You as in "Ugly"

Emily Ho Lia

Description

"It's what's on the inside that counts" is the last thing any girl wants to hear, but it's important to bring up anyway because while it may seem totally and unforgivably cliche, there is an unexpected truth to it. As a teenage girl, the author proves the existence of "inner beauty" with seventeen chapters, each featuring a real girl and qualities that make her incredibly beautiful.

Sujets

• Women's health

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 10 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781622874224
• Langue: English

Extrait

You as in "Ugly"
Lia Emily Ho


First Edition Design Publishing
by
Lia Emily Ho

First Edition Design Publishing
Sarasota, Florida
You as in “Ugly”
Copyright ©2013 Lia Emily Ho

ISBN 978-1622874-19-4 PRINT
ISBN 978-1622874-18-7 EBOOK

LCCN 2013950771

September 2013

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .

First Printing , 2013
For Mum
I love you to the moon and back—
to the moon again, back again,
and all around the galaxy.
contents
her beginnings
her potential
her bravery
her drive
her gratitude
her passion
her belief
her simplicity
her energy
her resilience
her honesty
her loyalty
her humor
her enthusiasm
her love
her forgiveness
her little things
her artistry
her vulnerability
her endings
her beginnings
I finally get it. This idea of internal beauty isn’t just another “ugly” girl’s excuse for her below average looks. It’s quite real. I should know. For fifteen less-than-lovely years, I’ve spent hours upon days, piled on top of months, stacked endlessly on years, sighing at each imperfection of my reflection. Maybe you can relate? Too fat there, too pale here, too uneven and saggy everywhere—the list could go on forever, the imperfections ever present. But as it turns out, that dreaded number larger than 00 sewn onto my skin-tight jeggings, the self-amplified creak of the chairs I so cautiously sat on, and the unforgiving jiggle of my thighs were all just one big misunderstanding. I had it wrong—wrong like every one of my answers on this past Chemistry quiz. Which reminds me that I’m somewhat obligated to ask, when will teachers realize no one reads the textbook?
Given the long, long time I spent heavily stressing the super-superficial stuff—the skinny body, the pretty face, and the expensive clothes—I really think I should have a better understanding of my recent conclusions. The truth is—despite how it may feel now—all those things don’t really matter. I’m just beginning to understand what does matter, what everything should be simmering and boiling and sautéing down to: me. Just me. You see, my thighs are supposed to be fatter than my calves. It’s human; it’s how I was made. It’s how we were made. It’s how every single creature with legs was made. And of course my butt’s going to be paler than my stomach, only the brave and uninhibited tan their butts. Not to say there’s anything wrong with that. “If you got it, flaunt it,” right? Right and left eyes—by basic anatomy—are different in size, so it would actually be weird to have perfectly even eyes. And I honestly cannot remember what I thought was saggy. At our age, nothing but a cool kid’s gangster pants are sagging—sagging so low that their underpants no longer go under their pants. I call them Peeky Cheekies.
What am I doing? Not literally, but with this book. What am I doing writing a book about something that every girl has already been told at least a hundred times in her life, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts!” I know. These words don’t help anything. They’re like the lyrics to an annoying song stuck on repeat. The song just goes on and on and on until it doesn’t even have meaning anymore, just a mess of empty words. As if that’s not enough, you’ve also read all the other books about the popular football-er who—against all odds—falls hard for the metal-mouthed band-geek. And to top it all off, you’ve watched the movies about the paler than pale girl in Forks who somehow ends up romantically pursued by a hot Cedric Diggory look-alike vampire and a werewolf with Photoshop-perfect abs. So why even bother going through this idea again? Totes cliché, man. Well guys, the truth is, I want to get into college and a book would look great on my transcript.
Just kidding, there’s actually a little more to the story.
It begins with the long list of wishes I “needed” fulfilled by my sixteenth birthday. Things I could not live without, things that would ultimately make me a happier person (or so I thought): a handsome European boyfriend, Nutella crepes, a French lesson from a local baker, a kiss under the Eiffel Tower, and maybe even a French-speaking dog. Aside from the dog, these were the things that perfect, pretty, popular girls already had. I told everyone I didn’t care about that kind of silliness. Popularity was such pretentious nonsense. I knew better—but did I? Not really. It was more your typical “I don’t want that anyway…because I can’t have it” act.
The truth is, the battle with denial wasn’t over just because I could say it had never begun. Of course I wanted it, of course I cared about it, most especially when it came to boys. There have been days—though much to my embarrassment—when the beautiful lads were the only reason I woke up in the morning to go to school. Sometimes just knowing they would be there was enough to get me excited about the books and tests and menopausal teachers. I lived for the moments I could relive in my head for days, which inevitably morphed into weeks, and yes, sometimes months—but thankfully never years. To impress boys, to attract them, and to be their friend were daily challenges I blindly took on. The first seconds of eye contact, the first wave, the first passing “hey,” those were the things that sent teenage girl hormones racing through every artery, vein, and capillary of my circulatory system. I deeply contemplated the meaning behind every minor movement and barely spoken syllable. I hoped it had some substantial significance. I prayed it would happen again, someday. Any day. Really. It was then, in all that wishing and praying, that I began to realize a girl can only wish and pray for so much before she starts to take everything else for granted. Like all the nice boys in the world, the ones that actually know I exist. I was so focused on what could be that I forgot about what already was.
So that had me thinking (again), maybe simplicity is a good thing. Maybe happiness doesn’t lie in perfecting every detail in the fabric of life so much as it is in just making sure it’s sewn neatly and sturdily. Maybe I’ve really got this whole thing wrong. So who knows, I could’ve been wrong about my love for Justin Bieber too. Is it possible his baggy pants are actually a turn-on, and not a turn-off? Life is full of uncertainties. Finally I’m beginning to understand and embrace all kinds of different possibilities. The possibility of you liking this book, the possibility of me ever publishing this page, I tried to take everything into consideration. In over-thinking and over-analyzing every aspect of my entire existence—from birth ‘til now—I narrowed down my contemplations into just the really important stuff. And in all that narrowing down I realized, nothing superficial would ever amount to what I ultimately learned instead: inner beauty is, indeed, real.
The night of my sixteenth birthday was a special night. For one, I was in Paris. For another, it was the night I was introduced to and really began to understand the other side of beauty—which is important because that’s kind of the whole point of this book. Like every story of inspiration, it all began with a walk.
Tourist couples strolled through the infamous city of love arm-in-arm, head-on-shoulder, with large cameras dangling from their necks. Locals were just beginning to line up in front of street cafes. Cigar smoke clouded a few of the outside tables, thickening the air with rich and spicy aromas as they do in every Parisian movie. It was magical, even perfect. Perfect except for one thing: the whole time I kept my stomach sucked in tighter than two, lifelong, inseparable best friends, which—as you might imagine—inhibited my natural breathing quite a bit. I felt like one of those annoyingly explosive burritos that no one can ever eat without sharing half with the starving ground below. My “justification?” The attractive natives could not see me looking any less than somewhat skinny—or for that matter, pretty. So I decided continuously flipping my hair and checking my reflection in store windows would also be a good idea. You know, just so everyone had an opportunity to witness the ignorant atrocity that was—well, me.
We walked only about five blocks before a short series of fortunate events knocked my fluffy socks off, reversed gravity, and thus, changed my world. Upon the cold concrete sidewalk lay a young girl, no more than five years old, together with her mom on a thin plaid bed sheet. Her mom looked really young, maybe in her late twenties. She had a hand comfortingly resting on her little girl’s back. They were like two poverty-stricken characters in an Oliver Twist movie, except so oddly real—so wrongly real. Things like this weren’t supposed to exist in a city like Paris, not where everything revolved around love and romance and happiness. Ideally, things like this weren’t supposed to exist anywhere. So reality hit kind of hard, much like a slap on the face with an additional slap on the other side of my face and a kick to the shin.
There isn’t a word that can accurately describe exactly how I felt in that moment. It was just a messy milkshake of shame, guilt, confusion, frustration, curiosity, hopefulness, devastation, and utter heartbreak. Strawberry should not be mixed with peanut butter should not be mixed with cherry, if you know what I mean. It just doesn’t settle right, an