I am Not Pretty

I am not pretty. No, I’m not fishing. Honestly, I’m not. Hear me out.

I occupy that space between ugly and pretty. That “plain” space. Distinctly average. I look like boiled shite without make up but I’m a solid 4 on a standard day. With a LOT of effort, maybe I push up to a 5.5. But I’m talking waxed, plucked, tanned, inches of slap, false eyelashes… a LOT of effort.

I don’t have any striking features, beautiful or otherwise. My face is a familiar one. So often people will ask me where they know me from. Or if I’m related to so and so. Or I am told “you look like someone” but no one can put their finger on whom. I could be anyone. I am vanilla.

I’m not morbidly obese. I’m not slim. I’m just averagely fat. I’m in the “could be attractive if I lost 2 stone” bracket. For so many years, I have lamented that fact. I have hated my shit tits and my bubble butt and my gunt (Dad, if you are reading this, please don’t google that word or ask me what it means). I have hated that I look like I am carved from spam and that an hour in the sun leaves me looking like I’ve spent a year on Mercury, rather than a bronzed goddess.

Never once have I considered that being Ms Nondescript is actually positive. But being bland has, in fact, meant I have skidded through life fairly smoothly. No one has ever questioned whether I got the job because the bloke who interviewed me thought I had a cracking rack. No one has ever avoided looking at my face or reacted with shock at a disfigurement. No one has ever told me that I couldn’t pass an exam because I look like an airhead. No one has ever patronised or ignored me because of a disability. No one has ever sexually harassed me.

And there was a time when I thought that was a bad thing. I really would have loved to be sexually harassed. This, my friends, is SICK. So unbelievably sick. Not like the youth say “sick”. I mean perverse and disturbing and EVERYTHING that is wrong about wishing to be attractive. I have wanted to be beautiful so badly that I thought it would be better to be objectified and abused than just be plain Jane (or Jemma), with no one watching me.

I have always considered the fact I am not glamorously gorgeous to be what has held me back in life. I put out for the wrong boy when I probably didn’t want to because I didn’t think I was pretty enough for him to like me for me. I have had crappy nights out because I’m not as slim and sexy as the people I’m with or because a man hasn’t looked at me. I mean, what more could I possibly want in life than male attention? What even is there?

Actually, there is everything. There is friends and family and laughing so hard you wee a bit (I’ve had two kids, it happens). There is watching any shitty movie you want, when you want (Yes, even if that movie is Love, Actually and it’s June and you snot-bubble cry, despite having seen it 3587 times before). There is working hard to achieve something that means something to you. There is music and books and dancing and chocolate. I fucking love chocolate.

There is independence and being kind and being a role model for your kids. Your kids who do not care, even for a second, if you are pretty. They will tell you that your hair looks like noodles on your face (no, really and that was my nice child) but they will love you, regardless. Even if you aren’t particularly attractive, they will still want to climb into your bed at 1 am and rub their sweet, sweaty little faces up against yours because they miss you from 6 hours ago. Very few men do that and, to be honest, I really don’t want an adult male’s stubbly, sweaty face rubbing against mine, thanks very much.

For the first time in a decade, I am single and there are times when I am truly terrified of what not being pretty – with my confusing face of lines and acne – might mean for my future. Will I be lonely and unfulfilled? Will I be invalid and worthless? Will I be unloved? Truthfully, the answer to each of those questions is no. No, I wont be lonely or worthless or unloved. I might not be having wild sex , but I do get student discount at LoveHoney and they do vibes so powerful, you could chip a tooth.

Also, it isn’t just pretty people that have sex. Remember all those people with meth mouth, demanding DNA tests for their 1000 kids on Jeremy Kyle? I reckon I stand a fighting chance. The truth is, you don’t actually have to be pretty for anything. It is not a prerequisite for life. As American lexicographer, Erin McKean, once said, “Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked female.”

I may not have enjoyed the perks that being pretty may afford some women but equally, I have never suffered the pain either. There is a lot to be said for not being beautiful and, although I struggle to accept it, not being pretty is truly my privilege.