Today I received the following email.
First, let me say, that I think your blogs (both written and video) are a joy to read and watch. I'm a fan. I think you have an insight and wit greater than most of the women I've ever known (of course, I don't actually know you).
With that said, this is going to sound unnecessarily mean and "un-PC", but I'm compelled to say it. Again, I feel like shit for even thinking it, but oh well, I've always been brutally honest, for better, and usually for worse.
Here it goes. Have you given honest consideration to the fact that if you dropped a few lbs., got a nose job (assuming you rectify your finances in the near future), and grew your hair out a bit, you'd have a free-ride in life? IMO, in terms of physical beauty, there's no reason for someone that could be a solid '9' accept being a '6.5/7' (Argh, the dreaded scale!). Is this completely shallow? Maybe? I don't think so. Is the pursuit of emotional/psychological perfection (which is almost unanimously accepted as worthy) mutually exclusive from the pursuit of physical perfection (which is almost unanimously met with derision)?
I fully expect you to crucify me in response, or more likely, decline to respond at all. My only concern would be hurting your feelings, which wasn't my intent, but I've likely done (it's only natural when questioning someone's attractiveness). For that I'm sorry. At the same time, I think you can process this with proper perspective knowing my intent isn't malicious.
It took me nearly eight years to post a photo of my face on the slack. In part because I wanted to maintain some sense of privacy, but mostly because I didn’t want to subject myself to the scrutiny of a wide audience. Or any audience, to be honest. I got to be The Great and Powerful Oz and hide behind my words. I didn’t have to be pretty.
Because I was never pretty. Growing up, I was the Smart Girl. But I wanted to be the Pretty Girl. Most Smart Girls do at one time or another. And yes, the world really was that black and white. I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Your friend K. is pretty, my mother would tell me. You’re smart. It was the one compliment I was always certain to get.
I didn't want to be smart. I wanted to be blonde. I wanted to be cute. I wanted that straight-up-and-down stick-figure that every other Pretty Girl had.
But I didn’t.
I had dark hair and bushy eyebrows and big eyes and an hourglass figure on an eight-year-old’s body. I had crooked teeth and an overbite and oversized eyes that I hid behind a book. Adolescence was equally unkind, as braces and bad skin and an even worse perm followed me through junior high and high school. My entire childhood prepared me for the role of the Fat Funny Best Friend. The Wisecracking Sidekick. The Girl with the Good Personality.
A few years ago, I lost sixty pounds. And braces. Again. Then jaw surgery.
I wasn’t a Swan. But I was no longer the Ugly Duckling.
I changed so much that the guy who dated one of my good friends in high school sent me a message over MySpace asking did you know J.? I dated her and she graduated your year. Even with a clear, unphotoshopped picture of my face, he still had no clue who I was.
I realize that there’s more to life than what you look like. I wouldn’t have been able to survive the past thirty years intact had I thought otherwise. A lot of women tsk-tsk and say that they’d never want to look like a Brazilian Supermodel, when I say I’d love to know what it’s like, six feet tall with legs up to there and a face that stops traffic.
But I no longer feel bad that I don’t look that way.
Not being beautiful has never cost me a job or a boyfriend. Sure, I wanted to be prettier. Who wouldn’t? I’ve also wanted a pony. So I didn’t win that particular event in the DNA Olympics. I won others.
We can’t gold medal in everything.
I was saying to a friend of mine the other day that being in front of a camera is still an alien concept. The idea that what I look like is anything but a detriment is an alien concept.
The idea that someone would consider me unattractive is not.
My world fell apart over the past ten months. Injuries, girly issues and a thyroid condition contributed to a thirty pound weight gain in the past two years, fifteen of which I’ve lost. My career is a mess, my relationship fell apart, my finances are a joke.
I wanted to continue to hide behind the curtain. It would have been the safe thing to do.
I didn’t want to be safe any more. I didn’t want to hide. I didn’t want to apologize for what I looked like. I think doing what scares you is a good thing. So I jumped in.
And while the response has mostly been positive, I have received plenty of negative emails. Always on what I looked like, never on what I said. But they were usually sent from throwaway email addresses, sucker punches thrown anonymously. This was the first that was thought out, was reasoned, was sent with an actual name attached.
I’m not offended by the email, mostly just confused. What sort of free ride would I get if I was a “9” instead of a “6.5/7”? What do those extra points buy me? It would make sense if he was offering me a job, let’s say, something tangible and in-front-of-the-camera. But that's not the case.
Anyway, I don’t want a free ride. I want to pay my own way.
That’s not to say that I’m not working at losing these final 15 pounds. I’ve been working my ass off to, well, work my ass off. My hair, well, that’s a matter of personal preference.
And excuse me, but my nose is fine.
I know I’m perfectly cute. I also know I also live in a world where there are girls who are cuter than me. Who are skinner than me.
But they don't have the one thing I do have.
Me.
