How Strangers Taught Me to Love Myself

Part One: Me

My favourite mirror in the house is the bathroom mirror. It is blurry and dotted with toothpaste splatter marks which gives it its magical properties. I always look good in that mirror. The ideal version of myself. Something about the orange tinged lighting in my bathroom blurs out my pores and gives my skin that glass skinned glow beauty influencers love.

Growing up, I was that quiet kid. That kid who had her nose up in a book, who barely spoke a whisper in class, whose report card always went something along the lines of: “Polite and respectful child but could speak up more in class.”

As freshly minted Primary 1 students, we were assigned Primary 6 “buddies” who would guide us around the school. My buddy had taken one look at me and whined to her friend “She isn’t cute leh, I want your buddy!”

My excitement from meeting a new friend deflated like a balloon.

So, that recess I took myself to the snack stall and taught myself how to pay for waffles while my best friend was swiftly escorted to the noodle stall. We all have defining moments in our life – when it feels like a rug is pulled out from under our feet and the world looks a little different. This was one of them; when the first seed of self-doubt was planted in my mind.

Being bullied from secondary school through junior college wasn’t all that great for my self-esteem. I learnt to pick on myself before anyone else could pick on me. No one told me I was ugly outright. But I was convinced that maybe if I looked perfect nobody would ever have anything to pick on me about. Have you ever seen a pretty girl being bullied? No. That’s because pretty girls are only bullied in the fantasies of teen drama scriptwriters.

I became increasingly obsessed with the way I looked. I was a crippling perfectionist. My own worst critic. I hated my acne, my eyes slightly crossed like a Siamese cat and my snaggle tooth that stuck out unappetizingly like a chicken bone – an off-handed remark my friend had teasingly made. She probably doesn’t remember it. I do.

I was borderline body dysmorphic. I spent way too much time staring at the mirror and picking myself apart. I would involuntarily gravitate towards reflective surfaces to check myself out, like a moth to a streetlamp. I picked my skin. I was constantly comparing myself to others. There was always something I hated about myself, something I needed to fix.

Society wanted – no demanded – that I be perfect. I saw it in the brightly lit LED board at the Korean cosmetics shop I passed by every day. “Buy me to be beautiful”, it shrilled. I heard it from the beauty salon worker. They would point out the flaws that I didn’t even notice so I would sink my savings into their new “acne-free” package in a moment of self- hatred.

The beauty industry thrived on the insecurities of young girls. There was always something to be improved. Dye your hair pink. Bleach your skin. Extend your eyelashes and grow out your hair but keep everywhere else hairless please. Get thinner. You are not enough until you take up less space.

Part Two: Boston

It all changed one night. I got hit on in a party. Now hold up. This is embarrassing but let me explain.

I was in Boston for exchange and my housemates and I were invited to a party. Boston is cold all year round, but it was the coldest time of the year. We had huddled in a circle to play a drinking game called Kings Cup (an excuse for college kids to get drunk and make out). I was chugging alcohol in an attempt to loosen up since I was never good with big groups. Also, free alcohol.

I remember going into the bathroom and discovering that one side of my eyeliner had rubbed off and transferred underneath my eye. “Oh great,” I internally groaned at the thought that I had spent the past 2 hours resembling a panda. I rubbed off the other side to balance it out.

Back at the couch, I drew the losing card that meant the punishment of drinking the Kings Cup – a mixture of various hard alcohols and milk. Yeah. Gross. When everyone was momentarily distracted, the cute guy no. 1 who sat next to me, took the card, winked at me, claimed the card as his instead, chugging the cursed mixture before anyone could protest.

As the dancing begun, cute guy no. 2 asked for a dance and I discovered the magical moment of feeling special in every teen chick flick movie. We shuffled, albeit awkwardly (he had a broken arm which limited the range of dance moves we could go for), while making casual conversation.

All I remember was that he was half-Irish. He was very funny. He had blonde hair and blue eyes. And at the end of the dance he called me beautiful and said that it was a pity that I was not interested. I was flattered.

Then cute guy no. 1 asked for a dance. He was more ambitious with his moves, turning me every two seconds, while I focused on not stepping on anyone’s toes. He ended the dance with a plunge, and I burst out laughing mid-plunge from surprise.

The whole experience left me in confusion. Why me? Was it some sort of Asian fetish? Why not my housemates?

Part Three: Scratch That Itch

Strangely, I never felt truly ugly. But there was always something to be improved. My obsession with mirrors begun when I started noticing the discrepancy between how I looked in the mirror and in my photos. I like to analyse my photos like a CIA agent would on her hunt for a suspect – blowing up the pixels and zooming right into my face. Do I really look like I have a diaper rash all over my face? Is that how I truly looked like? That begun my series of investigations – from asking my best friend incessantly to rate me to taking every person’s comment on my body way too earnestly.

On top of that, I was convinced that my nose was a bulbous lump that needs to be fixed and so were my eyes that needed strabismus surgery. And my acne (self-explanatory). And my teeth that were slightly yellow. You would be disorientated looking at my google searches at night, ping ponging between the different cosmetic treatments I thought I had needed.

“Nobody notices this kind of thing. Trust me.” My best friend sighed.

I decided to do it in a democratic way – I went onto Reddit to ask people to rate me. For the uninitiated, Reddit has subreddits called r/RateMe and r/firstimpressions for people to be rated on their physical appearance by strangers of the internet.

Half an hour after I submitted my carefully curated photos, my notifications pinged. I held my breath and checked. My worst suspicions were confirmed. I was ugly to the people of the internet. The first comment said, “No clue what that means but if it’s anything like ugly, then you are in the ballpark.”

The second one said a plain and simple, “Yes.”

Undeterred and with no more self-esteem to lose, I decide to post once more on a different subreddit.

First came the lukewarm messages. Then came the weird side of the internet. I was propositioned to step on live bugs for $50/hour and film it. Search “bug porn” if you dare. Someone offered to be my sugar daddy. Of course, there were your regular creepy nice dudes offering cash in exchange for nudes.

Somewhere along the way, the thread blew up. I still got some messages that rated me lowly. But most were overwhelmingly positive. Someone even compared my strabismus to Constance Wu. It didn’t matter if they were from sad lonely dudes or wholesome well-meaning people. I got approval.

There was an outpouring of encouraging messages assuring me about my appearance but most importantly, telling me that the opinions of others should not matter. The internet was beautiful that night. One message caught my attention. “You’re very pretty but what matters the most is how you perceive yourself.”

Part Four: No More Mirrors

Just like that, the “4/10” ratings did not sting anymore. I always tried to be a people pleaser. I craved approval. Yet there was no point chasing after the illusion of being beautiful. The perfect girl never existed.

In Japan, my snaggle tooth is on trend. “Yaeba,” which means "double tooth" in Japanese, is sought after because the Japanese think it is looks youthful and adorable. People went to surgery for this. If my acne were swapped out for freckles, they would become cute. If I were a Siamese cat, my crossed eyes would become my selling point.

The problem was me, not my face. The only approval I ever needed was from myself.

The other day, I was scrolling through my Carousell wish list in mindless boredom. A LED light vanity mirror had dropped to half price from the last time I had considered buying it. My hand twitched momentarily before I swiped it away. I did not need a third mirror in my bedroom.