How “Pretty” Became Toxic Because I Was Such A People Pleaser

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection” - Buddha

When I was 18, I won a minor beauty pageant complete with a glittering tiara and a huge bouquet of flowers. It was indeed a crowning moment of my life. What I didn’t realize then was that being declared most beautiful for one fleeting moment and the resulting attention in no way meant that this was how the rest of my life was going to look like.

My experience has been that in spite of a crown, life has a heartbreaking way of exposing some hard truths which can completely change the way you view yourself.

A prolonged tryst with depression and fibromyalgia showed me how fickle perceptions of beauty can be. The painful ending of a long term relationship that traced its beginnings to when I was at the peak of my glory cured me of any delusions I had that it might have been based on something more tangible.

At the age when girls transitioned from children to young women I underwent a drastic metamorphosis from an extremely shy duckling into a bewildered swan within a span of a few months. My parents were proud of producing a pretty daughter. I suspect my mother used to live vicariously through me, especially when people would stop and comment about how pretty her daughter was. I can see now that I must have been a reflection of her youth.

It is not a surprise therefore that my young mind started to equate being pretty to being loved and accepted.

In other words I started to believe that I was only lovable based on how I looked. My self esteem and self worth were tied to that misconception and everything else took a backseat.It doesn’t help that we live in a world with ever changing conceptions of how beauty should look like. Sometimes it gives rise to the falsehood that in order to be loved and accepted we have to present a different version of ourselves. We transform into someone who is not at all a reflection of who we are inside.

Did doing so make me happy?

Not at all.

On the contrary, it made me miserable and I often felt like I wasn’t enough.

“Nobody can make you happy until you’re happy with yourself first.”

In hindsight I was just cheating myself and others of getting to know the real me rather than just an inauthentic version of myself that I thought to be the best to “ get noticed’ version.

Talk about the amount of work and effort that goes into maintaining said image!

It especially became a problem in the context of romantic relationships not only due to the uncertainty as to whether the other person liked me solely for the visual appeal but also wondering if they would still continue to like me if I happened to lose my looks.

That need not have been the case if I had been more aware of the other wonderful qualities I have been blessed with: honesty, a sense of humor, empathy…

Hardly a surprise therefore when I discovered the hard way that this is not how healthy, lasting relationships are built.

Over the years, my idea of beauty has undergone a major overhaul and it got me thinking about how wonderful it would be if I could go back in time and have a heart to heart conversation with my younger self. If I could go back in time and meet my younger self, I would hug her tightly and tell her: “I totally understand how you are feeling and it’s going to be alright. Be secure in this confidence that you are lovable just the way you are and there will be no room for self doubt and no more trying to settle for crumbs when you deserve the whole cake.”

Originally published on Medium