Pretty Ugly

I already knew what kind of reaction I was going to get when I returned home -- generally speaking, anyways. My hair had been short and bobbed for nearly five years that many people couldn't remember the last time -- or any time -- that they had seen me with hair long enough to be swept up in a ponytail.

What I didn't expect was when I showed up to my neighbors' dinner party the night I landed in California and was showered in a flurry of compliments from the other mothers there about how beautiful and ladylike I had become, and how I look better with longer hair and should not cut my hair short again anytime soon.

I never know what to think in these situations, because the main thought zipping through my head is, "Was I really ugly back then?"

In the car yesterday, my mother told me that when she visited her in-laws in Taipei over Thanksgiving Break, my grandmother told her that I had completely changed and looked so pretty when I visited Taipei two summers ago. My mom said she laughed and joked, "Are you saying that she was an ugly child?"

I probably was. That is to say, I'd never had any illusion that I was beautiful. Before I got braces, my lower teeth were a crooked mess, while my upper incisors were noticeably larger than the rest of the teeth in the row. I don't have double-eyelids -- considered more beautiful than single-eyelids in Asian cultures. I refused to let my hair down as a kid, always preferring to tie it up and out of the way for when I played sports. As a result of all the soccer and tennis I played in my youth, I have been tanned as long as I can remember and have never had the snowy white skin of a classically beautiful Asian girl.

As far as that's gone, I still haven't changed much. My teeth are straight now, but my single-eyelids remain. Perhaps I might be less tan than before, now that I play much less outdoors than I did in the past, but undoubtedly my skin tone will still garner awkward remarks if I make another trip to Taiwan. And as I was still sporting a bob when I visited my grandparents two summers ago, hair likely has nothing to do with it.

Penelope Cruz once said, "I don’t think I am beautiful. I can look good and I can look ugly." The first time I heard that quote, I thought -- "Pshhh, easy for you to say." But at where I am now in life, Penelope Cruz couldn't have said it better.