I do not say that I am not beautiful to fish for compliments. I do not say it so everyone in the room will feel obligated to tell me otherwise. I try not to say it at all, to just say thank you if I get a compliment about my looks because I do not want to look like the cocky girl who wants to hear what she already knows. But I am not beautiful, and I will not believe anyone who says otherwise.
I have not felt confident in my appearance since I was in middle school. We live in a world where skinny equals pretty and when one day my older sister’s hand me down pants no longer fit, I started to realize I wasn’t skinny. Look at the magazines, look at the movies, the girls who look like me are never the pretty ones.
The girls who look like me tend to be side characters who don’t find love, they tend to be the girl you break up with for the protagonist, they tend to be nonexistent, because girls like me don’t get to be loved and beautiful. Name the last time someone who wasn’t stick thin was in a tv show you watched and their weight wasn’t ever pointed out. You can’t, because chubby girls aren’t pretty girls, and loving someone not pretty requires an explanation.
There was no safety from this feeling in my home. My mom would insult her body in one breath and in the next tell me I was built like her. Anytime I went to get seconds at dinner my mother would ask if I really needed more. In any outfit I wore my mom would point out what parts of me looked bigger. I’m sure she thought she was helping, I’m sure she thought my life would be easier if I was thinner or at least knew how to make myself look thinner. But what she thought was helping actually turned me into someone who looks at myself and sees all the flaws in my appearance before I see myself as anything close to beautiful.
You do not undo years and years of believing you are not beautiful with a few compliments from your best friend or from your boyfriend. I will fight you almost every time, the only time you will call me beautiful and not hear me tell you I’m not is when I’m tired of arguing. But just because I do not believe you doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it.
Every time you call me beautiful or perfect you remind me that the way I see myself is not the only way I can be seen. You remind me that just because I don’t think I’m beautiful, others still might.
I may never believe that I am beautiful, but I’ll start to believe that you might think I am.