All My Friends Are Prettier Than I Am

“Doesn’t it make you feel insecure that all of your friends are prettier than you?”

Left: me, circa age 17; right: LMW, one of my pretty
friends, sporting matching tanks & tats at Lilith Fair 

I was seventeen when my friend – let’s protect the guilty and call him Ron, so that my mother doesn't track him down and kill him – asked me that question. We were going through stacks of photos, selecting which ones I might want to take with me to college. He picked up a picture taken at a formal dance earlier that year. In the picture, I was wearing a silver dress, grinning, surrounded by several girlfriends in gaudy formalwear of their own. He looked up from the picture, and that's when he asked the question:

“Doesn’t it make you feel insecure that all of your friends are prettier than you?”

Oh God, I cried inside. All my friends are prettier than I am.

Trying to recover quickly, what I said out loud was: "Well, at least I'm funny."

He chuckled, said "Yeah, good thing," and has probably never thought about that conversation since.

I have thought about it many, many times.

This week, I can't stop thinking about that small exchange. There are several reasons it's been on my mind. I saw the movie The Elephant Man for the first time, and that film certainly forces one to think about how we treat people based on their appearance. I also read this essay by a British woman about how other women allegedly hate her for being beautiful. Then, I read Ashley Judd's indictment of the media and how we all participate in the objectification of women - and after reading Judd's piece, I went on to read several friends' responses to it.

All of which was thought-provoking, and all of which led to me replaying that conversation. It's incredible how the tiny cuts we receive in adolescence can wound, fester, and scar - without ever really healing. Because I've never quite shaken the idea that all my friends are prettier than I am. It's not that I think I'm ugly. It's something much more subtle: the feeling that in some fundamental way, I just don't stand out the way that other people do. That in one way or another, physically or whatever, it must be true: all my friends are prettier than I am.

Why did I let some idiot seventeen year old boy do that to me? Well, the obvious answer is because it wasn't just him. It was me. It was society. It was blah, blah, blah.

But now, I finally know what to say to him. I have a smartass answer to his dumbass question.

“Doesn’t it make you feel insecure that all of your friends are prettier than you?”

No. It doesn't. In fact, it makes me feel pretty damn secure. I mean, hey, if I were too pretty, they'd probably hate me; that's Samantha Brick's thesis, anyway.* And on the flip side, I must not be too ugly, because otherwise they'd shun and torture me, a la The Elephant Man. Let me sic Ashley Judd on you next as I turn the question around on you: doesn't it make you feel insecure that you're stupid enough to call the sweet seventeen year old girl sitting across from you unattractive, to her face? Before you posed this imbecilic question, I didn't think that I was at the bottom of the pile. I knew I had pretty friends. And because I was a teen, too, and we're a visual society, of course I thought some were prettier than others - some more classically beautiful, others cuter, others more exotic, others more awkward. We make comparisons. We're only human. But some of us are better at being humane than others, and since they were all my friends, I really did see something pretty in all of them. If I didn't, I wouldn't have bought your judgment for a split second. Unfortunately, I assumed that you were right.

Oh, and by the way, "Ron"? Thank you.

Left: me, circa now.
Right:  my pretty friend JQ.
This is what we think of "Rons" everywhere.

That's right. Thanks. Thank you for punching me in the gut in such a way that I subsequently made a real effort to NOT do that to other people. Have I failed sometimes, had my catty moments? Absolutely - and then promptly felt horrible. So thanks for that, and for instilling in me a real sense that pretty is as pretty does. That snap judgments based on appearance usually make us the ugly ones. (I kind of thought you were cute before that conversation. I kind of didn't after that conversation.) 

And so now, instead of secretly fearing that all my friends are prettier than I am, I'm embracing it. Because, in one way or another, all my friends are prettier than I am - and that's kind of awesome. Seriously. Like all art, beauty is subjective. People like Ron are still going to be stupid, society is still going to tell us to judge and compare each other, women will be catty, men will be superficial, and we will all be our own worst enemies.

But society be damned, we can and do see just what makes our friends gorgeous in our eyes. You can't tell me otherwise. We get to stop being seventeen, and if we're lucky, we get to be surrounded by at least a handful of people who really look at us, and see whatever it is that "makes us pretty." Do we stop feeling insecure? Do societal issues go away? No. But we have pretty friends to drink red wine with us while we give society the middle finger, to assure us that "Ron" probably died old, sad and alone** ... and all in all, help us feel more secure - about our place in our friends' hearts, if nothing else.

And that's a beautiful thing.

* I do have to say that the one thing that made me laugh out loud in the Samantha Brick article was her lament that none of her girlfriends had ever asked her to be a bridesmaid, "perhaps from fear that they would be overshadowed" by her beauty. Not only is that one of the most egotistical things I've ever heard, it's also financially ignorant. Lady! Being a bridesmaid is fun and all, but find the silver lining: you've probably saved yourself thousands in one-wear-only-dresses! Unless you're a nut job like me who spends a week in one, post-bridesmaid-gig... BTW, if any of your poor less-gorgeous friends musters the self-esteem to ask you to be in her wedding party, I highly recommend wearing the dress into the ground. Might even inspire your next blog post.


**Okay, "Ron" would only be in his early 30s now, so he has probably not died old, sad and alone. Yet.