What It Means to be Beautiful

Being beautiful has nothing to do with your physical appearance. At 17-years-old, this is something I still struggle to believe in wholeheartedly.

I’ll be the first person to tell you that I couldn’t care less about what other people think of me, and then cry myself to sleep after that because I would think I probably sounded stupid when I said it. This proves to me, although I try to exhibit the opposite, that I care far too much about other people’s validation and their view of who I am. Don’t we all?

One aspect of my life that clearly depicts this is the notion of being beautiful. For quite some time, I have been depending heavily on the complimentary words of those around me. The quality of my day and my value as a person correlated to the number of people who had called me pretty, who had something nice to say about the clothes that I wore or the redness of my cheeks.

Eventually, to be called beautiful was the only goal I had for each and every day. In retrospect, it isn’t strange that at 17 years old I’d be so insecure and reliant on the words of others, especially seeing as growing up, I was very convinced that I was perhaps the ugliest person alive. How could I not when that seed of self-hatred began to blossom before I knew how to write my name? When all my earliest memories of family members and old friends are of them vocalizing what they thought of how I appeared? When I was called ugly more often than I was called by my own name?

When you hear something constantly, especially at a young age, you begin to internalize it, making it incredibly difficult to break yourself free from it. I had internalized the idea that I was ugly, and couldn’t fathom a reality that, just maybe, I wasn’t ugly at all. A reality and a sense of understanding that maybe being ugly had nothing to do with how you physically appeared.

Consumed by the need to be called beautiful, I invested endless hours into enhancing my appearance. Years of starvation, hours spent daily exercising, and my inability to meet goals and dreams I had set for myself only made my self-esteem plummet even further. At that particular point in my life, I began to understand why people used to call me ugly more often than they called me Fatima.

At 17, I find myself particularly sensitive to the comments and opinions of others, desperately seeking their validation and wanting to relish in their compliments, restoring my self-esteem temporarily only for it dissipate when I am in my own presence. I’m tired of only feeling beautiful because someone else said so.

I’m trying to undo all of the harsh actions I’ve taken against myself in an attempt to appear and to be called beautiful. I’m trying to silence the words and phrases from those family members and old friends. I’m trying to accept, understand and internalize that being beautiful has little do with how you physically appear, and more to do with how you act, how you think, and what you say.  I no longer want to wait for others to say that I am beautiful, I want to see it for myself, and for myself only.