U.G.L.Y. You Ain't Got No Alibi

This is one of my essays I submitted to my English class.
Rebecca ----
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English 098
09 October 2008

“U. G. L. Y. You Ain’t Got No Alibi”
Several people like to point out movies and ads with unattainable images can have a negative affect on an individual’s self esteem. In truth what also has an effect on a person’s self esteem is the group of people that surround that person every day. What ever that group’s expectance of what is beautiful can have a negative effect on someone who doesn’t meet their standards. For me, my whole life has been this struggle from what other people think of me based on my looks and how it effects me.
My father’s side family tends to be very obese. Two of his sisters struggled with their weight most of their lives. Currently my father’s weight fluctuates between a little heavy to not being able to pull his shirt over his belly all the way in result causing my step mom to secretly trade out his polos for larger sizes. Another trait from this side of the family is the “Dale Nose.” The “Dale Nose” that nearly everyone in his family has is bumpy and slightly crooked. Both of these genetic traits have been passed down to me. Along with a slow metabolism and my father’s nose I was granted one more curse when I was born. I was born with Beckwith Weidermin Syndrome, in which caused me to have a larger than normal tongue. Before braces were put into my mouth, my tongue had pushed out my jaw as I was growing up. Most of my life I had been under the impression that I was deformed and freakishly hideous whenever I looked into a mirror or when someone wanted to tell me their opinion on how I looked.
I always will remember what it was like being made fun of in school. In Elementary school sometimes the boys would pretend they didn’t see me and talk about how ugly I was. One time during my Soft more year in High School I was walking past a lunch table full of obnoxious guys. One of them shouted to me as I went past, “Hey, Rebecca!” I wouldn’t respond. “Rebecca Dale, You’re Hella Ugly.” Then they all would laugh. When something like that would happen, I would avoid my friends and hide in the library because I was ashamed of my looks and someone had just pointed out the whole school my shame.
I used to wear a lot of my mothers old clothes in a sort of ‘hand me down’ fashion. My mother often lent me her purple windbreaker that had several unnecessary buttons all over it. One day walking threw a hallway I passed a group of friends. One of them shouted out to me, “Hey, you pretending you’re a pilot?” every one else laughed because they thought his joke was hilarious. One girl thought my clothes were bad enough to pull me aside and tell me I needed a make over.
My mother is constantly trying to dye her hair blonde to look exactly as it did thirty years ago. After so many years of treatment, the coloring has made my mothers hair brittle and dry. For some reason the dye doesn’t even sink into her roots any more so they still remain out for every one to see. I try to tell my mother it would probably be better for her if she dyed her hair to her natural brunet color. She shakes her head no and tells me that she doesn’t want to have ugly brown hair. I get my brown hair from my mother but she doesn’t understand that she makes me feel terrible when she says things like that. She has a lot of terrible things to say about her own looks, yet a lot of those looks she has passed down to me.
Their had even been some times in my life where I had tried to meet the standards to be considered normal looking. But, with trying to change my appearance I had caused all new problems. I would change my clothes to what other people had told me to wear, and then I would feel like I was trying too hard. I would skip meals only to eat three times as much when I did eat. I tried a ridiculous number of different things but nothing made me happy.
Sometimes I still can’t get over my insecurities about my own body image. I have a fear of when I talk to someone I’m being judged. I worry that they think I’m weird because of my clothes, or because it doesn’t look like I take care of myself. I never felt comfortable wearing make up but I take care of my skin. I don’t spend a lot of time on making my hair look nice but I buy vitamin shampoos that make my hair healthy. Although I know I do take care of myself I always assume that the person I speak to must feel superior to me. What is even worse is that I allow myself to feel inferior to that person.
Now I have braces that have slowly fixed my jaw, I try pick out clothes that I like without caring what other people think of what I wear, and I try to eat healthy. I have friends that support me and goals that don’t involve becoming beautiful. Being ugly is no longer important.
One’s Self esteem can be driven down by the negative opinions of those around them. Even though they still have their own power to feel however one can feel it’s hard to avoid the need for acceptance from others. For me it’s still a hard struggle, but my struggle now doesn’t reside in trying to make myself look better. My struggle now is to make myself live without the fear of the world thinking that I am ugly. I have learned that not everyone is evaluating me based on my looks and that if someone goes out of their way to make me feel bad about myself it certainly doesn’t mean they are better then me. I know they aren’t.