Thou art not ugly

I used to look at other girls, thinking to myself, ‘Why am I so ugly?’, then I would turn around to my sister or mother and ask the same question. With a scrunched face, they would always reply, ‘You’re not ugly. Why do you think you’re ugly?’

Yes, why did I think I was ugly? The problem wasn’t just physical, though physical ugliness formed the majority of my dilemma, but I often felt ugly in many things. Ugly in being a person, friend, sister, student, neighbour. I also felt like an ugly Catholic, trying and most times, failing to practice my faith properly. Overall, I felt like dirt. And sometimes, I still do.

First off, we are dirt. Dust we are and to dust we shall return…

But while we are yet living, one thing that should be clear is that nobody is ugly -or perhaps, physically ugly. As to the other types of ugliness, it is true that in fact, we do become ugly sometimes. Because of our fallen nature, we mess up one too many times and end up feeling like a horrible person. But even then, I suppose the ugliness is redeemable unless you remain in it.

Thou art not ugly, unless you refuse to do something about your ugliness.

Ugliness in the flesh

As a child, I wasn’t the most good-looking. I had a big belly from eating too many Pringles, and my face was so chubby that people made very creative nicknames for me. For half of my school years, I walked around with little or no friends, not knowing how to approach people without having them insult me. It was a very difficult time in my childhood, and even though I had loving parents and a homey family, I ended up developing body image issues that made me see myself as perpetually hideous, afraid of the camera, and envious of other girls’ physical attributes.

That was a long time ago. Though I have grown and started to see my face differently, body image disorder rears its ugly head every once in a while.

So, whenever it arrives, I repeat: Thou art not ugly, unless you refuse to do something about your ugliness.

What do I do?

The first thing I do is let go of beauty stereotypes and recognize that every woman has something unique about their beauty. Consider supermodels of the past till present. Most of them had features on their face or body that weren’t stereotypically beautiful, but they used those features to shine in the fashion world and provide new ways of seeing beauty. From ebony black to thick-browed models, we’ve constantly been enamored by women who accepted their unusual features and were proud of them. For example, Lauren Hutton has a very prominent teeth gap that someone like me would be embarrassed of. However, her teeth gap is what makes her smile so beautiful and unique. Before facial moles became a thing in the beauty industry, it was considered a flaw to avoid like the plague. Now, they’re seen as beauty marks because of iconic models (e.g. Marilyn Monroe, Cindy Crawford) who weren’t ashamed of them.

Somewhere down there, the things that you don’t like about your face or body are things you can accept and be proud of. And perhaps, the things you don’t like are the very things that people find attractive in you. Too long a neck? That’s okay. Too big a nose? That’s also fine. Chubby cheeks like mine? Show it off with a wide smile!

The second thing I do is to recognize that God made me the way I am for a reason -It’s because he loves diversity.

There are so many different plants, flowers, and insects roaming the earth as God’s creatures. Likewise, there are so many types of faces and body shapes, all beautiful alike. Take good care of your health and your character as much as you can, and whatever remains as a result of your natural look should not be looked down upon. What remains is beauty. Even after keeping to a healthy exercise and diet routine, I realized that the most important thing was to live life. There’s only one to live. And there was no use wishing I could live it as the next girl who appears prettier than me.

Nobody can properly be me except me. So, I might as well be me.

Besides, no matter how beautiful you are, if your character is terrible, people will dislike you. It’s not necessarily your physical attributes that matter, it’s the charisma you exude in your relations with your fellow human beings.

Ugliness in relations.

Yes, everybody has had that moment (or moments) in their life when they do something genuinely bad to their neighbour and stay up at night thinking, ‘I’m such a horrible person’. And if the feeling is more intense, like it has been so many times for me, they feel their skin crawling with disgust for themselves.

Over the past years, I have figured that one may have very strong moral convictions about what or what shouldn’t be done to one’s neighbour. And for this fact, when one does something against those convictions, one is plagued with thoughts about being horrible. Which means one isn’t so horrible: There is a recognition that something has been done wrong. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ people alike are weak human beings, but I suppose ‘good’ people -sometimes- allow their consciences to convict them when they do something wrong.

In other words, the fact that you may feel ugly about yourself because of something that you did or are doing to your brother, sister, parents, friends, children, etc. means that perhaps, you still have a correct moral compass. You may choose to ignore it and remain in your ugly state, or act upon your convictions and correct that ugliness.

Now, the feeling of relational ugliness may be what has just been explained above, or something of more concern. Something I have been guilty of daily. And it’s something everyone knows as people-pleasing. You may more likely be a people-pleaser if you get comments like ‘You’re too nice’, ‘You think too good of people’, etcetera. I have gotten many of them…

And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with being too nice or thinking too good of people. However, going too far with this good attribute may make you appear as someone who could be walked over. The worst part is that people-pleasing women often need an external voice to tell them when someone is using them as a doormat. People-pleasers are apt to see bad treatment as a sign that they have done something wrong, instead of the other way round. And like the first group of people, they stay up at night, wondering what they did and how to repair the ‘ugliness’.

If you have often gone through this psychological wasting like I have, be rest assured that thou art not ugly. You have done everything you could to not be, and as far as I know, whatever remains is beauty. However, you will become ugly if you keep pandering to other people’s smallest emotions towards you. You are too nice, but you must also have standards for being too nice. I know it’s astronomically hard to implement. But it isn’t impossible, sister.

It also isn’t impossible to have crosstalk between the two categories explained. Sometimes, you may have genuinely done something wrong, as an overly ‘nice’ person, which you need to correct, and which I trust may not be hard to do as a people-pleaser. Most times, it isn’t for me.

The summary point is that as Christian women, an accurate moral compass should be set, so that when we do wrong by someone, we correct our ugliness. However, the moral compass should also be able to tell us not to fret when there is no ugliness to be corrected.

To build the moral compass isn’t hard. You only need to request help from God and His saints.

Ugliness in duties, aspirations, and expectations.

Every once in a while, one experiences the chaos of mind when nothing seems to be going right. And worse, the reason happens to be one’s very self. Sometimes, we experience failures in school, work, religion, vocation, etc., and think, ‘Why am I so horrible in this…’

Again, it is important to give yourself space as an imperfect being. It’s been hard doing that for myself since I suffer from a mild tendency to want everything unerringly in order. But wanting that is, in C.S. Lewis’ words, asinine fatuity (it means stupid stupidity).

And why is it stupid stupidity? Because we, as imperfect creatures, are aiming for only what God can achieve -a perfect work. Imagine a dog, trying to write a complete sentence on paper with its paws, and then complaining (barking and whining) that it cannot do so. We would think it asinine fatuity that the dog even attempted to do such a thing. Because the dog simply cannot do it -except with the help of an intelligence, holding the pen all the way, and writing the sentence, with little use of the animal.

In the same way, I often imagine God, looking down at us, with a knowing smile on His face, shaking His head, as we whine that we cannot perfect a certain endeavour. No wonder He calls us sheep in holy scriptures. ‘Sheep’ is not a compliment. Sheep have little sense and need somebody of greater intelligence to lead them down the pastures. So, it is asinine fatuity to think that we can go down the pastures (or any endeavour) alone without getting lost or distracted. The same way it is for a dog to think, first of all (it has no rational reason). Then, to think it can write well.

Anyways, why do we really feel ugliness in our duties and state in life? As said before, we are imperfect beings. As a Catholic, I believe that after the fall of Adam, humans were plagued with a dull mind, a weak will, and rebelling passions. On top of all that, we have to fight the world and the devil, two factors that are constantly trying to get us into a ditch. With all these deficiencies and distractions, we can never perform anything, be it material or spiritual, as good as we ought to perform it. And as a natural result, from time to time, we may feel this deficiency as being ugly.

Truth be told, the ugliness cannot be corrected unless we realize that after all, we are ugly. We are broken and in need of God’s help to love ourselves and our neighbours appropriately, and to perform our duties to the best of our feeble abilities. After realizing that, it was so simple for me to let go of superfluous worries. If I couldn’t bake that loaf today, I’d do it tomorrow. If that assignment could be reasonably shifted to the next day because I was burnt out and couldn’t do any more work, it would be postponed. If the Rosary I had just said didn’t feel well said, I’d give it to God anyway.

Because what do you know? If I remained stubborn in my perfectionist head and persisted in the tasks, the quality would still be rubbish.

No matter how hard we try, we will never produce a perfect work, despite dreams that we may. Again, only God can produce perfectly, and thinking otherwise, is asinine fatuity. The only way of curing this ugliness, as I have learnt, is recognizing the ugliness and forgoing unrealistic aspirations and expectations.

After all that has been said,

The feeling of being ugly in all dimensions will never leave you till you die. It’s part of being human, and being acutely conscious of our need for God. It is part of the ache that gnaws in our hearts for the Infinite.

Honestly, the only real cure is to perpetually fix your eyes on He who has no ugliness. He, who is all beauty and goodness. Once you lose yourself in Him, you will forget your ugliness. You will always participate in His infinite beauty.

What better foretaste of Heaven could there be, where neither you nor your neighbour will ever be ugly?

Do you ever feel ugly? How do you deal with it? Email me about this post and let’s talk!