Day 270: What if Your Case of the Uglies is Permanent?

You know how when you hear your recorded voice it never sounds the same to you as you hear it in your head? Well, I don’t know what the auditory science is behind that little mystery, but like it or not, that is your actual voice and the way everyone else hears it. Well, what if it’s the same thing with how you look in photographs. Some people are just naturally photogenic and they always look their best on film. Then there are the people like me who seem eternally doomed to looking their absolute worst whenever a camera captures their image. What most worries me, is that perhaps I don’t just look bad on film, maybe that’s actually how I look and I never realized it.

There are those days when, despite my best efforts, I cannot shake my case of the uglies. My nose is ridiculous, my skin oily enough to fry food on, and my hair so limp it more closely resembles fringe than a hairstyle. This is how I look in most photographs and it’s been that way since I hit puberty. It’s not always bad though in person. Some days when I look in the mirror I even impress myself. Whose eyes are those, shimmering with intelligence from their teasing and mysterious depths? My goodness, that complexion and how the hair shines and bounces! On these occasions I love everything reflected back at me in the mirror, well not my nose, that is a absurd projectile stuck to my face.

Every now and again, there develops a photo that looks the way I think of myself, but the overwhelming majority is not so great. So what if, that unfortunate girl staring out from the photograph is truly what I look like? Could it be that’s who everyone else sees when they look at me? My self-esteem is on shaky enough ground. The only thing I really have is those good days and few miraculous photographs in which my perception and reality seem to meet. If it turns out, that like my voice on tape I do look the way I appear on film, I’m screwed. I know it’s not all about looks and personality counts, but I’m not saying I’m a beauty queen. I just want to look as good as I feel and when I see those pictures I feel like crap too. Beauty may only be skin deep, but then again so is my self-worth.