Overcome the feeling that I am an immature, ugly, awkward little girl and envision myself as the beautiful, intelligent woman I have become

I also feel a growing need to help and support other women with this as it breaks my heart when I see beautiful, intelligent young[er] women feel ugly and awkvard (unfortunately, a very common thing).
Being 26 I am by all means still young, but when I see girls in their teens and early 20s, I feel a lot older then them – I’ve been there, done that – I feel protective of them, like I want to support them and tell them the things no one told me at that age – that they ARE beautiful, that they don’t need to try so hard to fit in, that boys’ attention really are not the be all and end all of life, that being smart and funny and friendly is so much more important then looking ‘perfect’ (and people who spend years in the bathroom, only eat salad and don’t do improvised fun as it might ruin their hair/make up are boooooring).

I feel like taken them under my wing. You might call it feeling maternal.

5 years ago (age 21, about to start university): Put more effort into making new friends at university. Join clubs, volunteer, whatever – don’t disappear into your new relationship. Experience university life to the full – you’ll regret later that you didn’t. Of course it’s exciting, he is your first proper boyfriend – but try to stay independent. You look lovely, stop trying so hard to be to be ‘perfect’. Being seen without make up is not the end of the world.

10 years ago (age 16, about to start college): Don’t focus all your energy on boys, they are not worth it. Things WILL get better, you will become prettier and you will find a lovely guy – don’t waste so much time worrying about it. Do what you want to do. Don’t be ashamed of the fact that you have good grades. You really don’t have to show that much flesh to be attractive. You are a lot stronger than you give yourself credit for. You look lovely, stop trying so hard to be to be ‘perfect’.

15 years ago (age 11): Try to stay a kid for just that little bit longer. Don’t let some random kid’s comments ruin your life for the next 10 years. It breaks my heart that you are already starting to hate yourself. Trust me, no one looks great at 11 and you do not look as horrible as they say or you think. That being said, get some proper acne medication, don’t waste your teenage years struggling with bad skin. And never feel bad about being smart.

20 years ago (age 6): You’re perfect as you are and even better, you know it. Enjoy this confidence, you’ll be spending the next 20 years trying to get back to it.

While unenviably low in confidence and self-respect as a girl, I never doubted my intelligence. I always knew I was smart, I always knew I could study anything, become anything.

But I didn’t want to be smart! All I wanted was to be pretty…or if that was impossible, at least sexy. While I was happy there was something, anything, I was good at, I still thought I was a loser. Acing an exam never got you kissed! I didn’t want teachers to praise me, I wanted boys to want me. But of course, no self-respecting teenage boy ever fancies the ugly girl with straight A’s…

And I thought to myself that beautiful was out of reach – I would never have boys falling at my feet. I wasn’t modelesque, I wasn’t stunning and I accepted I never would be (yes, I had a very much black-and-white view of the world). So I tried for second best…reasoning that if I couldn’t get love, maybe I could at least get lust?
I went with gusto for the ultimate bimbo persona – I went clubbing constantely, dressed like a slut, drinking like the alcohol was going to run out and dancing like a stripper. I really tried. But I couldn’t do it – though I pretended with the best of them – I couldn’t do slutty. I couldn’t through myself at guys, I couldn’t sleep around. (and thank god for that says the 25year old me…:)

While I no longer wear tops slashed to my belly button, or make-up thick like a painting, to some extent I am still that insecure little girl – I still secretely hope that maybe one day I can somehow make all guys find me attractive by buying new clothes, changing my hair, toning up, whatever it takes. Maybe one day I can be perfect…
And on a mature, intelligent level I understand that this will never happen, nor do I actually want it to happen as I am happily taken. I also understand that perfection is impossible and that I don’t actually want to look like Barbie even if I could. I know why I feel like this, and why it’s really the little girl in me who is feeling it, not the real adult me. And despite this, I still only really feel great about myself, my looks, when reflected in male appriciation. How terribly sad…and unempowering.

I’ve started feeling a lot more like a woman and a lot less like a girl recently. I don’t really know when it happend – it’s a shift that has probably developed, slowly, over the last year, but it’s pretty profound.

I’m 25, by no means old, but I am not a little girl. However, despite turning 20 five long years ago I have somehow kept the feeling of being a teenager, or a 20 year old. It’s not that I’m unhappy about getting older, quite the opposite. But I have never really felt grown-up. I’ve always felt like a girl. Until now.

Now I look at teenage girls and I no longer feel part of the same generation. I no longer look at them and see myself – I see a future daugther. I feel protective and I feel compassion – because I know how lonely, depressing and hard being a teen can be. But I don’t identity with them like I used to.

Took out my old diaries today. There are quite a few – I wrote regularly throughout my teens, mainly when upset, sad, depressed, lonely, angry or [insert negative feeling here].
A lot of it made me sad…I cried a bit. But not because whatever had happend or whatever I had felt at the time upset me in itself – I felt detached; it didn’t feel like it was about me or even real.

But I felt enourmous compassion for the little girl who spent so much time talking down to herself, feeling bad, worrying, overthinking, trying to be perfect. She was so sad, so misunderstood, so in need of attention, for such a long time.
I wanted so badly to hug her and tell her she wouldn’t always feel so bad; that one day she would feel OK about herself, that she would not be alone forever but find a wonderful boyfriend, that she wouldn’t always spend all her time worrying about being ugly, that she would be ok. She would still have high expectations, she would still hit down hard on herself at times, but she would be OK. She would even be happy.

I truly felt like the adult me was reaching out to the little girl I once were. As a teen, I had other kids saying horrible things about how I looked, I had boys treating me badly, I restricted my life because I felt ugly…but today, I can see that for what it really was, and it wasn’t about me. Kids are rude to everyone, boys are immature, looks are important for teenagers. I was a sensitive girl, I got hurt. I let my feelings ruin my teens, and while I can never get those years back, I live fully in my twenties and beyond.

Today, people give me compliments, I have a great boyfriend and while I still care about my looks, they are not my main priority. And that, more than anything else, made me feel like I am finally a woman rather than a girl. I might still feel ugly at times, I might worry about what people think of me, but I’ve come a long way. And I am very, very proud of that.

Was talking to someone the other day about celebrities; female stars and who’s hot and who’s not. I always admire the seemingly ‘perfect’, superhot, superfit, big boobed but skinny, uber re-touched, model-faced, confident, loud ones. But I don’t find the plain, normal, pretty-but-not-perfect, shy girl-next-door ones at all attractive, in fact, it almost annoys me when someone does. I have an insanely high standard of female beauty (despite being a heterosexual female myself).

And I thought about it and realised…it’s because of me, it has nothing to do with these girls, they are probably quite attactive. But to me, the normal, plain girls are like me. And I can’t see how someone could be attracted to someone like me. I have always thought I would have to be perfect, uberpretty, to be attractive, and I in a way, I still do.
I’ve always wanted to be that perfect girl, the one EVERYONE stares at when she walks into the room, the one every girl envies and every guy wants. I’ve always wanted to be the loud, confident, sexy and cool one…but I have always been the shy, overlooked one, the cute one at best.

And writing this, I realise that I am writing ‘always’, despite the fact that I have been seen as pretty, seen as attractive, wanted and envied at times for the past few years. I was ugly, awkvard little girl but I haven’t been for almost five years. I am a woman and I am attractive. I don’t need to be perfect, I won’t ever be actually (neither will anyone else). And I have to accept that and move on.

On one level, I know I am quite beautiful. I know a lot of other people think so, I know a lot of girls are jealous of my figure and when I’ve taken care with my appearence, I can even think it myself…well sometimes. However, at the same time, deep down I don’t really believe it. I don’t think I am pretty, I don’t think I am thin/fit enough, I can’t truly see it.

I was an ugly teenager – bad skin, geeky, shy and insecure, not popular with the boys – who has somehow managed to become someone quite good looking and wanted. But in my head, I am still that spotty, geeky teen. I still think people look at me because they think I look weird. Even though I know they don’t! I know it, but I don’t get it.

When people compliment me I get embarrassed and have to fight myself to not say something bad about myself back. I don’t want to be that annoying thin, pretty girl who complains about being ugly and untoned…I hate when people do that. I also don’t want other girls to feel bad about themselves – which they probably will do, if I, who they see as thin and fairly pretty, claim to be ugly.

Actually, I don’t want to support the stupid ideas of female beauty this society has, but I can’t get away from that either. Because I want to be seen as beautiful. I want people to be jealous of me. I am vain. There, I said it. I don’t like it, but I can’t get away from it. Not yet anyway.
I was an ugly girl who boys wouldn’t go anywhere near unless they were so drunk they’d lost all sense…I spent all my teens with the one goal: to be pretty. And now I am, and I can’t stop and just enjoy it, because I want to reach a more perfect level of prettiness. Absolutely ridiculous and a huge waste of time and money. I am not even out to meet a guy, I already have a great one.

I actually hate the superficiality, hate the focus on beauty and hate having to constantly walk the thin line between being seen as beautiful and being taken seriously. In the end, my brain is much more important to me than my looks. I hate when my intelligence and opinions aren’t listen to, more than I hate worrying about being ugly.

So somehow, I have to overcome the feeling that I am still an ugly teenager, realise that I am pretty and that I don’t have to keep striving for further prettiness, that I am perfect as I am! And instead, focus on the mature, intelligent mid-twenties women that I actually am, the one who isn’t ugly, doesn’t hate herself, isn’t awkvard and unwanted but very much happily in love.

i was actually pondering this the other day and it’s fortuitous that it’s phrased so well here…. here’s my problem… i’m 28, not at all a “girl” anymore, past my ten year high school reunion. however, physical irony oh you’re good…. i still look like one. i’m technically not even five feet tall, have the general form of a twelve year old girl who’s about to get that last growth spurth, and my face doesn’t seem to want to wrinkle, fine by me, but…. i was also that archetypal overweight geeky wiry haired pipmly teenager…. something happened hormonally at about 19 and i lost a good third of me and my hair started to wave, not fritz out in all directions, and you know, grew up…. it’s just that the image in the mirror surprises me every time i see it, in a good way, i just wish i felt like that now that i am that. i wonder if i had a more appropriate self image if i could overcome the fact that i’ll always look like a little girl and (my parents still get mistaken for college students, we’re of an odd sort…) maybe the people i get to know will know me as a grown woman in a little body….. i’ll always be anachronistic, big old brain in a little teeny body, but hey, that’s me, just gotta learn to love it…

I still feel like a Girl, despite being aware that I am a Woman and has been for several years. I seem to think of myself as a teenager, or possibly a young adult, but I’m about to reach my mid-twenties. I’m almost 25. I’m not a little girl. Nor do I want to be.
I want to be independent, strong, confident, successful. And how can I be that if I walk around viewing myself as a girl? Little girls are dependent, unsure of themselves, not yet themselves. I need to realise I am a woman, and start behaving like one. Time has come.