How I Stopped Feeling Pretty

I think many girls out there are like me: we have a mind-boggling image of the 'perfect me,' the never attainable model who peers seductively over her designer sunglasses and nonchalantly flips out her phone, ready to talk to her CEO, who, by the way, was bonkers over her from day one. Okay, so that may be a stretch for even the most ambitious of us, but the point remains. Girls want to feel beautiful.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Maybe I should give a peek into my life, just so you guys have a taste for whose blog you're dealing with. I don't know about you, but if I were going to use up precious minutes of my time to read a blog, I'd certainly like to know a bit about the writer.

I'm an Asian undergrad freshman trying to elbow her way into the cyclone known as business school with a big dream: to work for Disney. I have a cuddly, karaoke-bellowing family and friends who nurse passions that range from salsa to engineering. I have a trilogy that I've been scribbling furiously in for five years. And I also have a huge, gigantic, find-all-the-stars-you-can-and-beg wish: I want to be pretty.

Don't get me wrong. I came to college feeling like Aphrodite, which is sort of embarrassing to admit. For instance, I used to make up stories for my sister in which a character called The Most Beautiful represented me. Mirrors and store windows didn't stand a chance; if they were there, I'd ogle myself at attractive angles. I felt good in nearly everything I wore in stores, confident in the fact that I weighed around a 100 pounds. Basically, I was the female version of Narcissus. Basically, you would have hated my guts.

And then the reality called college hit me. I arrived and found that, unlike my hometown, my university was teeming with attractive Asian girls. Back home, there were few Asian girls to compare myself with, which naturally led me to believe I was something real special. But here, there were curvy, vivacious Asian girls with sparkling eyes and billowing, model-like hair. I had hacked my own hair before I came to college, partly because I wanted to save on shower time, and couldn't help but feel envious of the black hair cascading behind them. So yes, there was now competition.

To make matters worse, I love food, always did since I was a kid. Before college, I would transfer my love for food through writing about all the delectable sweetmeats in my books and collect mini food erasors from Japan. But now that I was at college with a ridiculous buffet-styled cafeteria, I found that I could eat. And eat I did. Ice cream was no longer safe in my university.

As I began to gain weight, I also stressed immensely, whether from being five weeks behind in class or relationships, which meant my skin and body suffered. There were a lot of changes going in my life, ones that I weren't sure how to deal with, which had me forget how to take care of myself. It really hit me one day when I I had to take a picture for my ID card in college. It was horrendous. It's been months since taking that picture, and I still have to flip it over sometimes so I won't have to deal with it. Too bad I'm stuck with the WORST PHOTO EVER for my four years in undergrad school.

Then it got really bad. I began to purposely take pictures on my cell phone in bad lighting or angles, just as reminders that I shouldn't eat what I wanted. I would stare in the mirror and place both hands on my cheeks, trying to see the face I used to have less than a year ago. I didn't want to take pictures anymore. I was dethroned, and in a way, it was good for me, because I realized how much beauty made up a part of my identity.

Therefore, I decided to make this blog today to try to document my journey of feeling beautiful again. Not just outward beautiful, with all the trimmings, but to find real joy and pride in who I am as a woman, rather than a magazine-poring teenager. Please bear with me: I am not sure how this is going to turn out. This isn't a novel where I can control the ending, but my life in its whirlwind right now. In a way, this will sort of serve as my workout and diet journal, but I want it to be much more than that. I want to dig deep into how God would want girls like me to truly feel attractive and why the need to feel pretty plagues our minds day in and day out. Don't worry, I don't plan to bore you with a food diary that more resembles a calculus textbook rather than an actual blog. :)

I really hope you'll follow me on this blog and perhaps give me a few tips and stories of your own. There is a connection to be made, I think, between girls who have the urge to become beautiful, who know in a vague sense that they are beautiful, but have yet to feel it. I would appreciate any encouragement that comes my way.

Thanks for reading this post! Have a lovely, spectacular day!