When I was 17, I looked at my senior pics and thought, ‘Wtf? I’m actually pretty.’ I had already tried to kill myself by that point, had run-ins with being harassed by school mates, was socially inept, had given up on having any real friends, and would have rated myself a 1 if anybody had bothered asking for reasons I’m not going into here.
And then my second reaction was, ‘Screw it.’ Because the amount of effort it took to look that way was far, far, far more work than anything I’d ever put into something that was never going to last. I’d rather spend an additional 2 hours sleeping or reading than use that time to make myself look good for other people. (After all, I’m not going to be looking at myself all day, yes? so there’s no real benefit to me and f* if I cared about the ones who were making my life miserable if they were that shallow.)
But the lesson never left. Beauty is a head game and if you let it into your head, it’ll kill you. Maybe not physically but for a certainty emotionally and mentally. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a 1 or a 10, it really is how you think about yourself that matters. Jackholes are always going to be judging individuals on how they look and picking on anybody who doesn’t fit the average. Doesn’t matter if you’re too pretty, too ugly, too thin, too fat, too dumb, too smart — they will find something to try to knock you down a peg or two. It’s up to you as an individual to opt out of the game. You’ll take flack for it, but it’s also a confidence building exercise.