5 Things That Happen When You Used To Be Like, Really, Really Good Looking
At times, I’ve put gross amounts of effort into my appearance. Too much effort. So much that, in high school —when the results did not match the effort — I was an insecure freak show about it. I cried when I got a bad haircut, I gawked at my perfectly normal senior portraits: “I look like shit!” My friends and parents and whoever else I subjected to these tantrums, they all rolled their eyes. After years of weight gain, loss, life experience, bad and good haircuts, and learning how good it feels to not base 80% my self-worth on how I appear in photos and reflective surfaces, I am proud to say that I am just fundamentally less hot than I was when I was in high school. And when I was 20. And like…well, less hot than a couple different times in my short lifetime. But don’t cry for me, Argentina — I think I’m more attractive now, just way less conventionally hot, because that shit takes work. Shout out to everyone who is a better, slightly less stereotypically appealing version of themselves right now. Here are a few things that happen when everything about your future looks better than your past…besides you.
1. People ask “is….that you?
People squint at pictures of you and ask this question as if they’re truly confused: “but your hair is straight!” Yeah, girl. It’s called 30-45 minutes a day with a flat-iron — not missing that upper body exercise.
2. Your current significant other doesn’t feel like they’re dating the same person in the photo on the mantel
I mean, they really aren’t. When you take the person you’re dumb-head-over-dumbass in love with home to meet the fam, they will inevitably see those old photos and (if they aren’t a shithead) will meet them with a perplexed expression and indifference: “huh.” Extra points if they tease you for your extremely stylish, coiffed scene kid-ish skater hair and/or the 16.9 fl. oz. of makeup on your face.
3. Your Facebook photos are like a weird funhouse-zoo for new friends
When you were ~hot, young and stupid~ you probably took, on average, 2,000 pictures per party in every annoying rearrangement of bodies possible: “girls in front! Now the boys! Make a silly face!” This incredibly annoying yet standard 2k10 behavior yielded a shit ton of default pics — like how many profile pictures did we need in a damn year? New friends, upon discovering your embarrassing trove of Facebook past treasures, dig into this shit the way I imagine our parents gleefully poured over home movies or friends’ medicine cabinets. The present-day “LOL” comment on an old photo is typical, but the “omg you look hot!” is is a backhanded social media comment classic.
4. Your realize your clothes were pretty ugly
Being super hot has one super perk; it is a very ugly truth and it is this: hot people make ugly shit look good so that the rest of us will buy it. Oh damn, you already knew that? I know. Capitalism. Marketing. A Black Mirror episode is in the works right now, figuring out exactly how the hell anyone ever got hot people to wear Aeropostale. It’s a blessing when you become not-hot enough to finally air out the steam of your past and see your closet for what it is: a bunch of tacky shit that never made you look that good. Now? You can be chic and hot. For a price. But self-awareness is priceless…or at least worth a $50 pair of jeans that make your ass look good on its saddest day.
5. You get over yourself in the best way possible
Real self-confidence and good looks — rather, maybe, *the* good look, the one that is not a bad look, the overall appearance of being comfortable and having your shit together — come from having character. Self-respect. As Joan Didion put it best, “Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.” So you have a “fuck it” moment when you look in the mirror now, one that isn’t distasteful. You used to say “fuck it” when you didn’t look good enough, only to run away and buy another thing or sacrifice another thing or apply another thing to look better. Now? “Fuck it.” The kind of “fuck it” that makes you smile. A beautiful smile. A really, really fucking good looking one. What a babe. 
