"She Wasn’t Anything Special Anyway": What I Learned About Beauty, Confidence and Self-Worth
Beauty Was Never Meant to Be a Competition
A personal story about confidence, aesthetics and self-worth
Some words stay with us long after the people who said them have forgotten.
When I was 15, at secondary school, I entered a beauty contest.
I later decided to withdraw and went to tell the older girls who were organising it.
They thought I had already walked away.
I hadn’t.
And I heard:
“She wasn’t anything special anyway.”
There were other words over the years too.
A few people in my neighbourhood referred to me as “the girl with the big nose.”
I was told my lips were too thin.
Someone once told me:
“If you had your nose done, you could be a model.”
My first boyfriend told me I had a better body than another girl, but that she had the prettier face.
Years later, a colleague made almost exactly the same comparison between me and another woman.
And once, I overheard two colleagues talking about me. One said I was good-looking. The other replied:
“Yes, but her face could be prettier.” The first person immediately defended me. Yet somehow, it was the criticism I remembered. I think many women will understand that.
You can hear ten beautiful things about yourself and somehow allow the one unkind sentence to become the voice you hear when you look in the mirror.
When beauty starts to feel conditional
For a long time, beauty seemed to come with conditions.
You would be prettier if…You would be good enough if…You could do that if…
But life taught me something much more important.
Beauty was never meant to be a competition.
Another woman being beautiful does not make you less beautiful.
Her face does not diminish yours. Her body does not diminish yours. Her success does not diminish yours.
And somebody else’s preference is not an objective measure of your beauty.
But I learned something even more important than that:
Your value as a human being goes far beyond the way you look.
Beauty can be wonderful. Fashion can be wonderful. Aesthetic treatments can be wonderful.
We are allowed to enjoy all of those things.
But none of them determine our worth.
A beautiful face cannot make someone kind, intelligent, compassionate, courageous or loving.
And changing something about your appearance can change how you feel about that feature — but it should never be required for you to believe that you deserve respect, love or a place in the room.
Learning to respect myself
That lesson changed not only the way I saw myself, but also the people I allowed close to me.
I learned that the people who truly belong in your life should not make you feel that their love, affection or respect depends on being prettier, thinner or more perfect.
And then, later in my life, I met Filip.
He has never made me feel that I needed to compete with another woman or change something in order to be beautiful in his eyes.
He has always made me feel beautiful.
But there is something important about the timing of that story.
I met him after I had already started learning to respect myself.
I had already begun to understand that confidence couldn’t depend entirely on somebody else giving it to me.
Because although having someone beside you who respects you is incredibly precious, no relationship should have to rescue you from the belief that you are not enough.
You have to begin believing that for yourself too.
At 42, I walked London Fashion Week
And at 42, I walked London Fashion Week.
Years after someone told me that I could be a model if I had rhinoplasty.
I didn’t walk that runway because everyone suddenly decided I was beautiful enough.
I walked it because somewhere along the way, I stopped allowing other people to decide that for me.
Why my philosophy around aesthetics is so personal
Perhaps that is also why my philosophy around aesthetics is so personal.
I don’t believe aesthetics should be about “fixing” a woman because somebody once convinced her that she needed fixing.
It should be about choice.
Enhance something because you want to.
Restore something because it makes you feel more like yourself.
Change something if it gives you confidence.
Or change absolutely nothing.
Your face belongs to you. Your body belongs to you. And the decision should belong to you.
To every woman who has ever felt she wasn’t enough
So, to every woman who has ever been compared, criticised, overlooked or made to feel that she wasn’t quite enough:
Wear the dress.
Take the photograph.
Start the business.
Walk into the room.
Try something new.
Love someone who respects you.
Surround yourself with people who don’t require you to become smaller so that they can feel bigger.
And go after the dream you once thought belonged to somebody else.
There is no age at which it becomes too late to believe in yourself.
Never allow somebody else’s opinion of you to become the limit of what you believe is possible for your life.
Because your appearance is only one part of you.
You were always so much more than a face to be judged.
And sometimes the most beautiful transformation isn’t changing what you see in the mirror.
It’s changing whose eyes you are looking through.
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