A few years ago, while in the middle of a crisis, my mother happened to send me most of my baby pictures for my birthday (as I'm into family history and photos). I looked at them with a new eye. With every picture, I kept asking myself, why did I grow up with the idea that I was ugly? These pictures prove I was not. Kept looking at my own pictures of me as a young woman and mother and thought the same thing. Why did I think I was fat and ugly, these pictures prove I was not. So, maybe I don't see myself correctly. It made me realize that I look alright, presentable even. That as I grow older, I may never look better than I do right now. So, I began to stop trying to hide myself. Which has brought other challenges, let us say. But still, it's better to feel confident in my looks than to truly believe I'm ugly.
Whenever I meet another redhead I always ask them if they were picked on as children. Most of them say yes. But one I met told me that her family always told her how beautiful she was and even when she got glasses they told her the same thing. It was when she started at a new school that someone first thought to say she was ugly (she was not). I have always remembered that her family told her she was beautiful with her red hair and glasses. Nobody EVER told me that. Not until I was an adult.
In spite of this mixture of ideas about beautiful/ugly I now know that my social problems had less to do with looks and more to do with my personal problems. People will always be attracted to a happy, well-adjusted, and generous person, whether they are plain, pretty, unusual or whatever looking.
PP
I haven't posted here in a while. I read your post and had to write something.
My mother is N and OCPD which makes for an extremely perfectionistic N! She was into HER beauty, HER femininity, and HER body. She hated any competition from me. I was the ONLY girl in our family and she didn't like me, period. I once asked my mother if I was beautiful and she said, "No but you are pretty." I knew what she meant - 'Mirror, mirror on the wall who's the fairest one of all?' There was only room for one beautiful princess in her eyes and she was it. It was as if from that moment on she declared a war on my beauty, my femininity. I couldn't be what she was.
I too always thought I was ugly and genderless and fat as a child. My pictures sent to me sent to me years ago proved otherwise. I was beautiful, definitely feminine and certainly not fat. I was height-weight proportionate throughout my childhood.
Only as an adult did I gain weight because it wasn't safe to live in this world and in my body. The more I feel safe within myself and this world, the more I live in my body and am in touch with its needs.
