Overcoming years of beauty shaming and finally embracing myself…
Mirror, mirror… Tell me who’s the most beautiful?
Beauty has always been quite a big topic growing up. I grew up with a lot of complexes, especially in an environment where Caucasian beauty standards were the norm.
I have vivid memories of my mom and aunties making fun of this one or that one because she’s not pretty enough, they are part of this kind of people who think that as a woman your happiness and success lay on the fact of being attractive based on certain beauty criteria that they have assimilated very early on.
From a very young age, I was often teased for not being as pretty as my mother who’s fair skin and used to be a beauty pageant in her youth. Growing up in Africa, she was a pretty, popular girl from a respected family in a privileged environment, she had a lot of suitors: she just had to pick who she wanted just like the character of Scarlet O’Hara at the beginning of Gone with the Wind.
When she had me, her friends used to laugh and say: “Are you sure she’s your daughter and not Rose’s?!” Rose was a friend of my parents, I don’t remember her because I was still a baby when she was around but based on all the jokes made about her I can imagine she was not what they would call a pretty woman. So by default, I was probably Rose’s daughter since I wasn’t the beautiful baby they hoped for. I had a darker skin complexion close to my father’s, I took a lot from him physically and, he was a beautiful man with delicate features.
Then it was my teeth: I wore braces for a couple of years going through great pain with teeth removal and surgery in my early teens, to that one I can say it was worth it in the end, and after all that suffering, my aunties and mom starting to say much more pleasant things: “Now you look nice, you have a great smile!”
But soon after acne issues stroke! Which is perfectly normal as a teenager. Not the extreme kind, but bad enough to make my mother cringe every time she’d see me. It was by far the worst physical appearance change I went through mostly because, looking back, my mom blew it out of proportion.
The worst thing is, I realized I inherited that skin condition from her side. She suffered from much more severe acne and some of her brothers too. Still, she used to make me feel guilty about it, saying I wasn’t using the right products, or not using make-up properly so I could cover the pimples. I was never a big fan of heavy makeup compared to most girls my age who wanted to look like dolls, plus a part of me didn’t want to give the satisfaction to my mom to succumb to her unjustified demands. Many times I told myself: “I don’t do drugs, I don’t misbehave with boys, I don’t lie, I do just enough in school… So why is she acting like I’m a stubborn, difficult daughter?” As a result, resentment grew.
Between the ages of 12 and 20, I ended up using a ton of skincare mainly from pharmacies and supermarkets, going to dermatologists to seek help to clear once and for all that disease. I started thinking I was the problem. Why couldn’t I resolve that issue? I think if my mom would have been saying something like: “Look it’s okay you are still pretty with or without pimples, it will clear later, and if not you can always use medicine and makeup to cover it. It’s no big deal, many people have that condition, and I did too! It doesn’t make you less than anyone else…” Expecting this type of speech from her made me even more frustrated because I knew she’d never say it.
Desperate, I did the accutane treatment at 20, and the side effects were multiple, some of them being: extreme skin and genital dryness and depression, I experienced all of that. But my skin finally cleared. The acne came back slightly but I only did topical treatments here and there when I felt my skin was acting crazy with hormones or stress.
I wish my mother would have put all this energy into pushing me to excel in school or extracurricular since I had a love for creativity instead of constantly pressuring me, putting me down for not being well-dressed enough or put together, or making my acne disappear. I wish my mom pushed me towards reaching my full potential rather than futile beauty standards.
Yet I was receiving compliments from friends, and a few boys were attracted to me. I wasn’t repulsive… But in my mid-late twenties, at the age where I was supposed to become more confident, I had that constant cloud over my head comparing myself to others, envying them for their smooth skin and clear complexion. At some points I avoided mirrors or looked into them too long, it became a painful reflection of my insecurities and why I shouldn’t fool myself by thinking I was enough. I’d see myself as an ugly duck with pimples that nobody would want to be with!
In my thirties, my mom was still in the same mode saying I didn’t want to resolve that issue because if I wanted to with my now comfortable situation and access to products due to my spouse working for a big beauty corporation, I’d have found that miracle product or beauty routine to erase all of my acne issues.
My skin was improving though when I lived abroad but when I had a trip planned to France to visit her, my skin broke out. It was a trigger to see her. I started thinking she was projecting some long-ass time insecurities she never resolved on me! We had a big argument a couple of years ago, I just lost it and told her to leave me alone and that I had enough of her criticism and harassment. Since then she stopped.
Now she’s on my weight, sigh. I’ve always been slim, but I lost some more weight with my separation and stress around it so now she’s saying that being skinny is not good, especially at a certain age, and that I should eat more because I look like a little girl. The only difference today is that I tell her I love myself the way I am, and at least I can dress the way I want. A lot of my friends wish they could do the same! I’m wondering if maybe she’s jealous in addition to the unresolved trauma she went through, and that was the reason all along explaining that relentlessness towards me.
Today I often tell my daughter she’s beautiful no matter what others say and that she should know and be aware of her value, even if she faces or will be faced with heavy criticism because that’s the way our world works. And it often comes from the ones who are supposed to love and support us the most.
So mirror, mirror… Who’s the most beautiful?
You are. All of us are.
