Member-only story
I’m Less Invested in Beauty Than Ever
And I feel more beautiful than ever
I was what you might call an ugly duckling, or more charitably, a late bloomer. As a kid, I was chubby, bookish, and hopeless at reading social cues. I have a big nose and the kind of ambiguous biracial features that make people ask, “So…what are you?” I needed glasses that made one of my eyes look roughly twice the size of the other, and for some reason, my mom kept getting me these weird tight perms — starting in kindergarten — which made me look like a tiny lunch lady wearing an invisible hairnet. I longed for attention and validation, but I knew from a very young age that not being thin or pretty meant I had to compensate with my personality, smarts and talent.
So that’s what I did. I learned how to be funny. I drew people’s attention to my sharp mind and singing voice. I signed up to perform in every concert, play, or musical I could find. I was the first to raise my hand every time a teacher asked a question in class. I was always eager to read aloud from textbooks, because while the other kids struggled to sound out words, I could cold read like a pro from about third grade on.
I thought all these things would make me friends. I was wrong. I was bullied incessantly every year of my life until my junior year of high school, and it only stopped then because I caved…
