i asked a question on my twitter: it wasn't until i reached 18 years old that i realized i can be "pretty"; i spent 18 years of my life believing that i'm thoroughly unattractive. that beauty is absolute, and i'm not that, and i shouldn't even try. did you grow up "ugly" too? if you feel like sharing, be my guest.

i cried reading some of the answers, because i believe that beauty standards are ridiculous. and it's just unfair, especially for women, how thinking about one's beauty consumes so much space in our mind.

here are the thoughts i've gathered from the stories people told me.

• some of us will never believe that everyone can be attractive. attractiveness has a standard, and the existence of said standard is inevitable.
• we spent so many years in our lives being told that we're unattractive, to the point that the idea that we can be attractive becomes something utterly unbelievable.
• we made peace with how we're never going to attain the preferred beauty. we stopped believing that there are ways to be pretty; compliments are just people being kind, make up doesn't change the fact that "i'm ugly", etc.
• we're telling ourselves that taking more care of ourselves and appearing 'better' is possible. but still, to be 'pretty' is unattainable.
• some of us focus on something else, simply because so called 'traditional' beauty isn't our forte, through:
  • recognizing unique & specific physical traits that are attractive, at the end of the day.
  • and focusing on knowledge, characters; the kind of beauty that will never age.
• some of us think that we just spent years in the wrong place, surrounded by the wrong people, stuck in the wrong situation. surrounded by people who has such stereotypical standard of beauty. being complimented, yet never without a 'but'. spent so much time being compared with those who have the preferred beauty, that we wasted so much time believing that we can never be that too. that it takes years until we meet people who genuinely appreciates our qualities.

i spent so many years of my life believing that i have no rights to be attractive. like a lot of you, i hated mirrors. i have no pictures from middle school and high school.