It’s days like this when I delight in getting to be able to voice my grievances in such a way that maybe, without a face, you’ll hear me.
What a stupid and ridiculously spoilt thing to say: ‘I’m too pretty to be taken seriously’. That my problems should be diminished for being endowed with the #blessing of being aesthetically appeasing absolutely right and appropriate. And I’m not being sarcastic; I genuinely believe that. There has to be some perspective and really most of the time, one should not complain.
So, if you’re an apparently beautiful woman, you might consider locking yourself up in a dark cupboard when you feel bad about something until you’ve recovered yourself enough to seem happy again in the face of others. A smile is your only option (unless you’re ok with people hating you more than they already do).
From now on, just assume everyone else holds more pain inside than you. You have no pain. It’s not real.
Scuse me for a sec’ just need to get over this panic attack…
***Entry is interrupted for c. ten minutes as Girl in Style crouches over hyperventilating and is sure for just a moment whilst crippled with fear that she must be going mad as the world closes in around her***
Ok, back. So as I was saying…
Now I know you’re thinking that this entry is overtly self-indulgent. But I told a friend just the same when she called me one evening to tell me that she was feeling lost and that the two apartments her daddy had just bought her now felt too depressing to live in after a recent break up. Should she go with this new guy to Thailand to escape it all? Despite the fact she’d called me after a long day I’d had with a parent in and out of hospital whilst having the realisation dawn on me that I had no actual stability and was trying to sell the house I’d only dreamt of having my entire life amidst my own family’s downfall, her predicament was not all lost on me (well except the escaping to Thailand with some random guy - I’m much too unadventurous for such things). I calmly advised her thus that I thought the predicament of having too many choices in life often contributes to feeling lost. I may have used the description ‘rich girl problems’ (similar to ‘first world problems’ but reserved for those not only privileged but who genuinely have never known the responsibility of needing to work. I was once in this category but then had so much genuine sh*t happen that I’ve now been denoted to the rather more demure ‘first world problems’ category; which means I have perhaps a little more perspective but still lose it sometimes). Harsh, perhaps but I would have told myself the exact same thing. Get up and get on with it.
I was, of course, cast aside by said friend for my ‘lack of empathy’ (just to note that she was aware of me having to sell my house when she called to tell me all this and hadn’t once checked in on me) and I should ‘see someone about that’.
I don’t much like therapists because I don’t agree with validating absolutely every single feeling. But that’s just my way of dealing with things and I’m most certainly not saying it’s right. I suppose I believe that all of our feelings could be valid but not all of our behaviours are.
It must be noted here of course that ‘rich girl problems’ and ‘dark side of pretty’ are two different categories. You might just be able to get away with the former if you don’t befall the latter too. God forbid you satisfy both and your only option will be to become so extraordinarily successful or famous that you’re validated by something else because ‘feelings’ are really not an option for you. Or to marry someone from a good family so that you can live together in a bubble for the rest of your lives hopefully unaffected by those who would never understand. So I suppose, I’ve just grown up this way - feelings are fine but gratitude grants perspective and in turn, the closest thing we can come to happiness.
It’s a bit like walking through the world being simultaneously invisible whilst having everyone stare at you intently. Throughout a parents’ divorce, moving schools and homes countless times, witnessing domestic abuse, losing everything, working to build it up again, another controlling relationship, a family member’s sudden illness/passing, being separated from loved ones and of course not to mention, huge generational grief, I’ve learnt to build up an exterior that matches what I know people think of me and the semi-aristo lineage I'm from. Beautiful, successful and without a care in the world.
Throughout my darkest moments, I’ve heeded one friend who, when I lost aforementioned family member advised, ‘yeah but you’ll be fine because you have a silver spoon.’ We’d actually just lost our house too but I know if I’d told her that, I’d have been met with another ‘silver lining’ avoidant of simply acknowledging that losing a parent at 25 is no fun whatsoever. ‘But you look great!’ Hahahaha!
I’ll never forget when I was but a teen and started at a new boarding school trying as one might to make new friends and this girl says to me, ‘wow I didn’t think you’d be so nice!’ When I asked why she replied, ‘the pretty girls are never nice.’
I never really fit in back then anyway because the pretty girls were always clique-y and cared only about talking of boys while I wanted to write songs and be all deep and ‘intellectual’; so people weren’t sure if I was actually popular or just really weird. The two couldn’t co-exist at that time because I’m a millennial and things like ‘body-positivity’ or being both pretty and smart didn’t exist.
Another really fun memory is that time I was severely anorexic and was constantly asked by my school chums how I lost the weight… I of course, pretended that my metabolism had suddenly sped up and I was just one of those lucky naturally-waif-thin-girls who could eat whatever I wanted. It was the Rachel Zoe era. Whatever.
(A doctor later asked me if my starving myself had to do with what my parents were going through. I hated to disappoint him by saying ‘no I just want to be skinny like the models on Fashion TV’. Frankie Rayder was my favourite followed by Maria Carla’s epic walk. So I suppose I am that shallow after all.)
And then, there’s getting older. Difficult for everyone but an absolute blast if you’ve been so heavily validated by your looks your whole life - not lest by yourself but by others: isn’t she so young and beautiful? I entered my third decade not too long ago and was immediately struck by how, if the only thing I had were my looks, why hadn’t I used them better?
Like gone into acting, for example. Should I go to Hollywood?! Would they understand me there?!!
The flip side of all of this are of course the benefits. Most women won’t like you, but men will. You’ll never know how it feels to be insecure about the way you look. Nope sorry, that last one’s wrong. Maybe my genetics were lost on me but I was also somehow endowed with a really healthy dose of body dysmorphia and confusion as to why my nose has to be quite that shape…
And as one goes through the world with this continued sense of both self-righteousness in knowing that you possess a gift that others don’t together with an incredibly inability to act in any way other than people please and walk on eggshells in case someone thinks you’re a bitch, you realise that you’ve quite lost yourself.
When you keep putting yourself aside, dimming your light and accommodating everyone else’ emotions but your own just to make them feel better because you’re ‘fine’; it becomes very difficult to ‘own it’ or not care what others think of you. It becomes difficult to remember who you are and what you want or God forbid, to stand up for yourself.
You’ll most likely find yourself married to a semi-successful but also quite controlling man who loves you for the way you look and compliments you for being pretty but reminds you that you don’t make the money - because somewhere along the way you started believing people when they told you that you weren’t built for the three businesses you indeed did build from the ground up.
So you better hope you got something else on your side (not intelligence because that will piss people off even more) (actually, money is a good one) because when the world starts crashing down and you have no one who can see what you’re going through; because you just look so damn good that you must have opportunities being chucked at you from the powers that be (but you don’t because no woman will let you in the door and men well)… you will be all on your lonesome. Remember: it’s ok for them to not be ok, but not for you.
There’s no specific conclusion here other than to note this dear reader just in case, the next time you see a pretty girl entering a party and immediately feel an intense wave of jealousy or hatred toward her for this incredible luck bestowed upon her, remember that no one, and I mean no one can have it all. And believe me, neither does she.
Particularly in a generation where pretty has been replaced by ‘all forms of beautiful’ so you don't even fit into that superior box anymore either. Plus, if you don’t need/have botox or fillers now, you are basically an alien.
Now, I need to go take a selfie before the next decade befalls me and age takes away the only thing I’ve been good for.
Love,
Girl in Style x
Comments