Fear of being Ugly

Hey there,


I'd like to share a fear that has always existed within me (maybe not ALWAYS, but definitely since I was around 12) - the fear of being 'ugly'.

This fear specifically was with regards to being judged by (back then) the other kids on the playground and from my class as being 'ugly' and 'unattractive', which also had a lot to do with 'there being something wrong with me'.

'Something wrong' would then be like not looking like how a 'normal girl' would/should look like, because I started to notice that the boys and girls were judging each other, and I of course went along with it. The boys would often even be really mean when they were describing a girl, especially about certain aspects of that girl that were apparently 'undesirable' and 'not good' - they would completely bash this person in their words and 'laugh at them' among each other, confirming just how 'not good' this girl was in their eyes.

And the girls would do pretty much the same amongst themselves about the other girls and boys - and the judgments were always basically about whether or not a girl was deemed 'feminine' enough and a boy was deemed 'masculine' enough according to certain standards and qualities/properties that apparently defined 'a woman' and 'a man'. Thus boys that had feminine aspects/qualities about their appearance and mannerism would be negatively judged and basically put down and rejected in the words we'd speak to describe them among ourselves and the girls that had masculine qualities and mannerism would be judged and rejected in the same way. For instance I remember overhearing a group of boys talking about a girl that had a 'mustache' (she had a little bit darker hair on her upper lip) - which then initiated my fear of 'having a mustache' because apparently boys actually notice, judge and reject this. So based on this particular memory, I would walk around my entire life with an immense fear of 'having a mustache' and especially of boys/men seeing it, thinking of various ways to effectively get rid of any dark hair that I may have on my upper lip.

And what is interesting is that eventually I would even physically manifest this fear, because I would notice some darker hair on my upper lip (not even that noticeable really) and immediately I'd start pulling it out, because I felt this absolute panic of being judged about it by boys/men - so obviously what happened is that the hair grew back, only darker, which caused me to panic even more and start pulling it out more fervently. And eventually now I have to continuously remove the hair on my upper lip because it tends to grow longer and darker than on the rest of my face. So this just shows how extensively this fear has been messing with my head


So, this 'fear of being ugly' is really a fear of being 'unattractive', of being 'rejected' by boys/men as a fear of not being able to have a relationship - which means to not be able to 'play the sex-game' wherein we all seem to be players and the girls that are deemed to be 'feminine' and the men that are deemed to be 'masculine', are glorified and get all the 'attention'/'prizes' and the ones who apparently 'don't fit the part' don't get to play and are then the 'social outcasts'. This is a seriously sad and messed up game that we're playing here within and as humanity!