Ava Adore

I was an ugly child. Or so I was told—which was all that mattered. Ugly didn't care that I was white or thin among children; as far back as I can remember, my peers called me ugly. I can't even pinpoint why I was ugly; no one called me 'fat' or 'braces' or anything that would point to a root cause, something I could pick at or change or beg for alteration. I was just 'ugly.' I was unattractive, and, as young folks tend to do, therefore unworthy of befriending.

I did a lot of mental gymnastics at these early years, trying to change my personality into something that was worthy of being befriended, to make up for my ostracizing ugliness. It never mattered, because by 12 even I had realized it was inauthentic and hurt me inside to do that. Was it worse to be me and be ugly, or to be not-me and be ugly? So I gave up on trying to be whatever wasn't ugly. I was ugly, but at least I would be me.

I contemplated suicide. I told no one, until after I had decided against it. Instead, I wore my ugly like an armour. I was loud-mouthed; if people weren't going to like me, they were going to not like me for who I was, not for what I looked like (or failed to look like). My motto became, "Love me or hate me, but at least you'll know who I am." It made it more bearable, in some ways. I got some misfit friends. In others, it never really went away. 

I used my long hair to hide away some of my ugly. What my hair couldn't cover, I tried to fix with makeup. I remember when I was in 9th grade, a friend had come over to spend the night. When the time came to wash my face and go to bed, I was struck with panic. She would see me without makeup. She would see how ugly I was. What would she do? Of course, looking back, it was an irrational fear. That didn't make the fear any less valid to me as I grew older. 

I begged my parents for some help with my skin. Nothing over the counter seemed to help any of it. I became fixated on my skin; if I could fix that, I wouldn't be seen as so ugly, maybe. Skin is a big part of our bodies; if my skin was better, literally less of me would be ugly. I went to the dermatologist and they prescribed me, along with topical treatments, a medicinal regimen to make my skin look less like a moldy sponge. 

The medication made me vomit. With food, without food, it didn't matter. The meds made me so ill that I was on medication for my medication. But having slightly less ugly skin was worth, at the time, all of the awful chaos I was doing to my teeth, esophagus, stomach lining, and gods only know what else. I didn't lose weight, despite the vomiting; my body was doing this odd thing where it literally only spat out whatever offended it. I could not tell you why. 

I have always been thin. I have always been 'underweight.' No matter how much I eat, I'm still underweight. You can call me a bitch for complaining about it—and I don't mean to complain, actually, because I like my body but it took me a fuck long time to get here—all I want to do is point out that thin wasn't the answer to my ugly. In fact, another of my friends was also ridiculously underweight. We were both regularly called-out and made fun of for eating disorders we never even had.

The school nurse went so far as to try and get help for us. My friend was clearly suffering from anorexia; me, from bulimia. Neither of these were true. She ate everything in sight, was naturally thin, and exercised daily at length as a dancer. Me—well, if my skin were anywhere near as clear when I went off the medication, I'd drop the pills like a bad habit. But it was a bad habit: the medication was hurting my body, but I didn't care. I'd rather vomit and have clear skin. I was 16.

That's fucked up. I know. But it's so hard to re-program yourself.

I graduated high school with clearer skin, still thin, with small breasts and was still considered ugly. It also didn't help that I was struggling with another sort of invisibility: I was a lesbian with long hair and wore makeup (for aforementioned reasons), and so I was labeled 'femmey' or told I was straight or written off for a variety of similar reasons, none of which I identified with. I never identified as femme and even my community didn't know what to do with me, and so I had no community.

By that time, I had stopped caring though. Or at least, I had thought I'd stopped caring. When I was at school, I tried to express myself better. I would be more visible to the 'community'; I got box braids for my long hair; I dressed in baggy jeans, oversized shirts, that whole deal. I was more comfortable, getting the word 'femme' slung at me less (nothing against femmes, just literally not how I self-identified), and the lgbt* community took me more seriously.

Looking back, it looked like I couldn't afford to own a damn thing that fit me. My style was not flattering. But somewhere around 2005, I don't know how or why, people stopped calling me ugly as frequently. It took years for this to sink in. Hell, I'm still processing it now. It is weird for me to put this side-by-side with the knowledge that I've modeled on-and-off since I was a small child. I still think I look terrible in candid photos. At any rate, I slowly started to... not mind myself so much.

I cut off all my hair.

That was huge for me. This was literally the only thing anyone had ever praised regarding my appearance: I had such nice hair. It was so long! And so thick! And such a lovely mahogany colour with natural red and gold highlights! And I went and cut the whole damn thing off because I was tired of carrying around the weight of it, physically and emotionally. I think that's really when I started to come into myself. I faced all of myself, skin included, when there was nothing to hide behind.

Chopping off my hair gave me the queer visibility I'd wanted and no longer felt the need to dress in clothes that obviously didn't fit me. I am small; I started to dress in more flattering clothes in general, in the same style I dress today—like a rockstar. And that, too, had a certain boost for me. When I learned to apply makeup like a rockstar and dress in edgy clothes like a rockstar, I started to feel like a fucking rockstar, and I felt less and less ugly.

Now when people call me ugly, if they do, I tell them to fuck off.

More surprisingly, I hear that now, I'm 'hot.' It's so strange to me. No one ever tells you that when the ugly little duckling grows up into a beautiful swan, it still thinks like an ugly duckling. It takes more than lovely white feathers to fix the corrosive experience of being labeled as an ugly duckling. Because there is still the part of you that looks at these folks and goes, How shallow. You like me for my feathers only. When I did not have them, you would not have me.

I still have sub-par skin, for the record. I don't think I'm actually any prettier than I was when I was younger; I think I know how to carry myself better. I still have ribs that stick out from being too thin, a nose that's too big for my small face, and huge eyes like I came from some other planet. My boobs have not gotten any larger. And sometimes, I still find myself absently fixing my hair for people I don't know and will never meet again, with that old prayer in my head, please think I'm pretty.