Why Am I Not Beautiful?

I like looking at pretty people.

I’m mind blown at how pretty they are. Wondering what it must feel like to wake up like that.

Sure, they probably deal with insecurities, but they’re modelled to the conventional standard of beauty. The standard we’re expected to aim towards. The standard only a few can achieve, because of the way it’s been constructed by society.

I can’t look at myself for too long, in a mirror, or whatever. Even just photos of me. I end up being sucked into this trap of picking out the differences between my face and the millions of filtered and photoshopped faces on Instagram. I can’t help but compare and tear myself apart, asking, “why am I not beautiful?”.

I need to come back to the real world where the fact is that I can’t be that specific type of beautiful. It’s just not me. It’s the kind of beauty that would require me to act a certain way, going against who I am to look a certain way, to lose myself and my authenticity. Becoming this idolised pretty icon, emotionless, fed with empty compliments and fuelling this cycle all over again.

I realise that I’m more than that. I’m not defined by what I see, what I am, what I do. I’m not defined by the clothes I wear or the breakouts on my cheeks. My worth, my beauty, my value is not determined by this silly standard of beauty that is a product of companies tricking consumers into a false sense of reality that they need to be this “certain type of human”.

Humans are undefinable. We’re reckless and we’re wonderful. We’re chaotic and diverse. I read a Fluff post about how my pretty isn’t the same pretty as someone else’s. And it won’t ever be the same. But no one else can be my kind of pretty either. I’m just a different kind of beauty, and that’s really cool. I just need to be best at being myself, not another person, because that’s what I’m here for: to be the best kind of me. There’s no one else like it.