"They called me a board-two-nipple" ": Honest stories about fighting with complexes

"Long nose", "small breasts", "fat legs" - these labels usually appear in childhood and have no basis for themselves, except for the subjective and incorrect assessment of others. If you do not time away from the offensive definitions, in adulthood, they can cause serious problems with self-esteem. We talked with different people about what they wanted to change in themselves and what helped them to like them.

Interview: Irina Kuzmicheva

Vera

an artist

“Sexy, but simple. Just like you,” one prominent artist said recently, sticking an expert finger in my face. He talked about the artist, a prominent handsome man who could sleep with beautiful women to match him. And for some reason he sleeps with his wife - sexy, but simple. Like me. A few years ago, I would have burst into tears in the toilet after that. After all, I have always been just that - simple, nothing special. You will see, you will turn away and you will immediately forget, you will not distinguish from thousands of similar ones.

"Why are you so thin and face so big?" - This question knocked me down more than once. By puffy cheeks, I got a wide nose, a small mouth was barely wider than this nose, eyes with sad eyebrows - such a child would have been called a “little angel”, but I was no longer a child. They continued to compare me with a girl with a chocolate “Alenka” at fourteen, eighteen, twenty. In the theater, while others were playing intrigue-aristocrats, I got the role of "rokley with curls." And for a long time I tried to find something noble in my simple face. When the “Hero of Our Time” began to take place at school, I wrote out a quote about Pechorin: “Despite the light color of his hair, his mustache and eyebrows were black — a sign of a breed in a man.” I was terribly happy that my eyebrows were darker than my hair.

No matter how I changed, whatever comments about my appearance were released by others, it was my own banality that remained my main complex. Simplicity. I really wanted to be a really beautiful woman for a couple of hours. Find out how it is to be beautiful. Or what it means to grow with the knowledge that you are. I thought about beauty a lot, even too much. These thoughts always went in the background.

Then I was tired of them and tried to figure everything out by drawing the comic "How to be ugly." It was the story of my relationship with my own appearance, but through it I tried to convey the idea in a larger scale: that each of us is more than just an option as opposed to “beautiful / ugly”. That we are personal pronouns, not quality adjectives. On the Internet, everything, as always, was misunderstood. A flood of letters poured on me: someone said that I was stupid, since I consider myself to be ugly - I am a beauty! Someone - that I am really ugly and there is no need for such people to live. Someone - that I am cast like Tirion Lannister, whatever that means. But on the VKontakte network they supported me. And, most importantly, I was able to support others: the girls wrote gratitude in a personal, said that it helped them to take a different look at things. This situation helped me too. First, understand that my throwing and the truth is not unique. Secondly, to realize once again how subjective the assessments of others are: the path from young Angelina Jolie to Tirion Lannister can be traversed in just a day, even without changing the makeup.

But self-portraits helped me to make peace with myself. I decided that my face would become my canvas. I will become my model. Because no one is closer, always available and ready to pose for me, in my life and never will be. I began to draw myself in all possible views and angles. Beautiful and ugly, joyful and sad, alive and dead. And somehow, gradually, drawing my face over and over again, I realized that the combination of these cheeks, this upper lip with a crease, these gloomy eyes with eternal circles around - not at all trivial. And not boring. It is special and I like it. It is me. And I unexpectedly like myself too. And only I have power over myself, my image. No words can change it for sure.

Helena

journalist

I lived at first a plump child, then a fat teenager, and I entered a youthful dawn with a weight in a steward. It seemed to me that I would never have any personal life. It is not true. If desired, personal life is richer than a girl with a conventional appearance. You just need to be prepared that the guy might be surprised, and even out loud: "Well, sure enough, I would never have thought that I would meet a fat girl, but you are so cool." Instead of answering: "Is it you, my friend, some very not cool, and you would not pass to a known address?" - I found a strategy. It looks like this: I'm fat, but so cool that you forget that I'm fat. Everybody really forgets. But I remembered every minute. For example, that it is necessary to wear black and that it will be slim, it cannot be bright, it is not necessary to attract attention to itself. And dysmorphism begins - this is when you yourself seem all the time three times more than you really are.

Living with this is very difficult. Especially in my family, the installation “appearance is not the main thing, and it is embarrassing to think about the appearance for fools, the main thing is brains and soul”. On the one hand, it supports, and on the other, it pushes even deeper into the abyss of reflection, because it is impossible and unworthy to think about your weight, but you really think all the time. At one point I was tired of this and the feeling of guilt.

I went to a psychotherapist on another occasion and for the first two years of work I didn’t talk about appearance at all. Regularly discussed with a specialist why I hate myself, but avoided the topic, why. This is the weight, how can you hate yourself for weight, this is not the reason, there must be some kind of more serious. At the same time, I realized that I was creating the image of "how the life of a woman of my way of thinking should be arranged." The most important thing in psychotherapy was to understand that it should not. Any acceptance begins by allowing yourself freedom. Freedom interrupts self-loathing, silly stereotypes, and a perennial habit of self-restraint.

And I began to dress as I want. The earth has not collapsed from the change of the usual black-narrow to bright. They didn’t pay attention to me anymore - however, they didn’t become less. Then I started to beat tattoos. Before that, I really wanted to, but there was an internal setting: “Tattoos need to be beaten on a beautiful body, but not on an ugly one”. Who can not? Why not? Who ever spoke in that voice in my head? Because you can, in general, everything. Standing in the shower and looking at the tattoo on the ribs (on the ribs hidden under the fat, yes-yes), I was surprised to realize that I like myself. Tattoos reconciled me with my body, and any contact with him with a look that could have spoiled my mood for half a day is now comfortable.

Natasha

art manager

At school, I was not the girl about whom they say "beautiful": red hair, crooked teeth, then braces, in my teens - lack of breasts and a height of one hundred and eighty centimeters. Classmates periodically invented in my address mocking jokes. I missed them or laughed with them. They did not cause serious psychological damage to me, on the contrary, they made me believe in my own uniqueness.

When I was fourteen, scouts began to invite me to model schools and agencies. Modeling was not my dream, but closer to eighteen years of the proposals came with increasing frequency, and I began working with the main agency at that time of St. Petersburg. Without much zeal, but with interest in new experiences.

My story of self-indulgence began on one of the castings. On viewing, the art director of the agency threw the phrase in my direction: "You need to lose weight so that the cheekbones appear." I have always been slim, even slightly thin, but by the model standards of the late 2000s I still had excess weight. This phrase is like a thorn stuck in my mind, in the fall I went on a diet for the manifestation of the notorious cheekbones. My daily diet consisted of an egg, a piece of chocolate and a small portion of vegetables - only five hundred calories. For eating over the norm, I hated myself. The portions were getting smaller, my period was gone, I lost eight kilograms, and by spring my weight had stopped at forty-eight. My parents began to sound the alarm, they suspected I had anorexia, but they didn’t take me to the doctor, but only said that I was very thin and "throw this nonsense out of my head." At that moment, I stopped communicating with the modeling agency, making a choice in favor of studying.

Studying abroad saved me from fanatical weight loss. At the beginning of the third year I left for America. The new setting distracted my mind, and counting the calories on the campus dining room was more difficult. I began to slowly gain weight, but I still limited myself a lot, reproached for eating ice cream or milk added to coffee. In parallel, I went to the gym daily to burn the accumulated.

It took me another five years to return to a normal relationship with food and my own body. Only by the age of twenty-three years, I stopped standing by the mirror, looking at my waist in profile, stopped thinking about unapproved food, and worked tirelessly on cardiovascular machines. I just got tired of losing weight: this is how to do the same thing for several years - at one point you simply burn out. And I abandoned it. The young man, who as an outside observer, gave a flattering assessment of my figure, helped me to fix the normal attitude towards my body. And I learned to listen to my body. Sometimes he asks for breakfast only a grapefruit, and sometimes - scrambled eggs with croutons and a ton of bacon. He likes both.

Anya

beauty editor

All my life I have heard from unfamiliar people that I am beautiful. And she did not believe. My family, mostly my mother, told me exactly the opposite. Because of this, for a long time I thought that I had terrible hair that I could not fit, they were thin, they were few. Therefore, I wore terrible short haircuts. Once I told a hairdresser about this, and she managed to prove to me that these problems exist only in my head. After that, I radically changed my attitude towards hair, grew it several times and found the perfect color.

I also considered myself clumsy, inflexible and ungracious. My mother practiced ballroom dancing and claimed that I was born wooden and was unsuitable for this, but she certainly had a talent. For this reason, it's hard for me to dance, even though I always wanted to do it. Only at thirty I found out that flexibility develops, for dancing it is enough to relax and surrender to music, and there are people in the world who are much less agile than me.

And I always hated my legs: too full hips, thick knees, pale skin, a lot of hair. These beliefs were actively fed by the mother. She inspired me that my figure was not very successful and I had to “hide the flaws”. In the mirror, I first looked at my hips and ass, constantly covering this area with my hands, choosing clothes that would compensate for the difference between the top and the bottom. During classes at the gym, I looked only at my feet, as if there was only one part of my body.

Last year I turned to a psychotherapist. At one of the sessions, I said that I hate my legs, and especially my hips, so when my husband asks me to wear something that emphasizes them, I take it as an attack. At the same time, I had a conversation with my mother in which she praised my new dress (I posted a photo on Facebook): they say, perfectly hides all the problematic places and it’s not at all clear that I have no breasts. She also added that in the previous photo I look "like a condom." When I stopped crying, I blocked her and no longer discuss my appearance with her. In real life, we do not meet, as we live in different cities.

After a few sessions, I was finally able to look at myself differently. I remember the moment when I looked at old photos and realized that I was very beautiful. And the hips are normal, and hair, and dress. I began to treat myself differently and trust people when they say something good about me.

Alina

journalist

My complex about the short stature is far-fetched, initiated by me and not caused by any external factors. It began in high school when everyone suddenly grew up, but I did not: my height was one hundred fifty-four centimeters. At university, I hated degrading annual physical examinations, when all my classmates knew my height, and even worse - weight, with which I also had problems. There was not a day for me not to think about my “un-model” growth. Now I understand that there is nothing terrible in this, but then it seemed to me that absolutely all the failures in life are connected with him. Accordingly, high people for me were synonymous with successful people. At the same time, tall men always looked after me, and no one ever discriminated against me about it. Although it often seems to people that calling me "Thumbelina" or "baby", they give me a compliment. And I still hate such “compliments”, I immediately recall my “lack” and start to feel sad.

Katya

marketer

In school, I was the highest. By the tenth grade, she had grown to a hundred and eighty centimeters, was half a head taller than her classmates, both boys and girls. Someone even teased "sleeper" and "giraffe". It did not offend me, but I didn’t add to my love for my height either: I began to slouch to appear lower. There were few tall guys of my age, and the rest did not want to date girls who were taller than them. So my complex aggravated. The university became calmer, but I still remained the highest in the group, the girls of my height on the course could be counted on the fingers of one hand. I did not wear shoes with heels and was sure that I could meet only young people above me, although I liked those below. From this happened the extra love suffering. Until I met a man ten centimeters below me. He loved my height so much and was so proud of him that my complex was gone. He liked when I wore high heels, with him I felt absolutely comfortable. We are not together, but now for me there is no problem of being with someone who is shorter than me. And shoes with heels now also often wear.

Ivan

advertising specialist

I was always very thin, weighed less than sixty kilograms - and with a height of one hundred and eighty centimeters it was especially striking. It would seem that nothing special, but our society is quite conservative in terms of determining masculinity. In addition, sport did not interest me, so I did not possess either powerful hands or a broad back, which are so often associated with the image of an attractive man. Not once have I heard from girls that I don't look like a man. It was especially insulting that they reject not even my personality, but gender. It is as absurd as to claim that girls with small breasts are not like women. In addition, their words fell on the soil prepared by their parents. When I was a teenager I still bought clothes with my mother, she did not miss the opportunity to sigh heavily: "Oh, how very thin you are."

I was shy of my body. In winter, I felt more comfortable: when the clothes are bigger, it is easier to seem voluminous. So much so that in one very hot summer I wore long sleeve shirts. I realized that I need to change. I signed up for the gym, began to work out regularly on simulators. My muscles began to grow, and with them my self-confidence. It’s not just that I’ve become a little more conventionally beautiful. Working on my appearance, I began to understand her better, and along with understanding came acceptance. I stopped being ashamed of my body so much that recently I spent part of the holidays in an ecovillage on the seashore, where I was absolutely naked among people, not a bit embarrassed about my body.

Evgenia

marketer

I have never had serious problems with self-esteem. And there are no problems with male attention. But for ten years I have been waging war with me. The fact is that everything is not so with me: my fingers are crooked, my lips are thin, my knees are bony. A third size chest with a waist size of fifty eight centimeters adds a touch of vulgarness, no matter what I wear. It is only beautiful in the pictures, but it is terribly inconvenient to live with it. Whatever I do, everything does not fit: the braces did not help to align the teeth, the hair color caused an association with excrement. I dyed my hair, wore dark lenses, so that this blue color did not irritate me, I thought - now this highlighter will make Megan Markle out of me. Gym, carbohydrate-free diet, solarium, nails of different sizes and shapes.

At one point I am tired. I am tired of comparing, inventing new ideals for myself, masking, choosing which lips I will make for myself, walking with uncomfortable nails, spending a lot of money on all these attributes of beauty. But the main thing is that every time I get tired of understanding that I don’t like myself in the new image. Now, when I think: “What a beautiful girl, I wish I could be like that,” I remember how many forces I should pursue in this way, but in the end I understand that I don’t have any options other than being myself. I don't think this is self love, but something like accepting yourself. Every time there is sadness in the soul about the fact that I am not Kim Kardashian, I remember how much whining awaits me, how much money will be spent on adjusting to the new trend, and I think: “To hell. I'm tired. I'll be myself.”

Anna

journalist

I was a terribly notorious teenager. I was afraid once again to open my mouth in the presence of peers, if only they would not look at me. In the second year I jumped in marriage. Теперь знаю, что это из-за неуверенности в себе: спасибо, что меня такую кривую-косую хоть кто-то "взял". В браке стало чуть полегче, но всё равно до свободы от комплексов мне было как до луны.

After the divorce, my self-esteem was completely destroyed. Four years ago, I quite seriously considered myself not worthy of anything or anyone, and terrible as a mortal sin. Unfortunately, I myself could not think of how cool I really am. For this, I needed a man who fell in love with me. He so often said that I was the most beautiful and sexy woman in the world, that I began to believe in it. We had to part, but after this parting, my self-esteem not only did not go down, but also soared. And at some point I understood what I had known all my life, but I didn’t believe it until the end: no matter what you look like, how many acne and “extra” kilograms you have if you are confident, kind and sympathetic person. The ideal figure will not save the bitch. Yes, I strive for clean skin, a good figure, well-groomed hair, but at first I fell in love with myself the way I am, with all the flaws. If you hate yourself and try to change something, nothing good will come of it.

Alexandra

advertising project manager

Since childhood I was accompanied by the epithet “large”, and I still cannot stop associating myself with it. If with a grandmother we met her acquaintances on the street, she, as if apologizing, explained that I was tall in her parents. I thought for a long time that they were gulliver. And when I grew up, it turned out that they were both one hundred and seventy centimeters tall, like me.

Weight is even worse. Relatives, acquaintances, a clothes retailer, a masseuse and a hairdresser groaned, complained and recommended to lose weight urgently, as if I were one step away from obesity. It was never close, just at school for a while I was taller and heavier than some. Then we all caught up in height, but I always felt bigger. It's funny that none of my commentators was an athlete or an adherent of a healthy lifestyle. I think I was lucky that their comments did not lead me to an eating disorder. While on vacation after the first class, I saw enough of how my aunt expels cellulite using folk remedies, and also began to freeze myself a bottle of water so that I could massage it later.

I always had a lot of friends, an active social life, I was never bullied by my classmates. In adolescence, a gentleman with whom we met two times, said that I need to lose weight. The rest of the relationship experience never made me doubt myself in the physical sense. Guys, thank you! I recently went on a date in the pool. I feel in this kind of actionism: yes, I have a big and not perfect butt, but Apollo is near.

My figure is far from the instagram models, some of its features, I’m confused, but I can’t get mad at my body. It is proportionally folded, and all the "extra" kilograms I ate on my own. When my weight becomes more comfortable and it bothers me, I reduce late dinner. And no longer discuss this topic with relatives. I will not say that I completely accepted myself. It is rather a compromise. But now I can formulate why it does not bother me. I see a lot of girls with beautiful bodies. But I have a cool sense of humor, coquetry twenty-four by seven, I am adequate - well, the dream is the same.

Lida

stylist

Throughout my life I was tormented by various complexes. I especially suffered from being too thin: forty-three kilograms with a height of one hundred and sixty centimeters. My idol was Jennifer Lopez, and the boys called me "board-two-nipple." It terribly depressed me, at that very moment I began to compare myself with others. This was aggravated by the fact that important for me men chose women of opposite types to me. It seemed to me that I do not like men, although now I understand that I just wanted to please everyone.

By the age of twenty, I gained weight, so much so that I had to lose weight later. I had a very defiant image that attracted men, and it pleased me. But then suddenly there were problems with the skin, and as a result - post-acne. It killed my self-esteem and affected many areas, including personal life.

But once I realized that I live in hell, and drove myself there. I am very tired of this condition, and then I realized that it was not my appearance that was in my head. With the help of a psychologist over the past six months, I reconsidered my relationship with myself. I made a lot of complaints to myself, not realizing that I was an ordinary person with a set of physical characteristics. It is important to work with what you have, and not to sculpt from yourself what you are not. On the nose age changes, I try to accept them. I can look good at my age, and not pretend to be a young charmer. And this is great.

PHOTO: Urbanoutfitters (1, 2, 3)

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