pretty

there’s no sugarcoating that i grew up feeling incredibly ugly.

pretty for an asian

i was 6 when I moved to a then-sleepy, rural suburban town in south carolina. by the time i was 7, i wanted to bleach my raven hair blonde, buy color contacts for my too-dark eyes, get surgery to make my squinty eyes bigger, and figure out a way — any way — to make my olive skin lighter.

when i got my braces off when i was 13, i was deemed “pretty for an asian.”

and until i was 20, i only ever smiled in photos as wide as i could without making my eyes any smaller than they already felt. looking back, the contortion made me look at least a little worried all the time. i suppose i was.

pretty for a living

imagine then the irony that i, a girl who'd learned to hate everything about her face, began modeling at 23. my goal, even then, wasn't to be a model — only to get some professional looking photos to legitimize my acting portfolio. i truly had no idea what i was doing, but i knew i had to put myself out there if i wanted to chase the dream.

i think a lot of people experience the entertainment scene as one of comparison and anxiety, a space where their bodies and//or faces are never enough. i’m sure they’ve heard horrific things in the industry, the way i heard horrible things growing up. 

but for whatever reason, working in this industry the last couple of years has been really encouraging and healing for me. 

i’d long divorced my being from my body. i spent my childhood and adolescence obsessing so heavily over being successful and being considered good that it was like i didn’t even know my body existed, until my connection to my body became a part of my job. but now i’m physically healthier than i’ve ever been, and more in tune with how my body actually feels. 

it’s also made me a lot less self-conscious — because it’s given me a realistic picture of the amount of work it really takes to make something (or someone) pretty by arbitrary yet demanding beauty standards.

actors like me show up to set, naked-faced, looking very normal: faces sometimes blemished, eyes often tired, hairlines always unfilled. a professional makeup artist spends at least thirty minutes painting our faces, tailored to be harmonious with not only our features, but also the environments we’ll be in. a hair artist does our hair, often in ways we could not achieve on our own. a wardrobe specialist dresses us in clothes and shoes that are new and flattering and stylish and expensive – and they tailor it to our bodies if they don’t fit. when we get to set, a gaffer puts us in, quite literally, the best light possible, a highly technical and meticulous process. the photographer is a professional who knows exactly what elements, angles, and spirits to capture. 

anyone (yes, anyone) can be made prettier with the time, resources, and energy of experts determined to portray them in that way. and because of that, prettiness no longer feels to me like a binary (something i have or something i don’t); it feels, more and more, like a buildable resource and a cumulation of effort and focus instead. 

pretty for feeling

what i realize now is that what i really wanted, and what i think a lot of us really need, much more than being pretty is feeling good about ourselves.

we want to like who we are. and where we come from. and where we’re going. we want to feel special, and like we’re worth engaging with and knowing. we want to be liked. we need to be loved.

when i finally felt like i belonged (before anyone ever dolled me up), i realized i was never as ugly as i’d felt. i was never as gross or unlovable as i’d internalized. i was, in some spaces, different. and i was human. but never so impossibly far from being pretty. 

what is being pretty, anyway, if not feeling pretty & pretty & gay?

my features all look pretty much the same as they always have — olive skin, raven hair, almond eyes. but nowadays i smile bigger, laugh harder, and live freer, and — let me tell you — i feel prettier for it.