April 20

Why does it still make me cringe when people who I've met online see what I look like for the first time?

Today in Berkeley, it got up to 90-something degrees, I think. As a result, as I type this with my laptop blazing away on my lap, I'm all shiny and glistening from sweat, so I thought it might be a good time to revisit this question I raised (but didn't reflect on) in an earlier post, about why it still makes me cringe when people who I've met online see what I look like for the first time.

The honest answer is that probably, when I'm being totally honest with myself, I think I'm ugly.

And I guess I think that people actually seeing me after meeting me online will somehow blow my cover of being funny, clever, witty, thoughtful, caring, or whatever else they have come to believe about me. Somehow seeing that I'm a tall, dorky, bags-under-her-eyes, tall, bad-skin, pale, wears-no-makeup, tomboy will make them think things about me that they haven't thought before -- that I'm weird, that there's something wrong with me, that it makes sense I'm single, etcetera, etcetera -- that somehow my appearance and the impression that creates will overpower the things they thought about me before.

Throughout my life, I have gotten stared at a lot in public. Sometimes it is because I'm with my identical twin, so people do double takes when they see us together. But sometimes people just stare at me. I asked my dad once what was up with that, and he told me it was because I am "unusual looking." Unusual-looking. Hmmm.

When I say I'm ugly, or not attractive or not pretty, it's not said to elicit protests from the people I'm talking to. Just because I'm not classically beautiful doesn't mean that people won't find me attractive. I think it's entirely possible that once someone gets to know me, they will think that I'm the hottest thing ever, because of my looks combined with my sarcastic wit and keen intellect and other endearing qualities. It's just interesting to me that even nearing 40, I am so afraid of what power people will give to the way I look. And I'm aware that I fear that precisely because of the power that I give to it myself.