How I Look

I am twelve years old, and I’ve given my looks little thought. I know to smile when someone yells “cheese!” I know to pull my tummy in in ballet. I know my hair and teeth need to be brushed in the morning.

I am at the bus stop. I go to a school that requires what they call “soft uniforms,” so I’m wearing a tangerine polo shirt and khaki shorts with my favorite pair of pink Converse. I wear my hair in a messy braid down my back. It’s middle school, so I wait at the bus stop with kids from my neighborhood ranging from eleven to fourteen. I am the youngest.

My friend Kayla is the second youngest, but still, our three-month age gap is enough to make me feel far inferior. She has a much easier time talking to the older girls, and I dread the days when her mother drives her to school.

Today is one of those days. The usual kids sit waiting. I live closest to the stop, so I get there last. Isabelle Garrick and Layla Murphy share a seat on a tree stump. They’re hunched in on themselves, focused on Isabelle’s phone. She’s one of the few of us who has one, and sometimes she plays her music outloud for the bus ride.

Sophia isn’t here to make me brave, so I fixate on a patch of grass sticking up through the sidewalk. I dig the toe of my shoe into the dirt. Isabelle calls out my name.

“Do you have Instagram?”

I did have Instagram. I tell her as much. “But I don’t use it much because like–I don’t know anything about photography.”

I had downloaded it earlier that fall, because my brothers were in high school and they had it. But when I opened the search tab, it only showed me grand landscapes and wildlife photos. I hadn’t looked at it much since.

“I have a Facebook.”

Layla wrinkles her nose. “This is better than Facebook.” Layla lives too far away from our bus stop, but she sleeps over at Isabelle’s house often. Her little sister, Poppy, is my friend. They don’t get along well. Poppy told me once that Layla stuffs her bra. I don’t have any sisters, so I have to look up “stuffing bra” on my family’s computer when I get home.

I look at her chest now. It looks full, but a bit lumpy, like misshapen clay. I avert my eyes before she can notice. The bus pulls up, and the two sit a few seats in front of me. Poppy is in the back of the bus, and I join her there. I ask her if she has an Instagram, and she nods.

When I get home that night, I follow all three of them, plus Sophia, who made a profile during lunch. It seemed like overnight, everyone got online.

There is one blissful year where I use Instagram with abandon. I post memes and text quotes. I take pictures of my brothers playing video games and of my dog. I take selfies, screwing my mouth into silly shapes, and throwing up a peace sign. I cover my image with grainy, colorful pictures. It felt like playing dress up in a funhouse mirror.

Sophia posts too. She has tan skin and long brown hair that falls midway down her back. Isabellle and Layla always comment on her photos.

I still go to the bus stop every day. I know more about how I look.

A boy on my bus leans over his seat to tell me I have “butter teeth.” I ask him what he means, and he shouts, “mellow yellow!” I was confused because the year before, the boy had been my first kiss. He didn’t seem to have an issue with my teeth then.

He’s not the only one to comment on my looks. My dance teacher wraps her arms around my ribs and tells me they’re “too wide.” My grandmother pokes a dimple in my butt and calls them my “craters.” In an Abercrombie dressing room, Sophia refers to my chest as “mosquito bites.”

So I convinced my mom to buy me a push-up bra. I get my teeth professionally whitened. I watch beauty YouTubers, and ask for nothing but makeup for Christmas. Now is the height of “duck face,” and I perfect my pout. I post with a filter that flattens my nose and dampens my freckles, with a swipe of eyeliner and lipstick. Isabelle and Layla flood my comments. A few boys from my class do too.

At this time, I’m obsessed with external validation. I curl my hair and carry a purse to school. Sometimes I’m told I’m cute, but mostly that I’m funny.

The summer before high school, I get my braces off and get my hair cut. I go to a performing arts high school, so we were all the funny kids, and increasingly vain.

Kim Kardashian gets a Brazilian butt lift, and Kylie Jenner creates the Kylie Lip Kit. She makes “wigs a thing.” Nicki Minaj’s raps, “fuck the skinny bitches.”

In the winter of my freshman year, we have a photo shoot for a show we’re performing. The costume department puts me into a deep blue halter-neck evening gown and a red lip. Below the hem, I’m wearing white New Balance sneakers. But the photo of me becomes the poster for the show. I’m embarrassed, but a senior smiles at me when we see the poster in the hallway.

“It’s good, you look sexy.” She is the first person to call me that, and boys start saying it not long after. I never know how to take the compliment, and my face flushes every time someone says it.

Still, I lean into it. I start to wear all black because a girl in my class tells me, “it’s chic.” I wear red lipstick because a woman I babysit for tells me “redheads are made to wear red.” I still take dance classes, and late at night, I do crunches on my bedroom floor to tone my abs.

There are somethings I do just for me. I wear heels because I like the way they sound on the linoleum floors. I cut my hair even shorter because it makes me feel adult.

In my senior year, an adult man notices my looks, too. Suddenly, I’m not a pretty girl, I’m a full grown woman. I’d been harboring several unspoken crushes on a few people in my class throughout high school, and as soon as I get into this man’s car in the school parking lot, several of them announce they’d had the same feelings.

A part of me is sorry we hadn’t said something sooner. Like my best friend, who slams her hands on the table when I tell her I’d always liked her saying, “We could have been together this whole time?! We could be in love right now!” Or the tall boy in my AP Environmental Science class. When I mention having a boyfriend, he simply says, “Oh,” and suddenly we stop laughing together. A part of me dies.

I go to college, I wear exclusively crop tops, and I grow my hair long. I don’t wear heels anymore. I’m dressing for someone else. We break up, though, because you can’t convince someone that you’re somebody you’re not.

I cut bangs and experiment with my wardrobe. Quarantine hit. I get a really bad haircut, and then grow it out. Then I cut my hair again. I dye my hair blonde. I get another haircut. I pierce my ears.

I’ve graduated now. I work in an office. I don’t make enough money to buy nice clothes, but I get a good trench coat and stop wearing crop tops. My boss calls me “an odd-ball beauty.”

I blink at him. “What? It’s good, it means you’re unique.” I go to a Christmas market and have my caricature taken. He draws me in profile, stretching my long aquiline nose. I like it.

I gain a bit of post-graduate weight. I know this because older people stop commenting on my body with envy. I hide in pictures. I grow overly concerned with my face. I notice a dark spot under my nose.

I go to the doctor. It’s skin cancer. I get surgery and now a small scar sits there. No one notices it but me.

I dye my hair back, grow it long. I can’t believe I tried to keep it short for so many years. I like my hair long. I like to flip it over my shoulder or twirl it in my fingers.

One winter, I get so down with seasonal depression that I take up self-tanning. I’m nearly orange by the summer. I stopped doing it this year. I’ve decided to like the skin I’m in.

I’ve lost a bit of weight. I’ve been taking better care of myself. I am trying not to attach worth to the number on the scale, but oh my god, it’s hard when every celebrity is on a GLP-1.

Girls on TikTok paint on dark circles. Miley Cyrus gets her buccal fat removed. Everyone looks lobotomized and anemic, with uncannily perfect teeth.

A girl whom I don’t like very much, but has a pretty face, refers to me as “thin-lipped” to a mutual friend of ours. Of course, word of her comments comes back to me.

First, I’m disappointed in her. Aren’t we supposed to be girls’ girls? If you hate me, call me a bitch, but don’t come for my looks! Be better than that! Then, I look up how much lip filler costs.

I’m to be a bride in 2026. I’m supposed to be the most beautiful I’ll ever be on that day. I contemplate trap botox, and jaw thinning, lip flips ,and ear seeding.

I pay for luxuries I can’t afford. I get facials once every other month, I get my nails done bi-weekly, and I go to the best hair stylist in the East Village. (Shout out to Rosalía at Rogue House salon, literally all my hot friends go to her now, and it’s awesome.)

I update my Pinterest weekly to keep up with fashion, I oil my scalp, I take my vitamins, and I work out four times a week. I stop redheaded girls on the street to ask them what hair gloss they use. I want my hair to be the color it used to be when I was twelve.

I look back on the photos of the chubby, freckle-faced girl with a shock of red hair and a Roman nose. I don’t worry about her small chest or round tummy. I like the look of her crooked teeth and unbrushed hair.

I look back on the girl who wore high heels to class, on her sharp winged eyeliner and black clothing. She looks calm and in control; she looks cool as shit.

I look back on the college student with long hair and short tops. She has killer abs, but she looks tired, with dark circles around her eyes. Hey, those are on trend now.

I try to like the way I look now. But it’s so hard. Yesterday I over-fixated on my mirror, and discovered what I thought was a wrinkle. Today, I bought a redlight mask.

Kris Jenner gets a facelift. She looks 42.