Julianne Muscato, Second Place Winner of This I Believe Contest

Below, is the second essay of the three month student written, “This I Believe,” column. We are pleased to feature Julianne Muscato’s “This I Believe” essay.  The essays, submitted anonymously to a Friends of the Library panel, are reviewed and winners recommended. The Friends then contribute $25 to first place, $15 to second place and $10 to third place. Winners are typically photographed and their images displayed in the library.

by Julianne Muscato

“You need to put a lot on more”.

There I was standing in the trashed bathroom in the middle school looking at my reflection wondering how I messed up.

Puzzled on her advice I took a step back and asked her, “What do you mean I need to put more on? I thought the point in makeup was to look like you’re not wearing any at all.”

She let out a little laugh and went on, “No silly it’s so you can tell. The mascara is supposed to be noticeable.”

I, who had never worn makeup before, took my friends advice and the next day I came back to school with my lashes completely covered in some old gunky mascara I had to sneak from my mom. Jessie, my gorgeous friend, was really happy for me but, for whatever reason it still wasn’t enough. I wanted to feel and look just as pretty as Jessie. Every guy I knew was about drooling over her and I felt like a trash can standing next to her. Before I ever met Jessie I didn’t know anything about makeup or how girls are supposed to look. My whole life I would just wear whatever was comfortable for me. I didn’t care about my body shape or the little hair follicles at the end of my eye lids. I just had fun. Then I met Jessie. She hit me like a truck going 90 mph. All of the sudden I found myself looking at flaws I’d never seen before. From the way I dressed to every single hair my leg, I felt ashamed of how I was. My innocent 12 year old self went from having not a care in the world to hitting the panic button on her self esteem. Lost in a bottomless ocean, I found myself suffocating on standards that I could not meet.

It wasn’t just me that hated my looks. It was also a group of boys and girls. They did not like how I dressed or how I did my hair. In general I just wasn’t enough for them.

“I’m pretty sure she’s a lesbian. I mean look at the way she dresses. Are those her brother’s clothes? Has she ever heard of makeup? Maybe if she dressed differently then maybe boys would like her.”

These are all the things I would hear when I would go to my locker and it made me feel so self-conscious that I found myself thinking that I was even breathing wrong. How could people who have never talked to me hate on me so much?  I wanted it to stop so badly so, it became my new goal to please these nasty people. Can you believe that? I wanted their approval? Why? They were so mean and yet I believed every word they said so, not even two months into the school year, I changed. I grabbed the girl I wanted to be, gave her all my money, and had her buy my clothes for me. Crop tops, leggings, mascara, basically all the things my parents didn’t let me have. It cost me over $100 which was a lot for me but, at that moment I felt that it was all worth it. It worked too. The mean people had now stopped and I had never felt prettier. At least for a little bit. Then I started to notice other things.

I had changed my priorities in life. In all the effort to “look pretty” I started to hate my friend Jessie because no matter what I did, I always felt she was prettier. I hated her for being prettier. Rather than being a good friend and appreciating my friend for who she was. I deceived her and tried my hardest to make her feel dumb and ugly.

“I bet she’s just keeps me around just to make her look prettier. That brat. I bet she wants to date the guy I like. I bet she stuffs her bra. She’s probably not even pretty under all that makeup.”

Sadly these are the disgusting thoughts I had about my best friend. In all my efforts to be pretty I had become the ugliest person I knew. I was mad at my body, I mad at my friend, and I was so sad with myself. I was spiraling down and was about to crash. I truly thought I was the only girl in my school who had ever felt this way.

“How I could talk about it to other people? They don’t know how this feels. They’ll just think I’m mean because of how jealous I am and they’ll probably tell me I’m not ugly just leave it at that.”

Lucky for me though I wasn’t the only girl I knew who had these thoughts. Jessie had been going through the same thing and was too selfish to see it even though she was right next to me the whole time. I noticed it when I stopped eating. It had been a week of not eating anything except for some small fruit at home. On my second week my friend Jessie came to school without a lunch. She didn’t need to stop eating. She was way skinnier than me. What was she thinking? Then it hit me. Every little negative thing going on with me was going on in her brain too. That was so crazy to wrap around my mind because every bone in my body thought she was the embodiment of beautiful, yet somehow she had these terrible thoughts too? I was in awe so I had to talk to her. We went to the bathroom during lunch and I asked why she wasn’t eating. She shrugged her shoulders and asked me why I wasn’t to avoid the question. Something must’ve just clicked inside me because in that moment a little piece of what was left of me came out and bluntly said that I wasn’t enough. Being a good friend, Jessie told me I was and went on in long tangent on how I was beautiful and she envied me. She envied me? No way! I argued with her and told I envied her and how I wasn’t a good friend because of it. Like the two teenage girls we were we started to burst into tears. We’ve must’ve looked crazy. I had never been so happy and sad at the same time. Happy to know wasn’t alone yet sad to know that someone else had to feel the way I was feeling. I wish I could say that that day was the day I decided to not care but it didn’t work out that way for me. It took a lot of long talks and time alone to decide who I wanted to be as a person. The hardest part was to get all the negativity out of my brain because since my brain was unhealthy it made my body feel sick to the stomach. There were some ups and some downs and I still deal with some of the bad thoughts. The one thing I’ll never let it take advantage of again is how I treat the people around me because they don’t need it and they probably have these negative thoughts too.

It’s no secret that beauty standards are a thing. Unless you have lived under a rock for your whole life and are now just hearing this from me then, you have been exposed to what today’s society wants you to look like. From magazines, songs, movies, social media, and television shows you’ll see what people expect you to look like. It’s true that you can change just about anything on your body. Your hair can be any color, your lips can be plumped, your eyes can be tattooed, and even your ribs can be broken for a smaller waist. The thing is though, no one needs that at all. No one needs to please other people with their physical appearance. What we need is to love ourselves so we stop caring so much on how look. People need to stop looking at every microscopic detail on their body and open their eyes to the world around them.

Another thing that we need to do is to not contribute to the negativity. We as humans have no right to tell people how they should look or how bad they look. Build up the people around you and they’ll do the same for you. It’s amazing on what can make a person’s day and what can possibly stop them from doing something they’ll regret. From eating disorders, to depression, and even suicide these so called “beauty standards” can cause the ugliest things to happen. I believe we are truly all beautiful as long as we build each other up.