This month we’re looking at appearance and the roles we can play to hide who we really are because we don’t want to be seen – we feel uncomfortable being visible, that feels too vulnerable. Is this you?
As a little girl, I had to wear glasses – National Health glasses made of pink plastic that looked like bottle tops. Ugly. I was teased, bullied, and it was horrible. Somehow the glasses being ugly translated into me being ugly. I was shy, self conscious, now I felt ugly and just didn’t want to be seen. I cringed in front of the camera and to be honest I can still feel uncomfortable in front of a camera.
For a good part of my life, I ran away from that criticism of myself, hoping that when I was in London, Paris, Hong Kong, somewhere glamorous, that I’d feel more glamorous, more beautiful. I never really did, although I put on a good show.
There was of course more to it than that. When I look back I see that my mum, my culture, expected me to look a certain way. My sister and I were told that we had to be neat and tidy, never scruffy, and we had to be good girls, behave properly (whatever that meant!) We were not allowed to be mean or nasty or selfish…so in fact we weren’t allowed to be human! It was quite a load. Mum wasn’t the only one who expected her children to behave in this way, it was the way it was at the time. Now what I see is when I do things from that place I’m allowing my mother’s idea of who I should be to operate…one way and not any another.
We play roles to hide our insecurities, trying to make ourself more acceptable to others, however underneath it all what we’re doing is trying to make ourself acceptable to ourself! We try to prove we’re worthy, that we deserve, that we’re good people, and it’s a lot of rubbish! If you didn’t worry about it, you wouldn’t need to do anything, you could just be yourself!
Is it time to come out from under the covers…be yourself and just enJOY being you…let people see you?