One random day during my high school career, I was standing in a group of socializing people (which was odd for me in the first place) and decided I needed to go, so I said outloud to the group, “I’m outtie!” because I had recently watched Clueless and wanted to try out the phrase…
No one heard me...but I was still outtie.
I would consider myself an individual—one who doesn’t need the approval of others, marches to the beat of my own drum, and I’ve almost always been this way—but even I am and was affected by everything I see—in films, on television, on the news, in my home, out at restaurants and public places. Everything is making an impression on me.
I loved Britany Murphy in Clueless. I loved her Ugly Duckling to Belle of the Ball transformation. And I wanted to be like those girls. As much as I would never be like those girls (it is genetically impossible), I tried.
Late high school is when I began to become aware of myself—what I looked like, my body, the way people interacted with me—and I started to care too. When I was a Junior, I decided I wanted to be thin, so I became obsessed with eating very little and running, doing an exorbitant amount of sit-ups every evening and weighing myself incessantly until the magic number was reached.
It worked. I became thin. I liked the way my clothes looked on me, I liked the size of the clothes I was wearing, and I liked the number on the scale. I wasn’t perfectly content of course, but who is?
I went away to college, and began to interact with people in a completely different way. Basically, men were interested in me—they found me attractive and therefore wanted to talk to me—wanted to listen to me talk. I had never experienced this kind of power before, and while at first I was naive to it, I soon became subconsciously (and then consciously) aware of what was going on and learned to wield my power very carefully and to the end that I wanted.
In the long run, Beauty and Thinness equaled attention and respect from men and often other women; so without it, I was lost in the world. I had no power, no place, no respect, and often no basic human civility.
I spent years beating myself up over it—trying to look a way that would gain favor with people was becoming harder and harder to achieve. I still daily notice when people are kinder to me if I have makeup on or heels, or when they don’t speak to me if I’m in my comfy clothes or looking a bit unkempt in my glasses, hair a mess.
It’s something we all do, right? Judge people by their appearance. And sometimes it’s real. You can actually know real things about people by the way that they look. But this—what I’m talking about is not the same thing. You can’t assume anything about me by my weight. I mean, you can, but you’ll probably be wrong. You can’t know anything about me as a human being by the clothes I threw on today. I mean, you can probably tell that I don’t adhere to the widely held societal fashion guidelines, but that doesn’t mean I should be treated any differently than the woman in front of me who looks like she just left a photo shoot. You can’t know one thing about me or my intelligence or my worth as a human by my subjective or objective external beauty. You do understand that since I have not had any reconstructive surgery, everything about the way my face looks has nothing to do with me and has everything to do with my parents hooking up some 32 years ago, right? So, why is beauty so important? Why do I treat people differently when they’re "drop dead gorgeous" or super skinny and have a svelt bod? Why can’t I take some time out of my day to get to know the person, the human, who for right now is walking around in that particular body that he didn’t choose, but must live in. That includes the “beautiful” and “thin” as well. Everyone. Why can’t we all start at the same place: Human.
This is the grace I am trying to give…to myself and to every person I see.
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