I Have Every Right To Say I Am Ugly

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Can we please cut the crap? How did this social rule or self-imposed duty to tell someone they are beautiful even come about? Oh sorry. My bad. Not tell someone they are beautiful but impose upon someone that they are, most definitely, most certainly, one hundred percent doubtlessly beautiful, and will always be so. Seriously? I can’t even read this properly without rolling my eyes.

People who proclaim that they are ugly fall easily into two categories: People who say they are ugly and mean it, and people who say it for the sake of attaining validation from others. Those people, namely the “I’m allowed to call myself ugly but you are not allowed to agree with me” bunch of jokers need to take a seat and reflect about their lives. As if double-talking – not meaning what you say nor saying what you mean – is not bad enough, harboring such superficial expectations of the other party stroking your ego and making you feel good about yourself is just pathetic. I understand that some assurance helps with your self-esteem at times, but overdoing it and allowing your self-worth to rest upon how much others validate your appearances is not the way to go.

Why, then, do we keep playing this game? I am a brutally honest person. So when I gently decline your compliment and declare that today is my ugly day, I bloody well mean it. It should be painfully obvious too if I barely look the part. When I say I am having a bad hair day, don’t make cooing noises at me and obsessively stroke my greasy hair. When I say I feel fat and bloated, don’t look me up and down then scoff at me and dismiss me for being ungrateful for my figure. When I say I look like a truck just hit me after staying up until 3am last night, don’t hug me tight and whisper the winning one-liner in my ear, “You look beautiful just the way you are now.” I mean, WTF. There is a very fine line between being gracious and talking through your butt. Something must be inherently wrong with a society that skirts over the topic of ugliness and deprives anyone of the right to say they are ugly without being immediately dismissed and judged terribly for it later.

Firstly, can we all agree that there exists a spectrum on the beauty scale? The truth of the matter is, at any point in time, some of us will belong to the not-so-beautiful end of the scale. It is inevitable. Objective beauty and objective ugliness are here to stay, whether or not you are willing to admit it. To those who wish to posit that beauty is a subjective entity, that it is relative and entirely based on personal taste, that EVERYONE is beautiful (because Heaven forbid anyone is anything short of that), I call major bullshit. For if that were truly the case, a Victoria’s Secret model and a bedraggled, disheveled me in the morning would be on the same level. The very fact that we attempt to make judgments on beauty is enough to overthrow the argument that there are no standards of beauty we adhere to in our world today. After all, why then are there beauty pageants? Most Beautiful Woman awards? Why did that girl get picked for the modeling gig and not the next one? How did one selfie make it to your Instagram page and not the other?

That being said, I do not believe that the inability to recognize another’s placement on the beauty spectrum is the reason for such unnecessary sugar-coating.

The reason why saying I am ugly is such a taboo is because of the many connotations we tend to associate with that word.

Apparently being ugly, despite the word referring specifically to physical appearance only, also means being a stupid, yawn-inducing, unimpressive, self-deprecating repulsive loser who should be avoided at all costs.

It is as if looking sub-par instantly nullifies all my other good traits, and agreeing that I look sub par paints you out to be an asshole. That should sufficiently explain why every time I proclaim that I presently look as ugly as sin, everyone gives me scandalized looks and within seconds, starts coddling me. Being ugly is a fact. It is a factual characteristic of a person. It does not, and should not, in any way, dictate who you are. We need to separate aesthetic beauty from charisma, intellect, personality, and character. I can be ugly but I can also be a rather cool person.

When I say I am ugly, it does not mean I engage in self-loathing.

It does not make me out to be a weak, insecure wounded lamb. Even less does it place me on the social periphery. What it should make me out to be is an upfront, straight-talking, self-assured individual who is not afraid to be forthcoming about her looks. In no way should this make you feel uncomfortable, because all I am doing is making a statement about how I look and not who I am.

This absurdity has gone on for far too long. It is about time we get real. Next time someone swears upon their life that I am beautiful, even when I know it’s just a whole load of hogwash, I will retaliate by putting a bin bag over my head.

I have every right to say I am ugly, so please do me a favor, and stop telling me what I am not.