You are a 10 and don't even know it
You are a 10 and don't even know it
It was only a matter of time till people started calling me ugly
Women are extremely retarded about their looks.
This was always my beef with the Dolly Aldertons and Elizabeth Days of the world. Both of them are Stunning English roses with legs for days, massive tits, porcelain skin, the works.
And you read their autofictions, and it’s all “If only I were a pretty girl.”
This distorted self-perception is common, and why many people get triggered when they see women who seem self-satisfied.
Like a scene from Mean Girls, they demand that you invent an insecurity attached to a highly subjective value system.
People like the commenter above have a problem with the fact that I am pleased with my appearance and have the audacity to admit so publicly. If you believe you can lead a more fulfilled and virtuous life by underestimating your own value on the most subjective quality known to man, be my guest. I won’t follow.
Several other commenters have assumed my problem must be that I have very high standards for men, and here, I want to focus on looks, which is what the commenter above refers to: i.e. I chase after men too hot for me. I call fake news.
When I was young, I had a hamster with a hole in its mouth. It stored its food in its cheeks as hamsters do, and you could see the little seeds and kernels popping out of the hole. I picked that hamster out of a dozen others in the pet store because I thought all the other kids would think he looked disgusting and leave him behind. I could love him unconditionally, so I took him home. I carried the same attitude onto people.
I always loved the misshapen things a little bit harder. I pity people who don’t have the imagination to find beauty in the plain and the ugly. Even a fool knows he is supposed to lust after a model, but only a great artist can make a muse out of the girl next door.
Anyway, I am in Paris typing this, and I promised my therapist I wouldn’t write or do productive things while here because I am teetering on the edge of burnout and need to breathe for a hot minute. I came here for the birthday party of three high school friends who have reunited a bunch of us from across Europe. An old classmate said I look tense. I am tense; I was born tense. He said I need to relax, but everyone says that about me, and I don’t know what it means beyond drinking into a stupor ( I am tee-total 98% of the time). He said relaxing means having no rules. Ah, that’s an interesting thought. So I am allowed to write, even on holidays.
But even here, the city of love and beautiful, lean, stylish, effortless people, all I can think about is the pale, the chubby and the skinny fat, the neurotic, mishappened, freckled quail eggs of men, Brits. My OG lovers. My forever Gods. My personal proof, if I ever needed one, that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.
I promise you that even when I meticulously curate my wardrobe, weigh my protein powder, portion my fruit, and remove every last bit of makeup from my face before my 8-hour beauty sleep; I look at humans full of flaws they can’t or won’t address and see charm and grace.
PS Thank you so much for all the comments; I read them all the moment you post them, but I don’t always respond on time because I have been getting hundreds of them lately. Having people interact with my writing makes it ten times more fun, so please keep them coming. Some of you are brilliant writers yourselves. You are all giving me great food for thought and inspiration for my next posts.
As a ginger who is utterly gorgeous but still bruised by society’s relentless mockery of the inability to tan, may I suggest turning to the words of Leonard Cohen:
“And clenching your fist for the ones like us
Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty
You fixed yourself, you said, "well, never mind
We are ugly but we have the music"
“I always loved the misshapen things a little bit harder.” I love it!
Misshapen things tell a story, a unique story about a unique individual at a unique time and place. Misshapen things exist— despite conventional ideas about right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, good and bad. Misshapen things are about the human things, about what makes us happy,sad,love fear… Taking misshapen things and making them yours, owning them, loving them… it makes things whole.
I have always found the “imperfections” of my lovers to be proofs of beauty. It’s not because of anything I did— loving their misshapen hand or their scarred lips didn’t make them beautiful. A kiss doesn’t transform on its own. It’s that despite what others think, they are willing to throw themselves into Cupid’s arrow, to allow themselves to love and be loved, to forget about their own egos and allow Eros to take a hard and fast hold on their souls.
It’s not simple physical attributes or psychological affirmation that makes a woman erotically beautiful. It’s a woman’s confidence in her neediness, a confidence in the natural instincts in her heart and her feminine craft to makes thing beautiful that makes a woman hot. It is not apologizing for being profoundly misshaped. It is recognizing that it is through another misshapen body and soul that creates beauty— it is becoming clay that softens so two people make a bit of beauty in a world that is often too cruel and unforgiving.
So yes— a 10.