Our guest blogger this week is an extremely talented writer named Freya, who blogs over at Foxie. She’s also a wonderful designer, and a fascinating woman. Her life has been rich with experience, and we’re extremely excited that she’s offered to share some of them with us. If you’d like to contact Freya regarding her guest post, please send your mails to guestblogger@thedemoiselles.com and we will be sure that your feedback reaches her.

Five years ago, around this time, I sat with my friend Lola in the deserted computer room listening to music. I was browsing files and I stumbled upon a certain file named “My Long Nose”, I clicked it and then to my horror, I saw that it was a picture of mine taken with the webcam by Lola weeks before. She hadn’t deleted it when I asked her to. She sent it to the senior boys who in turn played a joke by titling the file as “My Long Nose” and of course making it easily accessible to everyone. The idea of the whole school laughing at me made me cry at once. Our wise and gentle computer professor noticed this and said, ”Why are you crying for this, dear? Do you know that long-nosed girls are actually very beautiful?”

“Really?” I blinked.

“Yes”, he said, “And I’ll delete this file for you. See, problem solved.”

Later that day, I asked Lola whether long-nosed girls are really beautiful. “Of course not. He said so just to comfort you.”

At the age of 13, I was sent to a co-ed boarding school quite far away from my home. Unlike other homesick kids, I was all happy and excited, thanks to Enid Blyton’s St.Clare books. Little did I know that I would be facing bullying, humiliation and needless to say, a lot of embarrassment in the first year. My mother decided to hook me up with Lola, another girl from our place who went to same school to have a company as I was new. Unfortunately for me, Lola was very beautiful and anything but nice. She spread awful rumours about me to my would-be schoolmates, about my behaviour, my nature, my looks etc. This resulted in me being hated and isolated by everyone except Lola, of course since she posed as a friend. Everyone stared at me strangely, subtly treated me as an outcast, etc. All this forced me to look at myself deeply into the mirror. I had never done that before. I realised that it was true. I did have a long nose. I was appalled because no one back at my place said that I don’t look good. Now, I began looking daily into the mirror, trying to make my nose look smaller but with no success. In this way I noticed other features in my face as Lola was pointing out something or the other all the time. I noticed that my eyes are too small, my lower lip is twice the size of my upper lip, and that I have too many pimples. I slowly began hating my face. I began dreaming of genies who would make all the pimples vanish and that I would one day wake up with the perfect nose. All these dreams were all “nice” except that nothing like that happened and my nose only seemed to grow larger day by day!

I didn’t realise I was wasting my time on such trivial issues. I bothered about what others said. I dressed according to Lola who always made sure that I don’t look good. I was unaware that I was just being bullied. I didn’t notice other good things about my body, like good skin, good hair, etc.

During winter holidays, I confided this to my mom and she gave me one of her brilliant motivational speeches. I went back, more confident than I was. I realised that the problem was inside Lola and others, not me. From that time, I stopped caring about my looks or what people said about me. I just dressed up the way I like. And, there was a change. Other girls in the dormitory would ask me to teach them walk like I do, compliment my tastes regarding clothes and the way I keep my wardrobe. This was not just limited to dressing up. I quickly became popular in the dorm because I was back to my old self: funny, confident and bindass (a hindi word which means being cool and having a devil-may-care attitude).

I still won’t say that looks are not at all important. They are very important, in fact. Presenting yourself well and dressing appropriately gives you an identity. People see you first and then decide whether to meet you or not. At the same time, I would ask you to stop torturing yourself for the sake of good looks. Don’t aimlessly go into excessive diet routines and strenuous exercise plans. That also doesn’t mean that you have to ignore your health and body and keep on eating whenever and whatever. If you are overweight, start having a balanced diet. Do this to maintain good health, not for the sole purpose of fitting into a dress (but of course, everyone has a different purpose when it comes to weight reduction and enhancing looks. It is difficult to classify everyone’s objective as good and bad).

Most importantly, don’t give much thought to it. Such things are trivial compared to other important things in life. The more you think, the worse your situation becomes, trust me. So, just be cool about it, be bindass (:P). Take it from a girl with a huge capsicum nose!

{ A big thank you to The Demoiselles for giving me this opportunity to share my incidences. I would be most happy if it motivates people who can overcome self-negativity regarding their bodies. }

Find more of Freya at Foxie!

All photos sourced from Flickr.