What it’s like to feel ugly

I have spent a lot of my life feeling ugly. I know I’m not, but I often feel like I am. This is my attempt to tell the truth about what that’s like, with a few additions about how I’ve built a sense of my own loveliness thrown in. Maybe one day I’ll write about what it feels like to feel beautiful, and maybe another one after that acknowledging that really I’m pretty normal, like all of us. But for today, this is what I have written.

What it’s like to feel ugly…

Aged 10-11

It’s going to a party dressed in a pretty skirt but very self-conscious about your knees. It’s looking at photographs of yourself and not liking at all what you see. It’s Daniel Jordan screaming that your bum is so bony and feeling awash with shame.

Aged 12-16

It’s wrapping everything difficult you feel about yourself, your mind, your body, your family, your place in friendship groups, where you come from, your personality and, of course, your face, into two small, horribly powerful words: fat and ugly. It’s anorexia. It’s not being able to leave the house some days because you’re so disgusted by yourself. It’s obsessively checking your image in every single reflective surface. It’s studying images of skinny models in magazines so well that you know every bone, line and angle of ‘perfection.’ It’s ripping the hair clean out of your scalp. It’s controlling calories because you can’t control the shape of your hips, the unevenness of your lips, your mum’s drinking, or the thoughts other people have about you.  

Aged 17-18

It’s getting obliterated because that’s the only time you feel confident –  even though this often doesn’t work. It’s not learning how to apply make-up or do your nails. It’s incessant, out of control obsession and comparison with other women. It’s seeing photos of yourself and drowning in shame. It’s sleeping with dozens of guys, hoping against hope that one of them will make you feel good enough. It’s dressing however your friends dress, but always just missing the mark. It’s paranoia when you’re high. It’s being told to “cheer up love” when you walk down the street. It’s learning to perform during sex, showing guys that you’re having a good time even when you’re having a horrible time. It’s feeling desperate each time you’re rejected. It’s betraying friends just to prove that you’re somehow not disgusting. It’s checking your reflection from every angle and only ever seeing that you are.

Aged 19-25

It’s gaining weight that your body doesn’t naturally want to carry. It’s uncontrollable bingeing. It’s eating food out of bins, eating so much you vomit and nearly choke in your sleep. It’s wanting to claw your face off. It’s a multitude of shameful moments. It’s entering your second decade of body dysmorphia. It’s building a fragile structure of self-esteem. It’s having an idea of how you want to look but having little support, internally or around you, to make that happen. It’s realising you’ve never learned how to be a woman. It’s looking around you and feeling like all your peers have. It’s looking at photos of yourself as a baby and thinking you look ugly. It’s picking your nails, hating your nails, hiding your nails. It’s wearing trainers in summer so no one sees your feet. It’s never ever wearing a skirt because your legs feel so disgusting and repulsive. 

Aged 25-34

It’s still being uncomfortable, but finding beauty in other parts of yourself. It’s building a solid sense of self. It’s hearing people call you beautiful and letting that sink in. It’s revelling in naked bathing in California. It’s allowing yourself to be convinced to cycle and weight train, and watching your body change shape. It’s becoming just a bit too skinny. It’s beginning to experiment with your hair. It’s relaxing and trusting on your wedding day that you won’t look hideous in the photos, and letting yourself smile and laugh. It’s taking relatively few selfies. It’s watching your face change shape as you mature and appreciating this vessel that has carried you. It’s getting braces, and bearing the unbearable self-consciousness of having four teeth pulled with the knowledge that one day, you’ll have straight teeth. It’s not being pleased with the result. It’s not getting your hair cut or your nails done often enough, and often feeling disgusting and ashamed. It’s beginning to find styles and clothes that suit your body, and making some hideous mistakes too.

Aged 35-36

Feeling ugly nowadays is mostly just about your face. It’s wishing you had different features. It’s secretly wishing you knew how to apply make-up “like a woman” but feeling a mixture of it being pointless and also, in fact, not wanting to learn how, goddamit! It’s still sometimes noticing that you feel like “a freak.” It’s really not liking the way you look in photos (yes, sigh, still), and not liking posing for photos, and dreading what you look like to the photograph taker and in the not-so-tiny screen. It’s not wanting to look ridiculous or like you’re a try-hard. It’s not taking selfies because you don’t like your face. It’s feeling like you don’t look relaxed, and that people will see that and judge you. It’s being perennially dissatisfied with your hair. It’s not having the confidence to ‘fake it until you make it’, especially in full body photos. It’s being disgusted by your nose, which appears to be permanently growing. It’s still being self-conscious about your smile (despite the braces). It’s not wanting to be reassured for the thousandth time that you’re not ugly, but just wanting to be heard.

But it’s confidence in your body, too: in the way she feels, in what she’s capable of, in how it actually feels to be in a state of pleasure (whatever the form). It’s still wishing you looked different, whilst wryly noticing that you’re beginning to, as the first signs of ageing set in. It’s being slightly horrified by the creases on your face when you smile. It’s reminding yourself the smiles are proof that you’ve laughed and smiled a lot in the last 15 years. It’s feeling like you look one way and feeling a jolt of worry and shame as you realise you don’t look that way at all. It’s refusing to cake yourself in make-up, knowing that won’t solve anything. It’s writing this piece and acknowledging that you’ve spent a huge amount of your life feeling ugly. It’s saying to yourself, “That’s sad.”

A lot has happened, and none of this is absolute. It ebbs and flows and shifts and changes. You know that a lot of the time, it’s not really about your face – yet still, in this beauty obsessed society, to some extent it definitely is. Maybe as you approach 40, what it’s like to feel ugly will change. Or maybe this feeling will be with you until your final breath.

(Image credit from blog page: Luis Villasmil via Unsplash.)