Headshot
Autor: Kimiko93
The first time a got a verbal assessment of my looks by a boy was in 7th grade.
There are three things I remember about this; first, it was in Latin class. Second, the boy was in my Latin class because he’d failed 7th grade the first time around, so he was older than the rest of us. And third, he and a friend had taken their pencil cases and pointed them at several girls in the class and sniggered “Headshot!”
This was at a time when ego shooters became popular around fourteen year olds. What the boys were trying to express was that they felt so harassed by the ugliness of the twelve year old girls around them that they literally wanted to blow our faces off.
At least that’s what he explained to me. Thirteen year old, unaffected me, who asked what it meant out of curiosity. They stared at me, with some kind of hungry expression in their eyes. What were they hungering for? My reaction?
Thirteen year old me, bless her heart, raised her eyebrows at them, said something like “Aha” and returned back to her book. Why should thirteen year old me care about what they thought? They were stupid.
Thirteen year old me was weird like that.
What she didn’t realize back then was that she started a pattern. A year later, in a new school and a new environment, she was walking to the cafeteria to avoid all human contact, when another boy from a higher grade did a double take upon seeing her, and then yelled, in the middle of the echoing hallway, for all the world to hear, “UGLY!”
I know even less about this guy than I did about the first one. What I know is by association; I know he was from one of the worst graduating classes my school has ever seen. I know he wasn’t one of the important, popular people from that class, either. I know for a fact he wasn’t exactly Brad Pitt himself. Neither was boy #1. They were both stupid.
Fourteen year old me was used to taking everyone’s crap at this point, rolled her eyes, and went on her merry way.
This was the same reaction fifteen year old me, who was clawing her way out of depression, had, when she was crossing another hallway at the same school, accompanied by two boys who were less than liked, to spend her break with them in the cafeteria to avoid other people. When passing by the room of an all-boys class, notorious for their misbehavior and overall stupidity, she caught the eye of one of the pack leaders. He gave her a sheepish rat-like grin, and yelled, in the middle of a not so much echoing hallway, for his whole pack to hear, “UGLY!”
I know significantly more about this guy than I do about the last two. Third generation immigrant, definitely not known for his academic prowess, definitely not known for his pleasant demeanor. Haven’t seen him in a while. He probably dropped out before 10th grade.
He was one of the guys who liked to think of himself as pretty. In fact, in a little social network for people from the ages of twelve to sixteen, he was in a group called something like “hottest boys ever”, in a horrible font and gratuitously cool misspelling. Probably involving numbers. If you google image search the word “douchebag”, you will find his likeness.
Fifteen year old me was perfectly aware of all these facts, rolled her eyes, grinned back, and moved on.
And while we’re at that social network, it was there that sixteen year old me was featured on some photos by-then-friends of hers took on a class trip. She was new to having friends in general, and to being friends with popular girls in particular. Then again, every pretty girl is popular when there’s only 9 girls total.
Be that as it may, also featured on that pic was a guy I sat close to in French class. He commented how this was such a lovely photo, except for that sewer rat that had snuck on there.
Needless to say, the sewer rat was me.
The girl who posted that picture laughed and assured me the next day that she had deleted the comment. She’d also given the guy a virtual slap on the wrist and a smile, and a teasing, oh no, don’t do that again.
I will now plagiarize the words of one of my most cherished friends on how to describe this guy; every time he opened his mouth, you wanted to pet him on the head and tell him to go sit in the corner and eat a banana. But of course, no one ever said that to his face. That’d be mean.
In junior year, after another class trip, another pretty, popular girl posted a group pic featuring me looking particularly not-so-pretty, and somebody else put one of these nice facebook boxes on it where you write a person’s name. The name in there is “Pretty.”.
In junior year, me and most of my friends had left our grade and advanced to a higher one. It’s a thing our school offered. The grade we were in was the best graduating class the school has ever seen. We were the smart people. Almost all of us. Even the not so smart people in the grade would have been significantly smarter by comparison to other grades. That’s why it all hit me so hard.
First of all, this photo incident wasn’t due to any malice on the girl’s part. She’s nice. I’m sure she doesn’t know about it to this day, since I never confronted her about it, so it wouldn’t seem like I care.
She was the one who spoke up the loudest when yearbooks happened. Yearbooks featured anonymous comments on everyone’s profile, and votes. Votes were not a big deal. The only thing I considered a big deal were the negative categories, of which we had a few. “Worst hairstyle” being the one I cared about, because a) it was gender split and b) it was the only bad category related to looks. I tried to talk the yearbook committee out of having this category.
I had no idea I would win it at the time.
I felt safe. There were only smart people around. Smart people were nice. People had been nice to me these past two years. I felt safe. So when the comments hit, they hit hard.
There were perfectly nice things, of course. Some people actually though I was nice, I was funny, I was a person. The other two kinds of comments are either about how ugly I am or crude comments about my relationship, because I had the audacity to not be pretty and have a boyfriend anyways. How dare I.
“Sheds her skin like a snake” being my personal favorite. I’m not shedding skin like a snake. I have scales like a fish. It’s in the name of the disease – Ichthyosis, fish disease.
Fun fact: Nobody ever asks why my skin looks a little weird. You don’t ask people that. That’d be mean.
By now, I am less unaffected, but more educated. So when I have to talk in front of a crowd, I make sure my skin looks as normal as possible. I make sure my hair looks good. I make sure to apply more make-up than I usually would, so I don’t distract people by how unpretty I am. I dress professionally even though I don’t have to, in hope that they will take me more seriously for it.
There’s that one boy in my class. He looks and smells fourteen. He looks and smells and behaves like all these boys and all these comments. He laughs when I open my mouth. He took a picture of me while I was talking.
We’re in law school.
“Just don’t give a damn” my friends say. “He doesn’t matter.” I know. I know he doesn’t. I know he shouldn’t. But he does.
I’m ugly and he’s stupid. And I have to live in his world.