Getting Over a Broken Beauty

I just spent around a hundred dollars yesterday on makeup. Although this is so unlikely for me to do, I just couldn’t resist the cute packaging and affordability of vanity products in South Korea. Local brands like Skin Food, Face Shop and Missha are sold only a quarter of the price compared to anywhere else in the world, so yeah, I just went gaga!

I spend a lot of my money on clothes, too. From hoodies to dresses and rugged to girly tops that most of  it still has a price tag on, I always think I have nothing to wear. Bags and shoes are up there on my “things I cannot resist” list. A wide variety of kicks and funky flats are home to my feet, and the bags that I fondly call as my “babies” always see the light of day and they are used and overused just because they are beautiful.

Yes, I do have a shopping addiction. I like pretty things, but not in a cheesy- girly kind of way (nothing pink!). I like looking good, even if I just sport a plain black tee with comfy cargo’s and flip- flops. I buy things that can make me look different, or bluntly speaking, make me stand up from the rest of the crowd.

Despite the cockiness, self- centered and overconfident image that I project, I am very insecure. Growing up as an overweight child, I never wished for anything else but to look pretty and be slim. I would envy girls who didn’t feel grossed out with their bodies and had boys admiring them. I somehow looked the part, but because I was on the heavy side until after college, I didn’t think much of myself which clearly reflected on how I dealt with certain situations and people.

Even if I projected an image of self- absorption, I was dying inside and I sold myself short with dicks and assholes, just because I thought that they were the best I could get for being fat and unattractive. And of course, boys never liked girls smarter than them, much less physically unattractive ones. So I had to bend, play dumb most of the time until I just snap and move on to an equally dumb jerk that would give me a fresh start.

I don’t know how my battle with weight loss began. I just started losing weight, running everyday and eating healthy. Before I knew it, I was losing 5, 10 then 15 pounds in a matter of a few months. From an overweight girl to weighing almost a hundred pounds, I still didn’t feel good about myself even after losing all that weight. I always struggled for physical perfection. A skinny girl trapped in a chubby girl’s body, that’s who I was. That’s still the way I am.

Every time I look at myself in the mirror, I just see certain parts of my body that I think is just wrong and ugly. My fat cottage-cheese thighs, my never EVER flat tummy, my small flat almost- Filipino nose, and my chest that’s flat as a board. My weight fluctuates every now and again, and because of this, I’m starting to obsess about my need to shed a few more pounds until I can almost run in the streets naked and sacred.

Who am I kidding?

I know myself so well that even if I do reach my ideal body weight, I still have the stretch marks and those little fat bumps that’ll remind me that I was once an overweight blob. And I can’t deal with this part of me. I knew things were starting to get out of hand when I started to consider getting a boob job, liposuction and tummy tuck altogether. But for someone like me who weighs a 110lbs., I think no surgeon would say yes if I want fat sucked out from my body. And I would never be satisfied. Ever. 

I always hope that I could go back to the time when I was much younger and stuffing myself with sinful food. I would tell myself to stop, not because I don’t want to be fat but I hate what fat did to me. Because I am still haunted by the insecurities that my chubby body cost me, I am struggling to look at the totality of myself, not just the parts of me that make me look ugly. Until the acceptance of my true “beauty“ doesn‘t sink in, I’ll shop until I drop and try my best, to be at my best all the time. Fact is, even if I don’t believe any compliment that comes my way, it’s still nice to hear that people take notice of how nice you look. Maybe one day, I’ll learn to believe them and I won’t have to fake looking confident, I will just be content… and way prettier inside.

fyi: BOYS, the  next time you tease or criticize a stranger, family member or partner about their weight, THINK FIRST. How would you feel if somebody tells you that you have a small dick, and worse, don’t know how to use it? That’s how it feels. And GIRLS, you don’t have a license to criticize other women just because you think it‘s more harmless. Insults are still insults no matter which mouth it comes from. In fact, you should be more shameful because you should know how it feels to feel ugly. Sometimes we forget these certain things in life.