Don’t Tell Me I’m Hot
…tell me that I’ll be okay even when I don’t look hot. I don’t like being defined as hot. I’ve been defined by how I look for so long now. And I’ve looked this way for a very long time.
I never liked the phrase ‘pretty privilege’. It has been used to excuse too many insecure people’s misbehaviour against me. I should not have to apologise for having more stalkers, for being judged on the basis of my body rather than my personality and abilities. I have never had a good romantic relationship with a man which is proof enough that being ‘hot’ is not a guarantee of male respect. It may even guarantee the exact opposite – male resentment, a.k.a. the entire personality of incels. Who wants more of that?
(Here’s a pyschologist talking about the dark side of pretty privilege that people don’t want to acknowledge).
I don’t want compliments. Compliments about my appearance have always been traps. Men trying to cage mee. Women’s ticket price for pity parties. Closeted gay men using me as a beard. Older people projecting their fears of ageing. This body is a magnet for other people’s murkiest intentions.
But I’ve always had my body. Healthy, resilient. And though I didn’t realise it, my mind. In the last two years, I’ve felt my grip on my reality slip away as depression and anxiety short-circuit my brain. It feeds me poisonous messages. It sets traumatic memories on repeat like crazed EDM music crashing through what used to be a place of tranquility.
When I can’t trust my brain anymore, I grope around for crutches to confirm that I’m still here, still standing, still me. Reiterating sentences I know I’ve said a milion times before to see if they taste familiar (they don’t). It makes it harder when my clothes are too tight.
Hot flashes have shown up right on schedule. And for the first time in my women’s winter life, I feel like I’ve swallowed the sun. Imagine that and also that your limbs are spilling out of clothes that fit you till very recently. I have no comfort wear, no stained pajamas softened to perfection, no faded teeshirts stretched to saggy, no old jeans molded to my body, nothing. Where the body is your home, clothes are your immediate neighborhood.
The header image was generated on Artbreeder using several of my own photos for reference. Strangely, I found it comforting to browse through the AI generated options. They got progressively further and further away from my looks, sometimes in amusing ways (hand growing out of elbow, shirtless male body in the reflection). The most coherent of them also looked quite nice to me. Not perfect, just like there was personality. It was like finding slivers of my real self.
So don’t tell me I look good. I would feel this way, even if my body morphed into an 80s supermodel heroic chic. It’s not about the absolute weight. It’s about how unfamiliar it feels.
If you must say something, tell me that I’ll be okay even in this new home. Because my brain isn’t cooperating. I’m in a stranger in a new land with no passport and no language. I deserve empathy, at least now that I’ve fallen off the pedestal I didn’t ask to be put on.
