INSECURITIES AS A TEENAGER

Friday, July 26 2024 — I’m 14, turning 15 soon. South asian (Filipino) thick black hair and 4'11. And as a teenager, I have a lot of insecurities with myself. Like how I naturally expect myself to look like the gorgeous people I see on the internet. With search histories that consist of “How to remove” “How to get rid of” “How to have” “How to—“ And it’s all so hard because this generation expects even people of 12 above to look meticulously perfect With big doe eyes, cute small nose, full lips, straight set of teeth, beautiful eyebrows, symmetrical face. I’ve went through inverted filters, taking a video from the back camera and pointing it at myself just to later watch it in pure disappointment. Disappointed that I didn’t look like those gorgeous people I see online. Even teens my age look really beautiful. I can never understand the “Everyone has unique looks, it’s okay.” It’s not okay. I’m not okay with having an almost 5cm wide nose. I’m not okay with the way I look from the camera behind. I’m not okay with people taking candid shots of me because no matter what I do I just can’t ever look beautiful and feel beautiful. I don’t even feel beautiful with makeup on and no matter how many compliments flood me, one singular hate comment always gets to me. And it’s not that I get hate for the way I look. But I genuinely feel it. I can feel how ugly I seem. And it hurts to even voice it out to somebody because if I do, they’ll just notice it more. I’m just 14 and I don’t wanna be that teen who indulges herself in beauty when she’s not even fully developed by appearance I’m still growing, I know. My nose seems to be my biggest insecurity ever considering that it’s the center of my face and it’s what enhances ur facial features Who’d wanna have a 4.5cm wide nose? Nobody! Everybody always wants a small, cute button nose. Pretty typical For someone my age, I should be taking all the photos and posting them and feeling all confident but I don’t Imagine having to angle ur face to look pretty The thing is I genuinely find everyone gorgeous and beautiful—but I can’t seem to see that in myself. Nobody makes me feel like i’m super ugly, but nobody makes me feel like I’m beautiful too. It has become an instinct for me to immediately think someone is lying when they compliment me. But who am I to just say that blatantly? So I just thank them and move on I’ve tried exercises, those how-to videos and tutorials, MAKEUP TUTORIALS. Nothing seemed to work for me really And I grew up believing because of the way I looked, I was so against the beauty standards. I didn’t want to wallow up in my sadness and insecurities because maybe it’s just a teenager thing. But it still sucks. I grew up being so mature and I started studying people and their body language, one thing to another. Suddenly I was overthinking about how people saw me, spent time imagining I was another person staring directly at myself to see how i would have looked like from someone else’s pov. I need help. I want rhinoplasty. I wanna fix my nose, I wanna be beautiful. I wanna feel beautiful. But i’m just 14 14 and thinking about how “ugly” I look while staring at someone on the internet who’s probably twice my age. I just want to look beautiful. I want someone to have the patience to teach me that because I never could.