Earlier this year, I stumbled upon someone, somewhere talking about how much time they had wasted trying to figure out how to be more attractive. I can’t remember the exact context now, or even who the person was, if it was someone speaking in a movie or a podcast or a line from an Instagram caption, maybe. I don’t know the particulars of the thought now, whether the person was talking about weight or body shape or skin or style or hair or something else entirely, what the phrase meant to them, specifically. But I knew immediately what it meant to me. I absorbed the words right away, felt all that time like it was falling right into my lap, the start of a rainstorm. A sprinkle at first — minutes, hours, days. Then a downpour as I added it all up — months? Years? All that time trying to figure out how to be hotter, prettier, sexier, drowning in it, when I could have been thinking about anything else.
I’ve written about this a little bit this year, about what it feels like to navigate beauty standards at this stage in my life, to want to challenge them and meet them at the same time. It’s a strange thing, to know that, at its core, your life isn’t going to be better and easier if you were thinner, younger-looking, “hotter,” but to also know that in many ways, in many rooms, it would be. More doors would open. People would be nicer. Maybe you’d make more money. I haven’t really figured out any answers to any of those questions, but as I’ve reflected on this exact idea more this year, I keep coming back to a similar thought: Why have I spent so much more time considering how something looks — how I look — than how it feels? And what would change if the feeling started to be more important, for once?
As I thought about this question more this week, considering if it was worthy of an essay topic, I started thinking about what moments in my life would have changed, if the feeling was more important. Instantly, my mind flashed to college, to the Spandex shorts and shapewear and Spanx I would wear under every ‘going out’ outfit, the way I would debate wearing it, weighing whether it was worth the discomfort, and ultimately deciding that yes, if that one, suffocating layer of fabric would be the difference between being hot enough that a guy would pay attention to me at a party or not, then it was worth it. I remember feeling bitter, not just jealous, but truly, deeply resentful, at the mere idea that I had to do this at 18, and none of my other friends did. That I had to, and they didn’t. I felt broken, rotten from the envy. But at least I looked thinner. Better.
You can probably imagine what happened, then, when some guy did pay attention to me at a party. When we went back to my dorm or his. I’d float above myself and see it all happening, not what felt good or bad or right, but simply what I looked like. In my mind, I was operating from a deficit, always. Not thin enough, not curvy enough, never small enough to be cute (fellow tall girls will understand), never confident enough to be sexy. It’s not really surprising, now, that I felt this way in these types of situations, when all the layers (Spandex and otherwise) that I had carefully constructed fell away, and I was left exposed. Like the gig was up. That they could all tell that how I felt was exactly how I looked, too: Not good enough. Not hot enough. Not even close. I can remember all those guys, all those moments, and I can remember how I felt, too, but not in the ways you’d probably expect. Mostly, the feeling was the same as it had always been for me, a churning, constant calculation in my gut of what would make more attractive, more appealing. It’s not that I was simply desperate for attention, boy crazy (though, I mean, we have all been 18 before, right?), but more that it felt like survival to me. I knew all the more important things, could have listed them for you on paper, given you some presentation (complete with complementary playlist) about why boys are stupid, why I didn’t need anyone’s approval to love myself (*cue “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn*). I knew all those arguments, yes, but I could never really feel them.
Luckily, my relationship with myself — particularly as it pertained to romantic relationships — evolved over the years, and I found a partner (and a wonderful therapist, too) who made me feel safe enough to move past all of that. But I can’t say that the phenomenon of how it looks > how it feels really disappeared entirely, either. Instagram, as a whole, has forced me to unpack this in the biggest way there is, really. I’ve written about that, too, this year. For a long time, there was almost nothing that I shared that I didn’t first consider how it looked. I mean, that’s the biggest part of social media, right? Curating your world. Editing your life, cropping out just enough that you’re not complaining too much but leaving in enough to be real, relatable. Yourself. Considering what’s too honest and what’s not honest enough. Anyone who shares their life on the internet is doing this, too, if they’re honest with themselves — no matter how unfiltered they say they are, or how off-the-cuff their content is. Ultimately, everyone is getting from A to B in the same way, considering the moments of their lives that could be packaged as funny, or beautiful, or inspiring, or cozy (*raises hand slowly*), and then hitting post.
It’s not that how I felt wasn’t part of the equation, too, but eventually, that stopped being the thing that came first. I saw an outfit I loved (but didn’t need), and I’d instantly justify it because I could share it, and maybe other people would like it, or buy it, and I’d make a little money, too. It’d look great on vacation. It’d look great on date night. It’d look great during golden hour. And sure, yes, I knew that it might feel better (or maybe at the very least just as good, in a different kind of way) to save the money, or to avoid adding to my already overstuffed closet, or to wait until I could consider if I really wanted that item after a week or so, but that seemed less important, somehow, than how it would look. Or less intense, anyway. Less urgent.
As we head into fall and round out the year — a year that has challenged and taught me more than any I’ve had in a very, very long time — I am thinking about how it looks versus how it feels when it comes to all kinds of things in my life, all the time. I go to the gym and use the treadmill for 30 minutes and then catch myself wondering what it looks like that someone who looks like me isn’t doing something harder, more strenuous, more “effective.” And then I ask: But how do you feel? I think about publishing my book next summer and I feel a rush of joy, followed by intense dread, panic at what it will look like if it isn’t what people expect or want. And then I ask: But how does it feel? That you did it? That you’re doing it? That you said you wanted to write every day, and here you are? I walk around the house and the garden and note the ways that I’m getting it wrong, probably, definitely — and the many others that I’m definitely getting wrong but have no idea about yet — and I feel embarrassed, painfully aware that I’ve taken on this giant life-long project with so little awareness of how anything works, how it would be, what was possible. But then I listen to the birds or stare at the old, water-stained wood floors that I’ve always dreamt of (the water stains weren’t really part of the dream, but I’ll take them, too), and I know the thing that lifts when it stops raining, and the wasted time isn’t so important anymore. I know what it’s like when the feeling is the thing that matters more.
If you’re interested in chatting more about how I’m trying to focus more on how it feels versus how it looks in my everyday life, join me for my weekly mini pod for paid subscribers (this usually goes lives 1-3 business days after my free essay goes up!). This week, I’ll be chatting about:
My ever-changing, often messed up, occasionally wonderful relationship with exercise, and how I’m trying to find workout routines that are more focused on how they make me feel than how they make me look (especially when it comes to working out around other people for the first time in a long, long time).
My simplified makeup and beauty routine — how I’ve been focusing on purchasing items that make my skin look *and* feel a certain way, and how I’ve learned that leaning into a simple beauty routine (for years now) has felt better than experimenting with makeup year after year after year like I used to. I’ll share the few products that work for me, and the items I’ve regretted buying, too.
Thoughts on being too cringe, too earnest, too excited, too basic, too fake, blah, blah, blah, from yours truly, somehow who has overanalyzed it all for far, far too long.
A portion of September’s subscriber proceeds will go toward fulfilling a public school teacher’s Amazon Wish List. Consider joining me in purchasing school supplies for her classroom by shopping the list here.
I can’t tell you how badly I needed to hear this today. thank you, as always, for sharing your beautiful words with the world
Not me reading this one week after basically telling my therapist I need to work on the same thing 😅