The other day, I was with a friend. And concerning this friend, there are several facts about his friends that I have gathered in the course of knowing him. Qualifications, if you will, for people to become his dearest friends.
These qualifications are:
1. They must love/have-seen Mean Girls
2. They must be intelligent
3. They must be funny
4. They must be somewhat insane (impulsive) and
5. They must be pretty.
Now, I thought long and hard about these qualifications, and more recently, he and I have become close, which implies that - he having confirmed what I assumed where his qualifications for friendship - I am all of these things.
See, before him, I had never really thought of myself as pretty. I can see intelligent, and funny and I certainly am impulsive. I did like Mean Girls a lot, but I had never seen myself as 'pretty'.
No matter how many times my parents said it.
Or Melissa or other girls said it, I never believed it.
Now here's a homosexual telling me I'm pretty.
Not even in a patronizing way that people sometimes do.
And beyond that, we went out to eat last night and he went so far as to call me skinny.
Now, he is much bigger than I am, but he also has friends much skinnier than I am. So I was utterly shocked to hear both things.
He said it again just now when he left, that his grandparents (whom I met briefly last night) would assume that he had a 'new pretty girlfriend'. It's still a surprise.
I thought on it today on my way to my business class.
About beauty and appearances.
And only recently, like, within the past few weeks or so, have I actually learned to accept that on some level, I am pretty.
That's all I'll allow myself for now.
But the thing that sucks the most is that most other people can't see past that.
The truth is, people are only concerned with conventional beauty. But that doesn't really mean anything. There are all sorts of other types of beautiful.
It was truly a bewildering thought I had though, that I could actually be beautiful. I look in my mirror a lot, and maybe that's why. I see what other people can't. Except that some people do. It really is odd when the one or two people will randomly say something about it. It catches me off guard.
It's funny, but I wish I could share that thought with other people.
But I know that I certainly wouldn't have believed anyone who told me that I was beautiful or cute or pretty or whatever.
At least until I could freely admit it to myself.
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