by Lena Potts
I learned to hate my thighs when they ripped each pair of leggings I had. When they bunched up my shorts in the middle. When they jiggled when I ran. I always wanted them to look like Blake Lively’s in Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.
Growing up, my hair was long, White girl long, and curly like Julia Roberts’ in Pretty Woman, and people commented on it all day. When I straightened it it was even longer. I noticed, in high school, that it still wouldn’t look like White girls’ did, no matter how long I spent straightening it. That’s when I knew that boys talking about liking blondes or brunettes weren’t talking about categories I could even fit into.
For the most part, I don’t look like either of my parents. I learned to hate my nose when I was 14, when it reminded me of my father. My nose is his- the bump at the bridge makes me look more like him than I want to. I want to wash that resemblance away. For a long time I’ve secretly hoped I’d break my nose in an accident and have it reset differently.
I have never been, and probably will never be thin. I read when I was 11 that Britney Spears did 1,000 sit-ups a day to get in “Slave 4 U” (iconic) shape. After each diet and thousands of crunches, my stomach will not lie perfectly flat.
I saw a picture in my sophomore year of college that made my arms look fat. I’ve tried to wear long sleeves as often as possible since. I don’t wave to people or dance if I’m wearing something sleeveless.
When I was 8 I learned to hate that my Blackness made me look different. No matter how hard I tried to copy the looks I saw on Disney and Nick, I couldn’t look like them. I was not Lizzie McGuire, and, no matter how dope Raven was, Lizzie was the favorite.
Five years ago, I learned to hate my face. I realized, when messing around with Photoshop, how assymetrical it was. One side almost droops. One eye is smaller. My mouth moves to one side when I talk. I cover my face when I laugh so that you can’t tell- it just looks like I’m being sorta coy.
I’ve worn lipstick or tinted chapstick every day since I was 16, when someone told me that my lips are the same color as my face, and that without lipstick, they just blend in.
My eyes are like the anti-Disney. Rather than being big and taking over my face, they’re taken over, normally by my squishy chubby kid cheeks, and disappear. I learned to hate them when I stopped seeing them in photos.
Growing up in a racially diverse, low-income community, everything about me looked average. I never stood out. I learned to hate my shape and color when I went to an elite college and was the biggest girl in my freshman dorm, when I was one of few Black faces, and when I felt I couldn’t be beautiful, not there.
When I look back on photos of myself as a kid, it’s clear that I couldn’t have believed any of this from the beginning. No kid starts out hating themselves. We do that to them.
I have learned, and more importantly, been taught, that I am not beautiful. I learned to hate my body when I was told that it was wrong. Unlearning that takes forever, and as hard as I try, I don’t know if I ever will.
We tell kids, especially little girls, that there’s constantly something to fix. They grow up, always learning a new thing that’s wrong with them, and they try to contort themselves into what will be beautiful and right, and we applaud them for it.
Then, when they are older, and are still imperfect, we tell them that they are brave if and when they accept themselves. Because we expected them to be flooded with hatred, and the absence of it feels like a feat. What does that say about us?
Narrow representation, passing comments, race biased standards, etc., aren’t something you can just choose to ignore or get over- they are systematic and ingrained. I, like so many people, took all those comments and images and standards into myself, and built my perception of who I should be, a picture I can never live up to, and shouldn’t.
Every time I wear shorts or a bikini, or go out of the house without makeup, I am challenging myself. It’s not as deep as me challenging the beauty standard and being “brave”- I’m not there, and we can’t all be. It’s very literally me overcoming myself, and trying to force myself to unlearn years of bad lessons. My biggest hope is that we can stop teaching those lessons in the first place, because I’ve found that unlearning can be a hell of a lot harder than learning.
I’ve recently decided to force myself to post more selfies and “bad” photos. Maybe if I force myself out there, fake it tell I make it, I can unlearn some of the damaging lessons I’ve been taught, and be a better model for younger people.
For more of me trying out this positivity thing, check follow my Insta @lenabbena.
