Being someone who challenges society's standards of conventional beauty, you become known for other things, such as my personality or sense of humour. Today, what I want to do is document the most significant times people have told me how physically unattractive I am.
The first time anyone ever brought my unconventional looks to my attention was when I was in year seven. I was at an elite co-ed private school, and my best friend was a boy named Adam. Adam introduced me to his mother, and then the next day he told me he had something to tell me. He said that his mother had said to him that I was “nothing to look at.” I don’t know why he told me, but he then went on to say that he stuck up for me. I laughed, but deep down it really hurt my feelings.
Around the same time, I remember going to a disco at Rostrevor College with a friend of mine who was particularly beautiful. All the boys were asking her to dance, and no one was asking me. I remember she said to one boy, “Would you dance with my friend?” and he said, “No way.”
At the same school, I had a huge crush on this boy who was in the year above me. Everybody knew I liked him, and I was talking to one of his friends about it one day. He said to me, “He hates you. He thinks you’re ugly, and he just hates you.”
After the elite co-ed private school, I went to an elite single-sex private school. I had a best friend who was quite rebellious, and she sort of led me astray a little bit. I remember the first time I tried marijuana. There were only two girls there, myself and my best friend, and a group of Italian boys. We were at one of the Italian boys' houses, and my friend was getting together with one of them in a bedroom.
So it was just me out the back with a whole group of guys. Everyone was stoned, myself included. It was an unfamiliar feeling to me, but worse than that, while I was there, the boys started saying they wished they were sitting there stoned with at least someone good-looking and how ugly I was, right in front of me. It was an awful feeling being there, but I pretended I couldn't hear it. I remember holding back tears, but there was no way I was going to give them the satisfaction of crying in front of them.
I didn't smoke marijuana a lot as a young person, but I did try it a few times between years 9–11. On this night, things were kind of somber, but the other times I tried it, I just laughed and laughed and laughed. I never tried any other drugs apart from alcohol.
It was a common occurrence throughout school for people to call me ugly. When I went to a Catholic all-girls school, I remember my first boyfriend, Eric. One of my “friends” from school invited Eric and me around to her house one night.
When we got there, she started talking about the way women look and said, “Eric doesn’t care what his women look like, does he?” She said that in front of me. By this age, I had become very used to remarks like that.
Probably the worst thing anyone has ever said to me was one night when I was 16 years old. My friend who lived up the road, Andrew, and I went to another friend of mine, Sandy’s, house. Sandy and Andrew were getting together in her bedroom, and I was waiting in the kitchen with Sandy’s mother and her younger boyfriend. She was a drunk, and she was very drunk on this particular night. She said to me, “I don’t know how you can leave the house without a paper bag over your head.” Her boyfriend shook his head at her, and I was shaking my head too, purely because I didn’t know what to do or say.
She then said, “You dress well, but you are awful to look at.” I was holding back tears, and I went and got my friend Andrew. I actually can’t remember how we got there because neither of us drove, but we went home.
In my early twenties, there are two instances that I can remember in relation to my unconventional looks. The first one was when I had a particular group of friends who were not the nicest people, but I felt at home with them. This one man, who was the same age as me, was brutally honest and could be quite cruel. On two occasions, he told me how unattractive I am.
The first time, he asked me if I wanted him to tell me his honest opinion about how I look. I said yes. He said, "You're a nice girl, but if I walked past you in the street, I wouldn't look back." Then one night, he dropped me off in town, and I was meeting a man that I liked. As he was dropping me off, he said, "I would rather just go home and have a wank than be with you."
Another time I can remember being made aware of the fact that I was not a beautiful woman was when I went to Melbourne with a girlfriend of mine for a Bette Midler concert. She was a photographer at an Adelaide paper, and she had a friend who was a photographer for a Melbourne paper. I was involved with a man back home in Adelaide, and I told the Melbourne photographer about him. In response, he said, “Jesus, you must be good in bed.” I knew what he meant, and he wasn't trying to be unkind. He realised what he had said, and for the rest of the night he talked about how beautiful I was, but I knew he was covering his tracks.
Back in 2013, I had some health issues which made me gain a huge amount of weight. That did not help my already very unconventional looks, so I look really bad at the moment. I have spoken to my best friend Maiki about what people have said to me about my looks, and he has responded by saying, “Are you fat? Yes. Are you beautiful? Yes.” That makes me laugh, but it doesn’t make me feel beautiful because I know he is saying it to make me feel better. He is also just a lovely guy to all the women in his life.
It doesn't make me feel bad to know that I am ugly, though. I think there is a role for a beautiful woman in this world, and there is also a role for the opposite of that. I don't act like a beautiful woman, and I've been involved with a number of men, mostly in my 20s. I think this demonstrates that I have still been able to meet people based on who I am as a woman and not my looks.
Something that I have learned through all of this is that it really doesn't matter what you look like. I am a strong, creative woman with a good sense of humour. I don't seek male companionship, and that's not because I'm not beautiful but because of other flaws I have that I am not going to blog about.
"Four Weddings and a Funeral" is nearly over, and there's about 20 minutes left until the tennis starts. I'm really looking forward to the match between Alexander Zverev and Carlos Alcaraz. Zverev is German, born in 1997, and is 27 years old. Alcaraz is Spanish, born in 2003, and is 21 years old. Mum and I are both going for Alcaraz. He's full of beans, and he is absolutely hilarious. In the last match, he had the crowd in the palm of his hands, us at home included.
