You Have Such a Pretty Face

A lot of people who know me today do not know about my past. They don’t understand why I often cringe when I’m told I’m beautiful or thin or x, y, z (anything meant to compliment an attribute that society generally deems desirable). That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a compliment (my pants would be disintegrated from fire) – but with every compliment comes this little voice in my head that says…

hmm. But what if I wasn’t?

It disgusts me to think about my childhood and how much others emphasized beauty as the one defining characteristic to strive for.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard – “you have such a pretty face.” 

I can remember being prepubescent and looking in the mirror with my mom. I took a chunk of my belly between my fingers and remarked about how much weight I needed to lose. My mom and I agreed 20 pounds would be the magic number. If I could just lose 20 pounds, I would be so beautiful. This dance would go on my entire life – if I could just lose __ pounds, then my life would be better. Then, as if by magic, everything would be as it should be.

In high school, a friend’s mom once took my face into her long, fake-nail-laden fingers, and looked deeply into my eyes and remarked, “hmm, I guess you do have a pretty face.” Of course I imagined that my friend had somehow been defending my beauty earlier to her mom who thought thinness was the only, or most important, sign of beauty. At least I had one redeeming physical characteristic. Otherwise, I would be a lost, worthless cause — might as well not even exist!

And, in the case I had any question about where I ranked amongst my friends, I remember being told, in middle school, that if I lost weight I would be the prettiest of all of them. “They are skinnier, Bella, but you have the prettiest features. If you just lost weight…” Looking back, I laugh. Ok, so if I did lose weight, and if I was somehow then deemed prettiest of all of my friends, what then? what would that even mean?  what life would that afford me that I couldn’t have with this round midsection?

Around the same time I would often come home to my older brother and his friend, two rebellious long-haired teens with anarchy patches on their backpacks, sitting on the front porch. My brother’s friend would moo as I approached. It was from his mouth that I first heard the word “heifer.” I remember running inside to look it up, slamming the dictionary shut, and resolving to lose weight. I went into my mom’s room and did sit-ups on her floor. And so I learned – men will not find you beautiful, or respect you, unless you are thin. Better get thin so I can impress all those jackasses!

But why strive for thin-beauty? What were the motivating factors? A few things became clear to me: one, to be fat and sexually desirable are mutually exclusive. And it’s important to be sexually desirable, otherwise why would people keep pointing out how fat I was? And, it is important for a woman to be considered beautiful to a man because men seem to hold the keys to all the doors you want to open. Second, your life will vastly improve if you get thin-pretty. That must mean people will stop feeling they have the right to judge your body like it’s on display in a Powerpoint presentation with arrows pointing to large thighs and a gut with the word “ugly” flashing in neon red letters. Third, beauty is the holy grail — your entire life should be spent in pursuit of finding and securing a beauty that others can corroborate on. Thin-beauty is an indication of power and it is a power with real-life rewards.

A woman I worked with once told me, in front of others at a holiday party, that if I had lost 10 pounds I would have made it on American Idol. She, of all people, knew that being thin-pretty was a currency in a world run by men. She was, in fact, sleeping with her boss and eventually reaped the financial benefits. If I had just been a little more thin-pretty, the judges would have rewarded me. Clearly, she said, I had the talent. But it was the looks I was missing and, well, looks trump everything else, apparently.

Today, I am the one who often tells myself I am not thin-pretty enough — it’s no longer strangers, co-workers or even loved ones telling me I’m fat because they “love” me or “care about” me.

Is it any wonder why it’s so ingrained in my psyche? Sometimes, I feel like I’ll never escape the ‘beauty = thinness = the goal’ equation.

I find myself resenting my body no matter what. I resented my body when I was fat because, well, I was fat. Being fat meant I had friends, family, doctors, and strangers all commenting on how much my life would improve if I lost weight. It meant people felt inclined to remind me I was fat, as if I was also incredibly dumb and lacked self-perception. It meant people wanted to tell me what to eat, what not to eat — even people who wouldn’t know what healthy was if it bit them in the ass; they told me to lose weight between puffs of cigarettes and bites of junk food.

And, today, I resent my body because it seems like if you are female and somewhat thin you become hypersexualized. It seems like I can open doors that may have been closed before and it leaves me feeling cheap. It seems like I’m part of the superficial world that once shunned me.

So rarely was my weight ever tied to the word “health.” I can’t recall anyone telling me that being active in loving myself would be the real contingency that mattered — the real, lasting and true indication of beauty. No one told me that being the best me meant defining “best” in my own terms. No one told me that everyone and their momma has an opinion and that they don’t matter unless I want them to. I believed every person, every stranger, who told me I was fat, ugly, not good enough. I daydreamed about being thin instead of daydreaming about who I could become in the world.

All I can hope is that when I have a little girl, I tell her how beautiful a strong, compassionate, self-loving and evolving soul is.  All I can hope is that a healthy body and mind is the goal — that we spend days comparing thoughts on life, not on our weight. All I can hope is that when I decide to have children, I’ve gotten over my own issues of flawed self-love because I want to lead by example.

<3,

The Cranky One