beauty is boring

deconstructing an obsession with appearance

Mar 22, 2024

I’ll admit, I am afraid to share this. I wrote this in early February, but I’ve scheduled and un-scheduled it several times out of fear. I don’t want to be misunderstood, especially as I share some of the most vulnerable parts of my brain with the world (AKA a couple dozen of you). So I will just offer a brief disclaimer that, while I don’t explicitly mention sensitive topics in this post, I do discuss comparison and physical appearance, which are uncomfortable subjects. I will also offer a gentle reminder that I am writing about my own experience.

Here it is!

I was about 11 years old when I started to notice everything—where my skin did and didn’t stretch the way it did on other girls, how my buck teeth, braces, and asthma-induced dark eye bags were exceptions to the beauty my parents promised I possessed. You get the picture.

After the tumults of middle school and puberty, I emerged on the other side fully (though subconsciously) believing my appearance mattered most, and subsequently that physical beauty, which I believed I lacked, was a sort of skill I had to hone in order to compete with other girls. This is to say it was only in the darkest parts of my mind where I tried to tear others down, emptying them of their positive attributes until they were objects and not intelligent, talented, beautiful, multifaceted people. Of course, I never, ever spoke these thoughts aloud. And yes, this is an incredibly toxic practice that is indicative of a nearly non-existent self-esteem (which is exactly what I had).

For the rest of my adolescence, I continued to do some version of this mental rearrangement every time I would see beautiful women in person or on social media. And it pains me to admit (on the internet, no less) that it was only recently when I was able to confront such a destructive thought pattern.

Earlier last year, I had a particularly illuminating therapy appointment in which my therapist and I unpacked the fact that my sister had received most of my parents’ attention while we were growing up, until or unless I did something exceptional. After our appointment, I journaled for a bit and wrote that I believed I had to be exceptional to be valued (which is something I mentioned in my first newsletter). At the risk of sounding dramatic, I’ll say that this recognition catalyzed a fateful shift in my foundation—I began to deconstruct my inclination toward constant competition with other people.

Here are a few other recent encounters that changed the way I see beauty:

One of my best friends and I were having a conversation about what it’s like to exist on social media where anyone can comment on your appearance (or even comment on you as a person). I said I think I value compliments on my character more than compliments on my appearance. They asked “How do you think you’d feel if someone commented on your post and complimented your appearance?” and after really thinking about it, I realized compliments like those have always lost their legitimacy with me even if I relished them in the moment. I’d always had a (mental) counterargument ready to falsify any positive claims on my appearance. But then I came to understand that compliments on my physical appearance become weightless because my physical being is guaranteed to change. We aren’t cartoons. We look and feel different every single day. We are our own variations on a theme: the variations, our appearance; the theme, our character.
SpongeBob SquarePants, season 2, episode 6 “Squidville”
At the time I’m writing this, I’m reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (…I know), and one of the characters is a handsome actor named Willem. There is one exchange in which someone says to him, “You’re good-looking, but everyone here is good-looking, and you’re just going to have to try harder.” This was perhaps the moment I had an “epiphany” about appearance. Minutes after reading that, I happened to open TikTok to see my FYP flooded with Grammys content, and I just kept thinking how this awards ceremony is a room full of some of the world’s most physically beautiful people, and they are being celebrated for their talent and their heart.
shoutout to Miley for winning her first Grammy
In mid-January, I made a concerted effort to reach out to my friends, new and old, after missing companionship through the tangled landscape of the holidays and my depression. I hadn’t fully comprehended how much I’d missed them, and they had been there all along. All of my friends are so talented, so kind, so supportive, so insightful, and I made the mistake of forgetting I had the privilege of reveling in their goodness. I had let my own insecurities keep me from reaching out or accepting their offers. It’s painfully simple, but one of the things that stops me from tearing myself down is witnessing and participating in supportive friendships. My friends are beautiful, and they are a part of me.
my second time going to Verbena with friends in the last month

It’s funny because, as I continue to challenge my own beliefs about beauty, everyone and everything slowly becomes more beautiful to me, while the goal of attaining physical beauty becomes more boring. I’ve also found that I have begun to develop a sense of neutrality surrounding my own appearance. It’s wild that I am capable of feeling this way after having spent so much energy mentally bargaining beauty away from other people in a doomed attempt to uplift myself. Beauty is not a limited resource for which we have to compete, but a wealth in which we get to indulge.

To realize this feels like watching my favorite room become gilded in sunlight at 7 p.m. at the beginning of Daylight Saving Time after a treacherous winter.

Thanks for reading <3