Beauty Belonged to Other Girls

I learned very young that beauty belonged to other girls. At least that is what everyone around me told me.

As a kid, I have actual people (relatives and strangers) comparing me to my siblings because they are all  conventionally attractive, unlike me. They would flat out ask me as a child, “Ampon ka ‘ba? Bakit hindi mo  kamukha ang mga kapatid mo?” (“Are you adopted? Why is your face different from your siblings?”) and  every single time I get asked, I would just shrug it off because I am so used to it that it doesn’t even hurt  me. Maybe the reason that I don’t react to it is because I thought it was normal. I saw it as a quirk and an  advantage because at least I was unique. 

However, looking back, it makes me wonder why they would ask that to a literal child? Why is everyone  around her so mean?

During elementary and high school, I expressed myself in a masculine way because if I wasn’t deemed as pretty, I might as well not look the part. I have no idea on how to be pretty because I was living with  my dad and brother. I do not have any female figure in my life as I grow up. Luckily, I have wonderful girl  cousins and girl friends who grew up alongside me. They are the ones who are absolutely gorgeous and effortlessly beautiful. If I can use every single adjective out there, I would use it. It’s like I am a comedic  relief character written so I can make my friends look more beautiful. I watched them be admired by our  male peers, getting gifts and being courted. Every valentine’s day, they will receive gifts and the boys will  watch me devour their snacks in front of them which pisses them off. I never wondered why I was never  approached romantically by these young boys because I already wired my brain that it’s not for me. Being beautiful and Phoebe can’t be in the same room. I was certain that I wasn’t attractive, I can’t even act like a pretty girl because I was raised like a boy by my dad. That is probably a factor on why I am thinking this way.

Then comes the pandemic where everybody was locked up in their rooms and desperately looking for  a way to be entertained. I spent most of my time curating my interests and personal style. Just like  everyone else, being locked up and isolated somehow rebranded me. Scratch that, I don’t think it is  appropriate to call it rebranding because I feel like that’s who I actually am, I just needed that push to be able to fully express it. When you grow up with people nitpicking everything little thing you do, your  confidence and self-expression is disorganized and shattered.

I’ve always been interested in fashion, makeup, arts, everything that is connected and deemed feminine, but I had to pretend I disliked them because ‘it does not suit me’. I remember hating wearing dresses and makeup because it was too ‘girly’. On the good side, I never hated girls who are hyper-feminine,  specifically my friends because I was fully supportive and loved seeing them like that. I just don’t like it on me because I know for a fact that someone will point out that it looks horrid on me. It was never about  being boyish to be liked by boys but it’s about me competing with my brother to be liked by my father. My dad made sure that I will never be as equal as my brother’s. He would make comments about how I am only receiving awards in school not because I was smart but because I work so hard that I push myself. Meanwhile, my brother is naturally smart, he just didn’t want to make efforts and if he just decided to actually put in some work, he’d be better than me. Eventually, I got tired of it because I realized in the long run that my father’s opinion about women being inferior to men is pointless. I am better than that. 

When I finally found my style and learned how I liked to express myself, people started noticing I exist  outside my friend’s shadow. I wasn’t the ‘tomboy’ friend anymore. I was my own entity for a moment.  For the first time, I wasn't introducing myself in relation to somebody else. I wasn't the ugly sister, the  tomboy friend, or the girl who was always standing next to someone more outstanding. I was simply  myself. Suddenly, being feminine isn’t so embarrassing anymore unlike what I was taught. I realized  that I am a woman too! I am forever grateful for my friends who never judged me and watched me  outgrow that part of me. They were the ones who guided me into being a woman. From teaching me  what to do during my periods to teaching me how to do my makeup.

And there it was, boys started to approach me for a bit and I found it utterly odd. People were nicer to me, which is so weird not because they aren’t supposed to be nice, but because I was not used to it. Is it  puberty? Unfortunately, only my looks and the way I present myself changed. My big and peculiar  personality stayed and it is still either intimidating or frantic, which is hilarious. It took me a while to gain a bit of faith in myself because up until now, I still desire to be considered beautiful. As horrible as it is to admit, but when I am with my amazing and stunning girl friends, I feel so small and invisible sometimes. For context, my friends have an unbelievably out-of-this-world level of attractiveness in a way that when someone interacts with me, their focus shifts to the beautiful girls beside me. The girls are showered with compliments and I am left clapping for them because can’t you blame these people? Like, those are my friends! Of course they are amazing! So, I feel sick to my guts when these kinds of thoughts run inside my mind because I  will do anything to be as pretty as them.

At this present time, I walk with my invented confidence because how else would you survive in this  world? I will make fun of myself first so it wouldn’t hurt as much when people do it themselves. It wasn’t such an issue when I was younger, but now that I am putting an effort to feel good about myself, it sucks. It’s exactly how Olivia Rodrigo said in her song Pretty isn’t Pretty, “You fix the things you hated, and you'd still feel so insecure” Because what do you mean I did the most in fixing everything that is wrong with me, only to end up resenting the results? If I could just inject that whole song into my veins, into my whole entire system, I would. It described perfectly how being pretty isn’t enough when you are a girl. You will do all  these things to make yourself presentable such as putting makeup only for them to nitpick because  looking ‘natural’ is better. Literally, pick a side.

It’s like no matter how hard I try to ‘fix’ and ‘change’, that ‘ugly’ girl will never leave. I can never be like my friends who can be effortlessly normal. Certainly, this thing that I feel isn’t jealousy or envy. I will never feel that towards my friends because they are a part of my soul that completes me. I wish I could  start looking in the mirror and fully adore the reflection it shows. As of this moment, I still actively search for that missing piece that will fill this void of wanting to be beautiful. I spent years believing beauty was the missing piece.

Why does being surrounded by beautiful girls make me feel invisible? 

If I could just become prettier, softer, more feminine, more desirable, I will be loved more, noticed more, and as devastatingly as it sounds but also, chosen more. I thought if I finally evolved and changed myself  to fit in, I would stop feeling invisible. Annoyingly, even now that I am surrounded with the most beautiful  girls I know, the epiphany that I am looking for is maybe not being pretty isn’t what I need. It is acceptance.

Every version of myself I created still has the same insecurity in her heart because at one point, the  problem was never my face. I put that burden in beauty to do the work that acceptance was supposed to  do.