Pretty Is Not Your Currency

“The only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me. I quit spending my life trying to control myself and began to trust myself. -Glennon Doyle”

I shut the door of the lift, the kind of elevator that has the steel screen-like doors with elaborate designs that you have to open and close yourself, like you see in the movie The Titanic. My eyes were forward, steady, with an aloof look on my face but an anxious look in my eyes. As the floors pass by, and I make my way to street level, I sigh to myself, “Another first date.” The elevator halts to a stop and makes a jarring, irking sound only an elevator that has been around for more than 100 years can.

 I walk into the lobby and give myself a last look in the mirror in the hub of my apartment building, located right smack dab in the middle of San Francisco. I rub the edges of my lipstick with my index finger and run my fingers through my strategically, loosely curled hair. I turn my body to the right, look over my left shoulder, and suck my belly button. I wiggle my skin-tight, size 26 jeans up to my waist. I turn to my right to face the back wall and take another deep breath in to suck in a little more. I look over my shoulder to examine my back side--to make sure it looked… acceptable. I did this same routine every time I walked into the lobby of my apartment building-- if there was the rare opportunity of having the lobby to myself in my busy, built in 1912, San Francisco-style building in Lower Nob Hill. I always got excited if there was no one around—it was another opportunity to make sure I looked skinny enough—thin enough—before that first date.

 “You are enough.” I’d repeat to myself over and over. “You are pretty enough. You are smart enough. He’d be ridiculous not to like you.”

 I’d repeat these same phrases, over and over, at all times of the day, as if I believed them. These positive affirmations I’d use like a power tool, and drill into my head until I was blue in the face. Maybe I’d start to believe them if I said them enough. I’m no stranger to repetition. That’s how it works, right? Beneath the surface is the real woman in charge. She’s my subconscious.

 Our minds are split in two—the conscious and the subconscious. We oftentimes think that our conscious mind is the one that’s in control and is responsible for our feelings and behaviors. It’s not. It’s our subconscious. I like to think of it as this little computer deep down in our psyche that is wired from birth until about 16-18 years old. The wiring takes place based on our experiences and how we were treated by our parents, media, peer groups…anything has the power to influence the little child within us all, trying to make sense of the world. We all just want to fit in. We all just want to be loved. Often times we will do whatever we can to fit in and be loved, especially if love or acceptance wasn’t given freely and you had to earn it.

 My sub-conscious hard-wired at the time because no one told her she was enough. She had a different loop of thoughts and ideas. She was in the driver’s seat, while I was unaware that she was in control.

 I glanced down at my phone to check where my ride was. The Lyft I called in the elevator 3 minutes before had already turned down Sutter St. and would be here in a few seconds. I opened the door to the building and shut it quietly behind me. I heard the click clack of my tan suede boots as I made my way down the marble steps and into the busy 6 PM hustle of a San Francisco workday. I open the passenger door of the blue Prius, smile at the driver and say “For Amanda?”, and he nods as I get in. “Pretty picture you have for your profile,” he says as I close the door. I smiled. We make our way past Polk St. as I see a group of guys in flannel shirts and Patagonia vests stammer out of a neighborhood bar, onto the next watering hole and another round of Bulleit Rye on the rocks. I’d be meeting up with the same type of guy, my type, the San Francisco Marina Douche Bag. I get a text from a 415 number that will never be saved to my contacts, just like the rest of them, “I’m here.” I quickly reply, “Be there in 5. Rush hour traffic.” A lie, I actually couldn’t decide what to wear. I tried on millions of outfits before resorting back to the usual skinny jeans, white top, tan suede knee high boots and a black leather jacket. The SF happy hour uniform. I’d look like every other white privileged, 20-or-30-something woman in the Marina. I liked blending in with the pretty privileged people. We turn right onto Franklin and I open Instagram to distract myself as I watch my thumb scrolling down the screen of my iPhone. My eyes focus on the images but my brain doesn’t register. It’s distracted by the loop of my subconscious as it takes over every time I go on a date. “You’re too fat.” “You’re not successful.” “He works at Google, why would he be interested in you since you left your sales career? You have $100 dollars to your name.” “How could anyone like you when you look like this?” I inhale sharply and make a silent prayer, “I hope he doesn’t think I’m fat.”

 “Wait, NO. Not today.” And then, the conscious loop.

 “You are enough. You are smart enough. You are pretty enough. He’d be crazy not to like you.”

 At the time I was a professional fitness instructor where I worked out for a living and spent the rest of my time on the ice teaching young ones how to skate. I was not fat. I had abs and chiseled arms that helped me do things like haul my groceries from Trader Joes 5 blocks away. On a regular basis I’d encourage other women, who looked just like me and probably struggled just like me, to demolish 50 burpees and 100 jump squats to loud pumping music at 6 AM before the sun came up. Whatever burned the most calories. My jeans I constantly fidged with, the size 26, were the same size I wore in high school. The 28-year-old me managed to stay the same size as 16-year-old me. Small.

 I had body dysmorphia and a waning sense of self-confidence. It sounds insane, I know. This was real. This was me.

 But I know I’m not the only female who thinks like this or feels like this.

 I have been taught, alongside any woman who watches reality TV, has an Instagram account, has a skinny mother and feeds into the media bias-- the one thing we have to offer this world is how pretty or skinny we are. To be the perfect combination of pretty and skinny is to be likeable. Like an ornament. I have to make sure I’m presented just like a freaking Christmas tree ornament because that’s how I feel safe. To be seen and not heard. To be admired and then chosen and that’s really all there is to it.

 Sometimes being seen would mean shrinking as small as I could, because if I was small and pretty, then I was also safe.

 My beliefs around my appearance became the foundation for my self-worth. How I sought out love and acceptance had roots in a belief system that were not planted in nourishing soil.

 When I was in 6th grade, a local dance studio called Billy Clower’s would have “dances” every other Friday night for middle schoolers in Ventura. It was the place to be for pre-teens at the time before we graduated onto the cooler hangout, Skating Plus—the local roller rink. These dances became the hub, a place where I got another opportunity to gauge where I stood on the “pretty” scale. Before the annual “Winter Dance” on the Friday of Christmas break, I had my brand-new outfit from Limited Too laid out—a powder blue mini skirt with a slit over the right leg and a sparkly white v-neck sweater. I hunted down all my butterfly clips, carefully twisting my hair into the early 2000’s trend 75% of the other girls would arrive wearing too. I’d swipe my blue eyeshadow over the bottom of my eyelid and use my favorite Lipsmackers Watermelon lip gloss, that smelled like the bubble gum, to make my lips shiny and maybe distract from the braces that awkwardly covered my teeth. I’d curl my bangs to camouflage my forehead, as it was constantly breaking out in hormonal acne, and my $2 Wet N Wild foundation was never good enough to cover it. The bangs however did the trick, but only enhanced the gawky, awkward look at the time.

 I wondered if I’d ever be less awkward. But maybe I will be good enough and this will be the day someone will ask me to dance.

 I arrive, feeling cute, and say hello to my friends, and immediately follow the eyes of all the young men as they stare longingly to a beautiful girl with flowing beachy blonde hair, skinny legs and a mega-wat smile.

 Let’s call her Kristy Baker.

 They are looking at her, not me. A knife makes its way into my belly.

 Was I not a pretty enough ornament? I had just gotten there, I had to remind myself. They just haven’t seen me yet.

 As the night wore on, I stood to the side and sipped on cup after cup of red fruit punch as I watched, teenage boy after teenage boy beg for Kristy’s attention and for an opportunity to dance with her. At one point, she even had a line.

 They had seen me. They just didn’t want me on their tree.

 They wanted Kristy Baker.

 I locked myself in the bathroom and gave myself a long, hard look in the mirror. I stared into my big, blue eyeshadow rimmed eyes and decided:

 I am going to do whatever it takes to be the prettiest ornament—so maybe one day—someone would choose me. One day I would be pretty enough to be chosen for someone else’s tree. I wouldn’t ever be Kristy Baker, but I could be close.

 It seems like a lot of pivotal moments happened in my life when I took a second to look at my reflection in the mirror. I’ve looked in the mirror a lot in my lifetime, just like the rest of us. But there’s a difference between looking at yourself in the mirror and looking at yourself in the mirror. It’s not when I’m brushing my hair or my teeth or caking war paint on my face to enhance my features or cover imperfections. I mean the kind where you put your elbows on the sink, look into your eyes so intensely that you can begin to see the borders and the outlines of your soul. The deep stuff.

 In 6th grade I looked into my ocean blue eyes staring back at me and wondered what was actually deep down in there. “Is that you?” I’d ask.

 My story has been along the same lines since that day. I’d look at myself after the outside world has processed what I have to offer, and I’d look to see what was missing. There was a small whisper that quietly knew the answer to that simple question. The answer really was simple.

 “Nothing is wrong with you, sweet girl.”

 It’s a deep question with a simple answer. This question has grip and girth and it’s not the question you ask to get an answer like, “nothing”. It’s also not the answer you want when it holds so much weight that it sinks to the very bottom, and from the bottom it constructs the foundation of an entire belief system. The answer was “nothing”, I just didn’t believe it. An answer that simple couldn’t be right.

 “What’s wrong with me?”, I’d ask.

 “Nothing,” my soul would answer.

 “Then why don’t they like me?”

 “Because you’re asking them to. You don’t have to ask. The answer is the knowing.”

 So, I look at my eyes with the grip and the heavy in my chest, and my eyes look outside for the answer that they already know. From there I continued on the path of asking, then fixing, then finding approval. Ask. Fix. Approve. The perfect formula. The answer to the asking included things like “Make your hair pretty.” “Shrink your body as much as possible.” “Stay hungry.”

 Here’s a good question:

 What if we all looked into the eyes of a woman who respects what she sees?

 As the years went on, I grew out of my awkward braces, bangs and Limited Too. By sophomore year of high school, my pretty, popular, and ornamentally worthy exterior began to emerge. I became good friends with Kristy Baker. If I surrounded myself with pretty, then I’d be pretty too. Who we associate ourselves with, that’s who we become, right? All the pretty ornaments must come from the same place. I’d be chosen if I was from the same tree.

It was that time in my life where I was a pretty enough ornament, and I was actually chosen from time to time. But that’s all I ever thought love came from.

From being pretty.

I would wait for someone to choose me based on my external appearance, when in reality, that was the least interesting thing about me. I find it fascinating that within these belief systems, is the fact that I never stopped to contemplate that I had a choice, too. Often times I’d choose someone just because they chose me.

And that’s not a good way to start the process of judgement and gauge my compass as to who I want to allow into my life and who I didn’t. This was not even in the back of my mind. I had no idea.

My belief is that if we ever want to navigate our way out of some really challenging experiences, we have to become the teacher that we needed. We have to be the voice in the little, awkward and insecure middle school-er that still lives in our adult bodies, on a loop that we aren’t even aware of. There’s another way. That the moment where I decided “pretty” was my currency was a place where I could begin to re-write my perception of acceptance. That my currency wasn’t my prettiness. My currency was my spunk. My intelligence. My creativity. The little girl whose teachers told my parents in parent-teacher conferences that I was special because of all the things I was capable of, pretty NOT being one of them.

 Once we learn to save ourselves, to teach and re-program ourselves about our experiences, we can learn to find our way. We can speak to those old versions of ourselves as a leader, as the voice we want to hear.

 This was the point where I began to take the paint brush and started to paint my own life. Instead of waiting to be chosen, I wanted to do the choosing. You deserve to be chosen. Not almost chosen. But chosen. For all the spunk, creativity and compassion that you are and one day you’ll believe it whole-heartedly, and on that day you’ll be free. While we all inherently deserve this, we must always remember that we, ourselves, do the choosing. Clearly, that’s a process. Read the Break Up if you don’t believe me.

There’s an off chance that you’re wondering what happened on that date in San Francisco. I’ve been avoiding that.  

 Well, it was just like the rest of them. I’d smile and laugh and order a second glass of Chardonnay, and he’d be inspired by my story and even a little intrigued by the fact that I was different and didn’t want to settle for the corporate hustle. He’d think I was pretty but maybe a little high maintenance, and he’d question if he would be ready to be involved with a woman like that. We’d go on a second date anyway, and we’d meet for drinks again on Union St., in the Marina, because that’s the neighborhood where the same unavailable, avoidant but attractive douche bags lived. That was the type I just loved to go out with. Maybe I could fix them. We’d laugh a few times and become a little more comfortable with each other as we talk about our hopes and dreams, our families, the broken bones, and adventures we have had in our lifetime. Our guards will go down a little lower, our walls becoming a little more porous, and his male brain would be able to detect the insecure, needy energy that I was giving off. He’d feel my seeking, my asking, my desperation of his approval before I had even been concerned with mine. What I thought about him wasn’t in the picture. He had the deck of cards, and it was his hand to play. He wouldn’t know this, but something in him would want to run the other direction because no man wants a woman who clings or seeks for approval. Even if he’s not conscious of it. This was the vicious cycle of my love and dating life, and the only way I could ever see this was from above and across a vast ocean. I had to rise and remove to gain perspective.

This I now know, I’m in charge of this story and how I choose to write it.

I’m not an ornament to be admired and that’s not my job. My job is to become the best version of myself, for myself. This isn’t easy. As humans we are conditioned to fit into our tribe, and it’s easy to fall back into patterns of seeking approval. It’s a practice. I picture a lasso when my thoughts turn to pleasing others, completely obliterating my own needs, and rope my own voice back in. My own needs. They are the ones that matter.

Our purpose in this world, and in love is not tied to pretty. 

I want to change that narrative for you and for me.

And so, one day, we can all be free. And on that day where we liberate ourselves, we really know what it means to respect the woman in the mirror that we see.