly, but I just don't think I'm neccessarily pretty. My eyes a bit too small, nose a bit too wide, uneven skin, far from perfect body. Not wholly unpleasant, but not a movie star.
I don't want to blame fashion magazines, Barbie dolls, television or films. Playing with dolls, watching films, or reading magazines never made me feel badly about myself. It was other people actually. The ones who did ridicule me for things. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't picked on a lot. Going to a small, private school did wonders for creating a family-type environment. When there are only 30 kids in your class (and that's a large class), cliques become a very abstract idea. But I was picked on. From my hair being too blonde (yes that's apparently a thing and they called me an albino), to my weight. I can honestly say that prior to those bullies (who were a few years older than I was and not in my class), I never gave my hair color, eye color, weight or anything else a whole lot of thought. I'm not saying they are the first, last, and only bullies in my life, but they certainly made a clear impression on me.
So why is it that a few negative experiences in my life have led me to believe those people over the other positive experiences? Why would anyone want to believe bad things about themselves? As I look back, I feel like there is a clear progression of how we get to that point in our lives. There's the first realization that someone doesn't find us as "beautiful" as we thought we were. In my case, it was those school-bus bullies. So that's the first chink in your armor. We get knocked off of our pedastal. It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong. The seeds of self-doubt are planted. Then, part of growing up is naturally going to be trial and error. We obssess over failures and mistakes because they confirm those seeds of doubt. We become our own self-fulfulling prophecies. The person you like doesn't like you back. You didn't make the team. You didn't get the lead in the play. You're not "popular".
People come up with all sorts of ways to cope with this. Some people become class clowns. If you can laugh at yourself first, or make your peers laugh at something else, they totally forget whatever it is you're insecure about. Some people become depressed or self-destructive, which is so, so sad. Some people become aggressive. I tried being aggressive and moody in middle school for about six months, but that didn't really make me any happier and confused a lot of people. Hell, middle school is confusing anyway. I did however, remain aggressive on the basketball court. Hello, foul-outs!
What I finally found solace in was being nice. Way too nice, actually. I let a lot of people walk all over me for way too long. I still do sometimes. I found a way to be indispensable to people in a way that I thought forced them to look past whatever it was I had been afraid of. Kind of the whole Steve Martin quote, "Be so good they can't ignore you." Well I was good, whether it was making signs for homecoming, volunteering for every charity event, boosting my sorority's GPA. But being needed is not the same thing as being wanted. I was always needed by many, but I never knew if they wanted me or not.
So fast forward several years, now I'm 30 and probably the most comfortable I've been with myself since I was 7 years old. Yet, I still don't believe it when people throw around the word "beautiful". Perhaps it's the fact that such compliments have come from people who have hurt me the most. Perhaps it's because I think that we don't tell our loved ones the truth because we love them and they are beautiful to us. But when you hear compliments over and over, when is it enough to make them valid? Do I need to be on a cover of a magazine in order to feel validated and beautiful? Because I don't want that. And even if I were voted into People Magazine's Most Beautiful list, there are still going to be people who think I'm ugly. People think Jennifer Lawrence is ugly. People think Ryan Reynolds is ugly. I think these people are insane, but everyone is entitled to their opinion. Sometimes I can't help but wonder if someone thinks that I'm prettier than they are, or if a friend is attracted to me. These are things you can't or don't talk about. It's not that I obsess over these thoughts or that they rule my life, but I do wonder, and wonder if I even knew the answer, would that satisfy me.
Maybe it's that realization that "beautiful" doesn't actually mean "I love you", "I choose you" or "I need you". That beautiful really isn't enough or what you're actually looking for after all. It's more than that. So what I'm finally realizing is that yes, there is a shallow part of me that wants to be beautiful. I know I've got a long list of accomplishments and good qualities, and dammit I would like to count being "beautiful" among them. Sorry, I'm not sorry. But I also need to believe I'm beauitful because I will never believe it coming from someone else until I believe it for myself. That may mean faking it until I get there. And not just faking it outwardly, but really stopping the negative thoughts as soon as they enter my brain. I've got to re-train myself and become at peace with all the mean comments I've said about myself and others have said about me. When I can do that, I'll finally be beautiful again.
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