An 'Ugly' Woman Shares Her Moment Of Learning True Self-Love
The power of self-love is something no one can take away from us.
XSandra, Angela Roma | Canva Posting to Mumsnet, a woman revealed her truest self, stating, “I am, by all conventional standards, an ‘ugly’ woman.”
“I am not, and never have been, beautiful,” she explained. “Never pretty or attractive. On a good day with some good light, I could possibly pass for striking.” She shared that she’s had low self-esteem for years, even developing a phobia and mirrors and photographs. But one night, all that changed.
The ‘ugly’ woman shared the moment when she learned true self-love.
She recounted a night that initially seemed like any other night, as she rode the train home from work. Only this night was different. A chance encounter on that ride would change her self-perception forever.
She described that she was on the train, when two young women sat down across from her, only to loudly make fun of the woman’s appearance. According to her account, they were “laughing loudly about how deformed and ugly my face was.”
“I didn’t challenge them, because I am middle-aged… and didn’t fancy my chances with two very loud, much younger women, but I realized I don’t actually care,” she exclaimed.
As she was being insulted, the woman realized the power of letting go, the freedom of not caring.
She noted that a past version of herself would have crumbled under the criticism, but with advanced age, came wisdom. She just didn’t care what anyone else thought. That realization brought her a sense of inner peace, one she hadn’t known before.
“For so long, someone calling me ugly or unattractive to my face would have been my worst nightmare,” she acknowledged. “But it happened, and instead of the world ending, I’ve realized I no longer care about my face or how it’s viewed.”
The self-proclaimed ugly woman found her beauty in radically accepting herself for exactly who she is.
She listed off the various reasons she no longer cared about what she looked like — “age, perimenopause, life experience, or being too tired to care.” Whatever the specific reason, she was led to understand that her self-worth isn’t reliant on her appearance.
“For the first time in my life, I feel like I am more than the sum of my facial features,” she proclaimed. She noted, “[I] very much like who I am, regardless of what I look like.”
Isn’t that realization where true power lies? In recognizing that her looks have exactly nothing to do with the person she is, she let the immense weight of societal expectations, beauty standards, of self-hatred, leech off her shoulders.
“I feel free,” she proclaimed. “I wish I’d had this realization decades ago! I wish I could tell young me [that] my wonky face doesn’t actually matter in the grand scheme of things.”
The woman came to an even deeper and more profound realization, explaining, “I have a life I am proud to have created and many things to celebrate, and not a single one of them relied on me having a conventional-looking face.”
She called for “fellow ugly women” to join her in claiming their space in the world and celebrating each other and “all of the many other things you are than your physical appearance.”
Often, it takes running up alongside our greatest fears to release our anxieties. This woman went through a sea change. She experienced a life-altering event in realtime, on her commute home. She faced her fear of being called ugly and realized that her looks didn’t matter, and that freed her.
To be human is to sometimes be consumed with a level of self-doubt that seems like it could destroy us, leveling us to the ground. Who here, walking this Earth, hasn’t stared at themselves in the low light of the bathroom mirror and asked, “Am I enough?”
The answer is, simply, Yes.
Our worth is based on so much more than how our hair falls, or what the lines of our cheekbones do or don’t do. To be beautiful is to live a life of meaning, whatever that meaning is to you. There exists a universe inside us, a bloody, beating heart we carry through the world, where we hold our losses and our triumphs, telling us that we’re enough.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers mental health, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.