People often tell me I look confident, that I carry myself with clarity and talk as if I’ve figured out who I am. I’ve also been insecure for as long as I can remember. The self-doubt creeps in quietly whenever someone calls another woman beautiful. A compliment meant for someone else lands on me like a reminder of what I supposedly lack. I start comparing myself right away: my face, my weight, my hair, my skin, the way she laughs or carries herself. I take myself apart in silence. I admire women. I love how they move through the world, the way a woman brushes her hair back, the way she talks when she’s excited, how easily she turns pain into poetry. If I got another life, I’d want to come back as a woman, because I love being one. Some days I struggle to love being me.
My mother and my sister have always been seen as beautiful. People said it out loud, often and easily, at weddings, in grocery stores, at family events. They were the ones people noticed. People complimented me for what I knew. “She reads a lot.” “She’s an intellectual.” I became the girl who knew her film references and could talk about Freud or Iranian cinema, and I was proud of that role. In quiet corners of my heart, I wanted to be called beautiful too. For a long time, that longing turned into desperation. I cried in front of strangers and exaggerated my emotions to get attention. I chased approval from people who barely knew me and went places I would never have chosen, just to feel seen. Looking back, I hate that version of myself. She was so hungry to be loved that she lost herself. Why was I like that? Why did I believe attention meant worth, and that being looked at meant being loved?
Now I’m trying to unlearn it. I’m trying to sit with my feelings instead of judging them, and to ask myself: so what? So what if I’m not the prettiest person in the room? So what if I have early wrinkles, or my hair thins, or my skin has flaws? So what if nobody ever calls me beautiful the way they call other women beautiful? I am still enough. I still cry sometimes when I feel invisible, and I still fall into comparing myself. I also know I’m growing, and every time I ask “so what?” I get a little closer to being kind to myself. One day I hope to ask it with softness and laughter, as a woman who finally sees herself through her own eyes. Until then, I’ll keep going one quiet question at a time. So what?
