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The Rules About Beauty
What I was taught in my childhood by my family and society.
No one told me that I was beautiful growing up. Although both of them were incredibly vain, my parents didn’t comment on how I looked. I think they cared more about the way they looked. Or, they thought I wasn’t beautiful and didn’t have the heart to tell me. Regardless of their thoughts, I knew I wasn’t. I knew the way you know the sky is blue. You see it.
I would have conversations with other children on the playground about beauty and express my gratitude for being so unfortunate looking. “If you’re ugly when you’re young, you’ll be a beautiful adult; that’s the rule.”
That’s the rule.
I don’t know where this rule came from. But, I had a lot of rules that were very similar to it. These rules guided many of my actions. These rules included:
- There’s only one type of beauty.
- If I’m not skinny, I’m not enough.
- If I’m not intelligent, no one will love me.
I knew I couldn’t do anything about my beauty from many failed attempts to become beautiful. These attempts included:
- Making skirts from magazine clippings of models in hopes that I would absorb their beauty (Age 3). Fail.
- Being the sexy version of Princess Jasmine in…