Tuesday, September 10, 2013

The Ugly Kid



That's a true story, albeit summarized and shortened.  I was The Ugly Kid in K-12 and until I left the horrible parish of my childhood, that's all I was.  At 10, I began saving up my allowance for rhinoplasty and at 15, I concluded that nobody would ever want to date/marry/kiss me because of my ugliness.  This was mostly because of my broken nose, but only recently have I realized how much undernourishment and confinement in a basement had affected my appearance.

Although high school friends & faculty greatly improved my self-image, college finally valued my mind above all, and my post-school life has been fantastically slutty, a small part of me is still The Ugly Kid.  It is liberating: how I look to others doesn't factor into my functioning 95% of the time, I don't spend any money on makeup or jewelry or hair junk or wonderbras, someone who's attracted to me but doesn't care about who I am is easily filtered out.  And when someone calls me ugly, I just don't care - my first and last thought on the statement is "wow you're not creative."

Recently, my history as The Ugly Kid just happened to come up in two separate conversations and both people replied that I'm beautiful.  When I tell my story, that's not the reaction I'm going for.  I appreciate the thought, but I'm not fishing for compliments - that's not the point of the telling, I use my experience to teach and connect with others.  "But you're so beautiful, I can never believe you were The Ugly Kid" has good intentions but leaves me feeling invalidated.
I don't like it when someone, anyone, calls me beautiful save for 2 circumstances: when I'm wearing something formal and when I'm wearing nothing.  I only remove my clothing when I have control over the situation, and I put a lot of work into looking good at formal occasions.  Otherwise, I really don't understand why anyone would call me beautiful.  Do they want something of me?  If someone knows me well enough to want to compliment me, I'd like to think that this person knows that I'd rather be called smart or witty or twisted, etc.  Let me own that I was The Ugly Kid and help me seek revenge on those who prey on other Ugly Kids.

1 comment:

  1. I got nailed with a hardball straight in the nose when I was in middle school. Luckily it hit me so dead on that it didn't change the physical appearance of my nose, but underneath there was a problem. The bone from the bridge of my nose had crossed over into one of my nostrils and blocked it 90%. I subsequently had massive trouble sleeping for the next couple years because I would wake from hearing my own loud snoring or from an extremely dry mouth. I finally got nose surgery when my mom realized my lack of sleep was affecting me at school. When the surgery was over I had to walk around with two cotton balls that had strings attached to them stuffed up my nose all the way to the sinuses (they were pretty much tampons). I had to keep the cotton in my nose and a gauze patch covering my nose on for two weeks. It was REALLY awkward explaining to people I was a boy that essentially got a nosejob.

    Not exactly sure what the moral of the story is there, but I'm quite willing to join you in your crusade against people who prey on ugly kids :)

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