The Truth Behind Why You Feel Ugly

Every 2 to 3 weeks, I feel ugly. For about a week or two at a time, I would stare at my face and body and list all the problems. My nose is way too big for my face, my jaw line isn’t super defined, I’m fat, I hate my stupid, curly hair, and I’m too short. Even writing these things out here makes my eyes sting a little because I still believe these to be true.

The intensity of these ugly days has gotten a lot worse in recent months. Since 2019 began, I would feel ugly every other week. I would open my (ridiculously stuffed) wardrobe and feel like no matter what I wore I looked like a malformed potato that had been smashed up, eaten, and shat out. Basically, I felt like shit.

Obviously, with the grand scheme of the world, my feeling ugly was not some groundbreaking development. I didn’t feel like talking about it with anyone because, well, I thought it was stupid. In a world where you, the person reading this post via a screen, are likely not one of almost half the world’s population (3.4 billion people) that lives on less than $5.50 a day, it seems frivolous that my biggest problem is that I feel ugly.

That being said, our problems are all relative. When I opened up to friends about why I often didn’t feel like going out, or why I would rather skip half of my 9am Chinese section than leave my room without makeup on, I realized I wasn’t alone. In fact, statistically speaking, about 1 in 50 Americans have reported to suffer Body Dysmorphic Disorder (and accurate statistics are supposedly hard to estimate as many who suffer from BDD are reluctant to seek help).

Moreover, 10-15% of all Americans suffer from some form of serious eating disorder. In terms of the collegiate demographic, 10% of women enrolled in college suffer from a ‘clinical or nearly clinical eating disorder, including 5.1% who suffer from bulimia nervosa’.

I am not going to declare whether or not I suffer from an eating disorder or BDD, but I do think that we as a generation have been bombarded with an unattainable standard of beauty. We are living in an age where #bodypositivity and #nomakeupselfies are competing with face tune, and photoshop. Heck, every other photo my favourite celebrities post are airbrushed and edited to perfection to fit into the ideal that they themselves have created.

I am not surprised that 1 in 10 college women suffer from an eating disorder. I am not surprised that every 2 or 3 weeks I wish that I could peel off my skin and step into a morphsuit that resembles someone completely different. I am not surprised with the stream of perfectly filtered selfies and photographs that fill my Instagram feed.

So, what can we do? I really, truly, feel that we dictate what we want to see. As I already mentioned, there is a wave of body positivity and natural, unfiltered sharing occurring as we speak. If we contribute to this, and not the stream of unattainable perfection, we will help to combat against unrealistic beauty standards.

As always, it isn’t that easy to not feel ugly. I’m still wearing makeup in this photo, but I haven’t edited it. I also still feel ugly, and probably will continue to do so every few weeks. But, it’s all about those baby steps, right? Rome wasn’t built in a day and my self esteem won’t be either. I’m proud of the fact that I am posting this untouched photo that I took literally on the way out of my building, and I hope to see more of your unedited moments, too!