Last month I released my most recent single, ‘Ugliest Girl in the World’, an empowering, rock inspired anthem written in rebellion against the oversaturated catalogue of songs celebrating outdated presentations of women’s bodies and calling it ‘self-love’. I was sick of turning on the radio to hear another, so-called feminist track with lyrics from women romanticising a tiny waist and a fat ass or generally just associating their confidence and womanhood to their physical forms. I wanted to write an empowering, girl-boss track that abandoned the importance of beauty altogether.
“So what if I’m the ugliest girl in the world, don’t mean that I can’t be happy?”
I have Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW), a condition caused by the use of topical cortisones that are given to treat the symptoms of eczema. It is a consuming and destructive condition, characterised by its full body redness, extreme dryness, cracking, oozing, crusting and flaking. Physical pain aside, your own reflection becomes unrecognisable. Through this condition, I temporarily lost access to any form of conventional attraction. As well as the collapse of my dermis, the demise of my skin, I also became unable to shave, I lost huge amounts of my hair, my eyes were swollen, I couldn’t wear anything but baggy cotton clothes without extreme discomfort, and there was certainly no way I could attempt to put on make up some days. It was terrifying but freeing.
Eyes in supermarkets began to linger on me for longer, I smiled extra hard at those who passed me by on the street, in order to appease for my self disgust. I felt guilty for being seen. I would hide myself away at dinner time, out of fear of putting my family off their food. I would let go of my ex-boyfriend’s hand in public places, as I didn’t want to embarrass him. But I never let myself hide away. I deserved to be seen.
One of my most viral videos, simply titled ‘Update: I’m Struggling’, received over 2.3 million views when I was most affected by my visible symptoms. It was vulnerable to have so many screens carrying the digital image of my flaking, red skin, but it helped me access support and community on which I relied whilst I was healing. There was a power in the fact that my pain, my strength and my courage were being proudly displayed in each crack of the skin, patch of redness or receding hairline.
I stopped striving for beauty and instead for peace.
As a trans girl, I had often idolised the beautiful and worshipped the superficial. I’d scrape my skin red with blunt razors and burn my hair dry to feel feminine. So, being able to access this sense of power and pride, whilst feeling so far removed from any sense of conventional attraction was life changing. I was still a woman. I felt like more of a woman. That is when ‘Ugliest Girl in the World’ was written.
Everything I did felt like it had more meaning. I learnt to manage gender dysphoria by stripping myself bare, being kind to myself, asking myself to define what really makes me a woman, instead of avoiding it by disfiguring myself into uncomfortable corsets or caking sensitive skin in make-up I was allergic to. It was a backwards kind of confidence. Being unable to achieve a Westernised standard of beauty led to the discovery of a new form of beauty. An internal one.
Pride hasn’t historically been an easy thing for me to carry. I always push myself to be better, do more, try to change, but through those months of extreme discomfort and disfigurement, I learnt that my strength is larger than I could have imagined. Every night I would go to bed with a smile for myself for getting through another day, every morning I would wake up with a grateful tear in my eye for the fact I managed to get any sleep at all.
Music became therapy. When pain consumed me, and I found it hard to sit still or stop scratching, I would just place both hands on my guitar and would strum and hum along until I found words that came to me. ‘Ugliest Girl in the World’ was born from resilience, strength and resistance, all of which fall under my new robust definition of beauty. I didn’t need to disrespect my body anymore in order to recognise my own beauty. I found an acceptance that I was unable to be societally ugly but could still respect myself.
Ugly is a mindset. Ugly is powerful. Ugly is freeing.
