I donât know if this helps, but Iâd like to say it anyway just in case it does.
The other day I found a class picture from fourth grade and I looked everyone in it, and then I saw the âugly girlâ â the one people constantly harassed, whose desk kids would pretend was contaminated, the one kids would invent complex songs about just to voice their disgust toward her.
And she looked like a normal little girl.
She looked no different than the rest of the class.
She was never ugly. And I know that you may be thinking to yourself âbut I WAS uglyâ â I just want you to consider for a moment that maybe you werenât.
Maybe you were tormented by your peers for no reason except that they were experimenting with and learning the rules of callous human cruelty that would define the rest of their lives â and recognizing this, the adults who should have protected you, let it happen. Cruelty and social shaming â the foundations of how human beings police their society is learned and it is practiced.
Since Iâve become an adult, I donât recall ever seeing an âuglyâ kid. Kids are all just strange-looking works in progress that the artist seems to have abandoned intending to finish them later.
I want you to think about our racist and unhealthy âstandards of beautyâ. Are any of the things that society fixates on as âuglyâ truly ugly? No. We take things that are beautiful and we associate them with ugliness and badness and coarseness â to control them â to batter the will of the already oppressed down to the point where they think the abuse they receive is justified.
The children who demeaned you were learning to crush the human spirit to the point where the target internalizes all that hate and keeps hating themselves even when the bullies are no longer there. Those children were learning the sadism that defines our social hierarchy â we live in a culture where success is achieved through exploiting others.
No one deserves to be treated that way. LGBT children shouldnât grow up ashamed of themselves. Black children shouldnât grow up thinking white children are inherently prettier.
You were not ugly. You were told you were ugly so that people could have an âexcuseâ to target you, to ostracize you, to other you, and to abuse you.
An âugly childâ wouldnât know they were ugly until someone TOLD them they were. They donât grow up ugly, they grow up emotionally abused.
And still if you feel that you were the exception and you were objectively and unquestionably so ugly as a child that everyone noticed â even if you feel you are still that ugly nowâŚ
That doesnât mean you donât deserve love. It doesnât mean you wonât find love, and trust and happiness.
You are worthy of respect. You have worth. You have value.
And if the rest of the world doesnât seem to notice your worth â look at the evil and vile things the world does value and count yourself lucky not to be among that number.
There are people who will see your worth. There are people who will look at you and not see âuglinessâ â they will see a friend, a mentor, a hero and even, yes, a lover.
If no one else says it today, and even if you canât say it yourself, I would like to tell you that you are not ugly. That you were not ugly. That you did nothing wrong. That you did not deserve to be treated the way that you have been and that you deserve happiness and love and respect. And you will find it.
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