My eyes are green.
It took me over thirty years to believe that statement, verifiable by any mirror.
Says so on my driver’s license.
But for most of my life I talked myself out of believing they were green “enough”.
No joke, y’all. I thought I wasn’t the right shade of green.
Self doubt does not make sense. Not when you write it out, say it out loud to a loved one, or even to a mirror. The power is diminished. I remember the moment I looked in the mirror and said ‘my eyes are green’ to my reflection. It felt like I took one step up a great staircase of knowing. What a small thing, but what an important one for me.
The standard of beauty I once held myself to was sold by Vogue, reinforced by television, and involved no small amount of self-destruction. Looking at Adriana Lima and Heidi Klum and Kate Moss— I was not going to be thin enough. Tan enough. Tall enough. Yet I tried to be enough, as a teenager, by being smart enough (with some mighty disordered eating). Not smart enough to let go of amazingly impossible aesthetic ideals, airbrushed and spray-tanned and ubiquitous, but I tried to excel at school, since I wasn’t being recruited by modeling agencies while having a burger alfresco, a la Gisele Bündchen. Having the ability to nail most standardized tests took me to a couple of colleges and got me out of the bubble of believing I’d only be a worthy person if I woke up looking like a supermodel.
The thing that made the biggest impact?
Friends.
I found friends who believed in me as a person, even nights when I was an absolute idiot (it was college, there was beer, it ended poorly), or the days I was an academic whiz, they didn’t care, they just liked me for me. We bonded over music, books, movies, all the pop culture phenomena past and present— we made up stories and dreamed about the future. We lived in our human bodies in the safe haven of a university where the sole purpose was to become better humans, maybe pick a career.
But the friendships saved my life.
Even as I gained and lost weight, chopped off my hair or grew it out, wore oversized t-shirts and avoided shorts like the plague— they liked me anyway. They didn’t care what color my eyes were. I bet they still don’t.
We learn, as we grow into a social life, what really matters. I was a way-late bloomer that way. It took me into the 20s to really get a grip on how to show up even a little bit. And I don’t know what would have happened had I been body-confident, or just plain confident, in my teen years. I wish I could tell that version of myself how very few people look like a magazine cover, and how very boring it would be if that’s all you aimed for. But I love that I got the chance to grow beyond the incessant draw of vanity for acceptance. It was a shimmering illusion, and I forgive my younger self for chasing it. She was doing the best she could.
Fast forward to 2023, and I have wrinkles, sun damage, and green eyes. Jennifer Connelly also has these things. I had a poster of her on my wall throughout most of high school. She is still all the beauty goals. I bet she has moments where she has insecurities. As much as I still think the likes of Heidi and Adrianna are beautiful, I know they’re more versatile and nuanced than I gave them credit for in my youth. And so am I .
Things I’ve learned:
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to like yourself.
Aesthetics are personal, which is to say that if I do an aesthetic enhancement, whether it be eyeliner or Botox, it’s for me.
Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.