1. Every morning when I wake up, I want to go back to sleep. Not because I’m tired, but because I can’t face the world like this. I dress myself up as best as I can manage, and I do my hair by physical memory. I avoid the mirror.
Whenever I look in the mirror, I want to throw up. I want to rip my eyes out and never see again. I wish I could go to the store and return the parts of my face. Tell them: “This wasn’t what I ordered. I need a refund”. Get a replacement and finally love myself.
It’s hard to love yourself when no one loves you. A guy asks you out because of a dare. Just when you think you finally got someone to like you, they laugh at you and call you names. “Squidward”, “witch without the wart”, “forehead higher than my grades”, stuff you wish was a joke. It never is.
I have a crush now. We talk all the time. Sometimes about life, sometimes about our hobbies, sometimes about nothing really. I would definitely say we’re close. When I confessed, I admit I was kind of hopeful. I thought ‘maybe this time will be different. Maybe he would at least consider it’….But of course I was rejected. He wants his beautiful friend, not me. That kind of stuff always happens when you’re ugly. I couldn’t get someone to go out with me if I paid them.
See, as a woman, it doesn’t matter what other merits you have. It doesn’t matter that I’m a hard worker, people seem to think I’m funny, and I have some of the best grades in my entire school. It doesn’t matter that I read and research topics for a better understanding, and that I like having conversations about them. It doesn’t even matter that I have many skills. I’m ugly, therefore I am worthless. I’m ugly, so no one will ever want to date me.
When you’re ugly, you start considering the options. You look to plastic surgery because you know it’s the only way out. But plastic surgery is uncomfortable, it’s expensive, and it might not even work. God dammit.
I don’t believe in god, but I’m starting to think I should. Maybe some magical space man can make my face beautiful. Maybe some fairy in the sky can get someone to love me. Then I’d be happy. Even if it’s just for a little while
2. I’m not a pretty woman and it shows in everyday life and it hurts.
As much as being hit on and catcalled is scary and I’m SO sorry to those it happens too, I get the opposite. All I ever see are posts on being catcalled and I just wanna talk about my experiences. I get moo’d at and barked at like a dog and vomit noises. We have a creepy old regular where I work that’s calls all the girls beautiful but is disgusted by me and has made negative comments on my appearance and literally told me to get out of his field of vision.
People act super awkward and their eyes dart all over the place trying to avoid making eye contact when I talk to them. Other times people are just straight up MEAN and dismissive of me, but treat everyone else with respect.
I’ve been bullied and called ugly my whole life. Ever since I was 5 years old. Kids singled me out and were mean, and even the moms in my Girl Scout troop treated me differently.
I remember in high school these two guys were sitting behind me and one just loudly asked the other if he would fuck me. The answer was a loud resounding “HELLLLL NAWWWW.” Of course if the answer had been the opposite, anyone would be creeped out and feel unsafe, but this moment still sticks with me and hurts for some reason.
I’m physically in shape now but my face is just fucking weird. It’s so unsymmetrical and disproportionate and you can see every single little blood vessel in my face and I have genetic dark circles I can’t seem to conceal. Even with regular dentist appointments and good dental hygiene, I just have shit teeth that crack and break. My forehead is huge and I have a double chin that won’t go away and my eyebrows are wildly different from each other. My nose has been broken twice so you can only imagine what that looks like now.
I don’t take selfies. I hate pictures of myself and even still it hurts how friends and family don’t want to take any pictures with me. I do have a son and the whole reason I spiraled into typing this post was I have a photographer friend who offered to do valentines portraits of me and my son as a gift. I accepted FOR MY SON, not for me, and I’m not looking forward to it and it’s making me so sad. Every picture I see of myself I get super depressed.
I have good hygiene. I bathe and smell good. I dress nice. I AM nice. But the few friends I have and even my mother have admitted I’m not exactly the most attractive woman so that just confirms everything else.
I’m sorry for this post and I don’t mean to invalidate anyone else’s feelings or experiences. I just really wanted to rant.
2. I’m ugly. I know I’m ugly. I have known that I am ugly since I was twelve years old.
Before then I thought I was simply fat, and that when I lost all that fat, that I would be beautiful and valuable. When I was twelve I lost two stone, and realised I was simply, irretrievably, ugly.
My most prominent feature is my long, hooked, nose. My eyes are tiny and so close together I can only use children’s glasses. I am twenty one and still constantly get large, red spots.
My hair is a thick, brown mess of frizz. I have a wide ribcage and broad hips, which leave me with a very broad figure no matter how much weight I lose. I have very small breasts, which, coupled with my wide hips leave me perpetually pear-shaped.
To top it all off I am tall, 5′ 10″ in stocking feet, so there is never an option of blending into the crowd. I am always seen, and always ugly.
The world of an ugly woman is different to that of a beautiful woman in so many ways I could not begin to explain it all. I can, however, briefly sketch the strange differences I have observed between how society treats ugly women, and how society treats beautiful women.
My sister is beautiful. I have many beautiful friends. I live in the same world as beautiful women. I am not one of them. They are celebrated, remembered, asked after. People are good to beautiful women, even when beautiful women are indifferent, hostile or even cruel in return. People remember my sister’s name and instantly forget me. When we are introduced to new people together, nine times out of ten if I meet that person again they will immediately ask where my sister is, how she is, what she is doing. I am never asked about myself and she is never asked about me.
My beautiful friends are photographed by friends and acquaintances. I am silently left out of the records of social events. I am erased from history because I am too ugly to be photographed. Strangers compliment my sister and my friends, strangers insult and ridicule me.
Men might think that perhaps they live in the same world that I do, but they don’t. Even ugly men live in a different world to me. I have never seen, or heard of, a man experiencing the same level of public condemnation for their looks that I have faced. The most recent example I can think of is the man who stopped in the street last week to tell me that I shouldn’t be wearing tinsel on my head like my friends (we were going for Christmas drinks) because I was so ugly. This is not rare for me and this is not new. This has been my life since I was a young teenager.
When I see discussions about catcalling I want to scream at the people who tell women that they should be complimented. What should I do when someone yells at me, unprovoked, that I am an ugly minger? I know I am ugly. There is literally nothing I can do about it. I’m trying my best already!
There is hope for ugly men in popular culture. We celebrate the story of the ugly, or at least not conventionally attractive male, who finally gets his, inevitably beautiful, female crush to realise how much he is worth on the inside and how worthy he is of her love. That story never happens in reverse. There are just no famous actresses that are anything other than conventionally beautiful.
Nobody writes books about ugly women. No one makes films or plays, or songs or art of any sort about ugly women. In fact, we’re not there at all. In popular culture, and culture stretching back as far as human memory goes, ugly women are not there. We don’t exist and nobody talks about us. Beautiful women are the only women we see or hear about, and most crushingly, the only women we remember. The ugly ones, no matter what they do, seem to be simply invisible. Invisible or evil and bad.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this, though, we tell children stories of the good, beautiful princess and the evil, ugly witch. We make this happen.
I am ugly. I will not be remembered. I will never be the protagonist of any story told. I hate being ugly. I hate myself. The end.
Theodore Lee is the editor of Caveman Circus. He strives for self-improvement in all areas of his life, except his candy consumption, where he remains a champion gummy worm enthusiast. When not writing about mindfulness or living in integrity, you can find him hiding giant bags of sour patch kids under the bed.