2nd April 2015

Respecting Your Beauty

When I was in the 6th grade, I organized a group of girls to sing Aretha Franklin’s RESPECT at a school pep rally. We wore matching shirts and danced around with feather boas while belting out R - E - S - P - E - C - T. I’m not sure anyone in my school particularly cared, but it’s a distinct memory for me as an adult. Maybe it was because a pep rally is an odd place for this kind of show. Maybe it’s because I clearly had underlying feminist motives as a pre-teen girl. Maybe it was the boas.

lips

Sixth grade was a pivotal time for me. On top of this musical performance, I dressed as a female CEO for Halloween. I decided to embrace my bookishness and intentionally sat in the front row of the class. I stole my mom’s suits and wore them on any given Tuesday.

And it was the year I figured out I wasn’t “beautiful,” by conventional standards.

One day while waiting in line for lunch, a classmate said to me: “you have Elvis mouth and it’s weird.” At 12, I was not only being told I looked like a dude, but that I was weird. There’s nothing worse at this tender pre-teen age than being told you are not normal. Being compared to the opposite sex in the looks department is devastating enough, but when it’s said as a tool to point out a negative differentiator between you and other girls, it’s particularly heartbreaking.

I can remember exactly how it felt to hear someone say that to me. The meanness and the contempt practically spraying itself from the words onto my face. For what it’s worth, the girl was somewhat accurate in choosing that description. When I start talking really fast or get super excited, I do have the tendency to speak out of the right side of my mouth. Think of how Margaraey Tyrell AKA Natalie Dormer does her little side grin in Game of Thrones. It’s kind of like that. As a result, I’m getting more wrinkles on the right side of my face now that I’m older, but that’s irrelevant.

What is relevant is that after I heard that, I truly NEVER believed I was an attractive woman.

I was a smart woman.

I was a brave woman.

I was an eloquent woman.

I was an ambitious woman.

I was a funny woman.

But I was, without any shred of doubt in my mind, NOT a beautiful woman.

Beautiful women are symmetrical. Beautiful women have big beautiful lips and even complexions. Beautiful women don’t become less beautiful when they open their mouths. Beautiful women don’t get compared to Elvis.

Somewhere in high school, I forgot about being compared to the gyrating King. I dated and even had a few boyfriends. I did as teenage girls do, I enjoyed their company and their kisses - in the backs of cars, against trees, behind the school and on my mattress which I had thrown on the floor in the corner of my room as some kind of protest against furniture. Not one ever pointed out that my mouth got a little asymmetrical from time to time. Not one mentioned if my oral peculiarity impacted my make-out abilities. Not one seemed to care. But somehow, despite all this, I still felt fundamentally un-pretty. I thought they liked the smart, brave, eloquent, ambitious, funny me. I couldn’t even see myself as anything else.

More than a decade of dating later, I was on a date when a dude mentioned that he liked how my mouth was a little off center. It charmed him. It added to my personality. He didn’t call it beautiful though. And immediately, the words from the girl standing in front me in line in the 6th grade hit my chest. I absorbed the negative memory before allowing the compliment he was offering me to take hold.

This feeling is bullshit. And I hate that it’s an emotional tether that I’ve allowed to impact how I felt about myself for years. The even bigger tragedy is that nearly every single woman I know has a story similar to mine. There are countless beautiful, bold, brilliant babes who were the recipient of an unflattering comment that still wander around this earth carrying that criticism like a calling card.

Are you one of them?

Aretha’s iconic song is about a couple navigating the strangeness of the intersection of love and mutual respect. It’s about creating a culture of equality in all elements of cohabitation between partners. But when I sang that song as a 12 year old girl, I was asking for a different kind of respect. I wanted to respect myself enough to be able to get up on stage and demand it. Today, I’m closer to middle age than I am to my primary education, and I wonder how a fundamental lack of respect for my own beauty has changed the course of my life. I don’t want to live like that anymore. And we shouldn’t be allowing ourselves or the little girls growing up today to experience that same weight.

I’m asking you to throw that comment away. The one that you’ve been carrying around since 4th grade or 8th grade or last damn week. I’m asking you to respect yourself enough to know that you are MORE than an ugly observation about what *actually* makes you beautiful.

Beauty is not perfection, but rather the quirky qualities that mark our individuality and transcend our very human existence.

Yeah, my mouth is a little wacky. But, dammit, I’m still beautiful.