She’s Too Pretty to be Smart
“You tryna fix something that you can’t see. It’s the soul that needs a surgery”, when Beyoncé sung these lyrics, they resonated with me on another level. Pretty hurts. The way society looks at a woman from an early age all the way through adult years, and deems women that are pretty can’t be smart too. I’m sure my soul needed fixing long before fifth grade, but for me, that's the year of my life that I can actually remember restructuring myself based on what my classmates and friends said about me. I was different. I had switched from a suburban school to an inner city charter school, and things were different, like really different. The teachers, the students. They were just all so different.
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I was picked on about everything from my hair all the way down to my shoes. However, what stands out to me the most was that I was picked on about my faith. I remember bringing my bible to school and a young lady pretending to be interested in studying with me, only to later make fun of me with her friends. Fast forward from fifth grade and I entered middle school where I became so many things that I really started to lose my identity. I became a red headed freak, and because we lived a very simple life at the time, this is me being generous with my words, I only had a couple pairs of uniforms, if that. So my uniforms were always on repeat and they weren’t the nice dickies pants and Aeropostale shirt that all the popular kids wore. So, it was obvious that I was one of the less fortunate kids. I became a target. I didn’t recognize the beauty in myself then. What’s now looked at as an asset for women to have I was made fun of for. To most I was too lean and because of my athletic build I was called a man. My basketball teammates were my safe space. We were close, we were cool, we were all tomboys pretty much with the same hobbies. Until, I decided to wear a skirt to school.
I remember my good friend clowning me for this. She gave me the hardest time for wearing that skirt that I probably cried when I got home. Honestly, if I can recall, I drew on my skirt with a permanent marker so I couldn’t wear it again. Eighth grade, I started to get a little more attention, but I still felt like the ugly duckling. The attention was only low key and the guys would only really give me attention if their more prettier and popular friends weren’t around. The last straw that I think broke me, was getting off the bus and hearing kids yell, “Red Headed Freak”, and me looking up seeing my mom come after me with open arms. I’m not sure if it was the pain on her face or the thought in my head that I’ll be paying for this tomorrow if the kids see me being babied by my mom, that worried me the most. However, her confirming that I wasn’t a freak warmed my heart. I didn’t understand why my hair color was a huge deal to kids. I was just different. Why isn’t that okay?
What I haven’t mentioned is that, through all of this I still maintained a positive attitude towards school. Good grades were mandatory in my home. If you didn’t have good grades you would face my mother’s wrath and the one thing good I had going for me was a peaceful home. So I bust my butt in school to have good grades to keep that peace. Middle school was nearing the end and I just could not wait to get out of that school, away from those kids, and out of the god awful uniform I had to wear. High school was a different beast. My body started to form and shape in areas that I had no idea even existed. However, the attention that I got was so different than what I was used to. I was popular. I was wanted by a lot of the guys and I was actually being talked to. The attention was not the best attention, especially because it drove me to make a few dumb decisions due to me being so gullible at the time. The attention changed my attitude and how I responded to my family. I got a “big head” from all of the hype of being a pretty girl.
Pretty and popular, two things I thought I would never see. What I didn’t know was that there was a secret code that I had clearly missed. I was in history class the day after a long basketball game, and the teacher started to ask questions from her previous lesson and our homework assignment we were supposed to complete the night before. She asked questions as if she didn’t expect any of us to complete it since the night before was a big game for the school. To her surprise, I raised my hand to answer questions and I answered them correctly. Every question she shot at the class I shot back with the information she was looking for. Then, as the teacher took her seat, one of my classmates looked behind her shoulder and looked at me and said the words that changed my life; “I didn't know pretty girls were smart.” Puzzled face while trying to figure out what she meant by her comment she then said it again, “You’re too pretty to be smart”.
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Did it mean I had to choose between pretty and smart? Why couldn’t I be both? Surely I can’t let my mom down, but I also can’t let the kids who aren’t friends, but think I’m cool down either. Meh, needless to say, I continued picking my battles. I wanted good grades. That fueled me and I enjoyed the perks of good grades. I wanted to be pretty, besides, the attention was something I needed (sarcasm) right? Wrong. The attention turned negative. I was a bet among the guys. I was introduced to a lifestyle that changed me and had me living aimlessly for a very long time even long after my freshman year. I had this horrible personality that hurt my family. When you fast forward my life to college, that was a totally different beast and I was a muse for it. My looks started to become my definition, and I wasn’t running as deep as I pretended to be. I hurt people, because we all know the saying, hurt people hurt people.
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I know I know. So what right? What’s the big deal? We have to start instilling in our youth, but first ourselves, that there’s more to us than what’s on the outside. Pretty doesn’t pay bills, but most importantly it isn’t all that you are either. Pretty is an adjective used to describe a noun, but what happens when that noun takes a shift and becomes something different? Does that something different take away from the very person, place or thing that once was described as something else? You see when you take away the adjective you are still left with the noun, which means when you take away your exterior beauty, you’re still left with being you. What does your inside look like? Now that I’m an adult who still has trouble with self identity I realize that my root of brokenness didn’t just start yesterday. It’s a deep root that roots back to younger days and years of believing that I had to choose between things that were merely incomparable, deal with the pressures of society and understanding how to rewire my way of thinking. When you spend your entire life looking to be liked, you miss out on enjoying who you really are. When I finally realized it was my soul that needed surgery I started to heal, I started to embrace all that I am and not just what people can see. Peace. Love. Blessings.
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