I was sitting opposite him, behind an enormous, glistening, white desk. His bleached yellow hair was gelled and flicked over to one side. The blinding white tee shirt he wore camouflaged him into the surrounding decor of his office.
Another man sat silently behind me, just out of my view. Like a creepy, lifeless mannequin and the room fell silent for longer than was comfortable as they both sat there, assessing me — from the profile of my face, and the complexion of my skin, to the health of my hair.
I felt goofy and inadequate then.
My skin wasn’t as clear as it should be, given my tender age of 17, and my clothes were hand-me-downs from a family friend.
“Please like me, please like me.” I thought
Me, the tall, gangly girl with the too-bigger-eyes and the unAustralian face, from the small beach town on the outskirts of Sydney.
I desperately wanted a picture of my solemn-looking face hung on the wall behind his desk, amongst the sea of other flawless faces of girls that had come and gone before me
Those who had already attained this yellow-haired man’s ‘tick’ of approval.
Like he’d declared to every one of them: Yes, you’re beautiful! I say you have something special, so, therefore you do. Go forth in confidence now, my love. I have spoken.
What a load of complete and utter bullshit.
What made this man decide one day that he had the ‘qualifications’ to open a modelling agency and start pulling unsuspecting girls from the street to tell them they’re beautiful and “Have you thought of modelling?”
I feel like I want to send him (and every other Agent that dealt with me over the years) a blunt and confronting email, like:
“You there! Just who the bloody hell do you think you are, telling me that I was or wasn't good enough? — Beautiful or not beautiful? You don’t get to make those calls.”
He was no one, and now, as I sit back and think of that time in my life, I find it laughable that I sat there, one day, desperately hoping he would sign me — seeking his validation for my one and precious life.
No wonder then, for the first half of my life, I grew up unsure of myself and needy of other people’s approval.
I was often told by strangers that I was beautiful because of the shape of my body, the length of my limbs or the way my face bones sat together —
Or, often too, that I was not — because my teeth were crooked and my eyebrows were “not in” and my face (having European features) was too strange compared with the highly sought after ‘girl next door’ look that flooded all the agent’s books.
One woman even said: “You know, there is such thing as being too pretty?”
I don’t know what the fuck she meant, your guess is as good as mine.
My self-confidence peaked and troughed with each positive and negative word said to me.
I remember one night when out drinking with girlfriend's, prying my friend’s iPhone from her drunken fingers, desperately trying to look at the result of my face after our ‘photoshoot’ in the dingy bathroom of the seedy club.
She’d be cacking herself laughing at me, threatening to ruin my ‘flawless’ reputation on social media (which I upheld like a fiend back then) by posting the one photo she could get of me with my eyes half shut like a moron and my belly poking out from my too-tight skirt.
I’d manage to talk her out of it. I’d threaten to cry or to post that equally (if not more) socially damaging photo of her sitting on the toilet, pissing, while drunk.
It was a hell of a time. I don’t wish to repeat my younger years.
I do understand that an integral part of growing up usually involves that awkward phase of: ‘NOW I'M JUST GOING TO HATE ON MY BODY FOR A LITTLE WHILE (POSSIBLY FOREVER) and to try with hectic awkwardness to obtain other people’s validation and approval.
But, now, at the more ‘mentally stable’ and ‘sane’ age of 25, I tend to think:
Fuck beauty.
Be witty, be creative, be funny, be interesting, be weird, be adventurous.
Be ugly, and then make fun of yourself and your ugliness (in a lighthearted couldn’t give two fcks kind of way — not a laughing on the outside, crying on the inside kind of way). There are literally thousands of other (more impressive) things that you could be rather than this elusive, subjective and temporary thing called BEAUTIFUL
What is beautiful anyway?
It's just a string of letters put together to make a word — and this particular word means a number of things to each and every person that utters it.
To me, everyone has something about them that makes them beautiful — even when you’re standing in your mum’s 30 year old wedding dress, LOOKING LIKE AN OVERDECORATED MERINGUE:
“She’s so beautiful, isn't she?.”
So fucking what?
I wish we’d all stop mentioning it in conversation. As if it’s a factor worthy of considerable weight to a person’s ‘being’.
Besides, it’s not all that exciting when, behind that beautiful face, you realise there’s nothing much going on inside. No spark or passion or quirky weirdness. It’s so disappointing. Like opening a fancily wrapped birthday present and finding a pair of shitty socks…
So, be your own definition of beautiful, always, but don’t make it your aspiration in life and hold it up with such importance.
*Published elsewhere by author*