stop saying you were “ugly as a kid” where kids can hear you. kids can’t be ugly, because no one should be holding them to any standard that judges them by their looks! and people will say “okay, but be honest with yourself, some kids just are prettier than others.”
No! Some kids are considered “prettier” than others based ona set of made-up standards set by adults!
No child should ever be viewed through the lens of “attractive” or “not attractive,” because they’re children, and when you refer to your childhood self as ugly or lame or embarrassing, the children around you look for the features you’re referring to in themselves and try to avoid/erase them. And if they can’t, they just settle for hating that part of themselves.
It isn’t about you anymore. The children are listening. They’re watching. Be mindful.
M8. I was the ugly kid. Not according to adults, according to other kids. Ugly is fairly objective, being whatever deviates greatly from beauty, which is judged based on closeness to average features. Like … I agree. We shouldn’t judge people based on their looks. Especially not kids. But some of them are objectively pretty damn ugly.
Should or shouldn’t ≠ is or isn’t.
I’m really sorry that kids learned to think you were ugly based on what the world run by adults taught them to consider ugly. I’m even more sorry that you internalized their opinions so deeply that you believed you were ugly and that you’ve grown up into someone who calls children ugly publicly.
I hope you can learn to let go of the negativity you internalized as a child. I’m not making fun of you. I really hope you can grow past it.
But in the meantime, I hope no child listens to what you have to say, because ultimately it’s not about your pain anymore. It’s about preventing theirs.
You’re in my thoughts.
Nobody send them any messages about this. Don’t be mean. Just be a positive example for a kid in your life instead.
my favorite Millennial Thing™ is when a group of us are standing around and talking and someone asks a question that no one knows the answer to and suddenly it’s a race to get out your phone and google it and be the first to know, and then someone starts reading the Wikipedia article about the thing aloud to everyone else, and what started as a casual conversation is now A Learning Opportunity and we all walk away a little more knowledgeable about a random topic
Like, Boomers hate when we do that, but I think it’s one of the best things about us.
So long as we have internet or a cell signal, all of the world’s collective knowledge is at our fingertips, and damned if we aren’t going to use it.
My dad always get mad when I do this. He’s always like “We didn’t need to know.” That makes no sense to me. Why would that make me ignore my ability to learn something? I don’t always *need* to know but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pass up an opportunity to learn something new.
Why carry a supercomputer around in your pocket if you’re not gonna use it?
It really drives me insane that I don’t know how people feel about me. Like am I nice??? Am I funny???? Am I mean???? Am I rude??? Am I obnoxious??? Am I dumb???? What am I????????????????????
