Being perceived

physicality

1. My personality is built off of how I am perceived

I was once a carefree 9-year-old who interacted with her classmates in silly and fun ways, smiled smiles that were way too big for her face, didn’t worry about doing things that were seen as strange, didn’t care what her body looked like, and was interested in playing or talking with almost any other kid. Then somewhere around the age of 10, a switch flipped and I suddenly was conscious that anytime I was around other people, they could be watching me. Somewhere around the age of 10, we became conscious of our bodies, and were no longer just free-floating spirits. The concept of judgement suddenly dawned upon me, and I no longer navigated social interactions based on how I felt, but rather how I thought the other person perceived me. The point of life no longer felt like to be happy with who I was, but rather, to make other people happy with me.

At first, this concept of judgement made navigating some things very challenging for 10-year-old me, for example while crossing the street I would assume that all the people in the stopped cars were staring at me, and thus not know where to put my hands or what expression to put on my face, etc., because I felt like I was suddenly in a spotlight. (I have since learned that crossing the street is no big deal.) I started being more selective with who I talked to and played with, not because I was less interested in some people, but because I thought some people were less interested in me. I paid much more attention to how I dressed, and my style completely changed -- I went from being a complete tomboy to wearing skirts and hair clips all the time, and trying to open up my eyes bigger.

Over the next few years, I grew more and more aware that I was quite awkward in terms of my appearance and what people saw of me on the outside, and this probably pushed people away from me, some consciously and some subconsciously. Most people saw me as a short, uncultured girl who dressed very plainly, wasn’t exceptionally pretty, and often didn’t know what to do or say other than smile. Over time, my appearance only seemed more important -- physical attractiveness is instant respect in most girls’ friend groups, and in the broader world it’s an immediate universal sign that one has self control, discipline, and/or an air of sophistication and confidence. Not only do many people in the world prune their friend circles to consist only of attractive people, but many others have subconscious biases inclining them to interact with more attractive people.

I came to the conclusion that as a girl, I simply could not be respected unless I was attractive -- and so throughout middle and high school, I genuinely tried to become more attractive, with the constraint that I had very limited options of clothes to wear and ways in which I could actually change my appearance. One of the few things I could do was become less chubby. It sometimes worked, and sometimes didn’t -- becoming attractive took effort and wasn’t exactly natural for me, and I often gave up hope and stopped putting in effort, which led me back to square one. I think there were a total of 1-2 years throughout middle and high school combined during which I thought I was decently attractive.

Eventually, I kinda gave up. Many things that girls did to become attractive I had neither money nor much interest for, for example nice clothing and makeup. Eventually, I accepted the fact that I was probably never going to be that attractive, and I should accept losing the potential respect from people who weigh appearance very highly… which unfortunately is a large portion of the population. I accepted that I was never going to be the center of attention, because I was simply not attractive enough. The most I could do was to be a good supporting character, a wholesome sidekick -- and this was who I’d try to be.

Another part of it was that I had always had a reputation for being innocent and sweet. I’m only 151 cm, so I’ve always been the shortest among peers my age, and children associate height with age and intelligence. It’s very hard to obtain a leader role when other people literally look down on you when they talk to you, and it’s hard to have strong and steadfast opinions when other people could potentially challenge you in intimidating ways. This, combined with the fact that I knew very little about pop-culture and thus had a hard time following my classmates’ banter, led to me obtaining the role of a sweet and innocent child who was nice to everyone and never got in the way. In nearly every in-person friend group I’ve been part of, I’ve kinda been the little sister who didn’t know all of the friend group lore but was just along for the ride and would make the mood a little more buoyant when needed.

I’ve carried this personality all the way to the present day, since it seemed to have been carved out for me since I was young. It ebbs and flows from day to day, so the more positive I feel like other peoples’ perception of me is, the more outgoing and confident I tend to be… but generally, I don’t like to be the center of attention (especially not in-person), am quite peaceful and positive and soft-spoken, and prefer to do things quietly and then showing people the results later, rather than potentially causing a commotion by announcing early on an idea which I think is great. I’ve found it very hard to be taken seriously in-person, so I have resorted to proving myself on paper.

2. It’s so hard to care and not care at the same time

Inherent biases toward attractive people are not a myth, nor are they only possessed by a small portion of the population. I’ve seen both sides -- the benefits of being attractive, and the drawbacks of being not attractive. Throughout my life, there have been 1-2 years (2019 and mid-2022 to mid-2023) during which I was decently attractive, and I have felt a very conscious difference in the way people perceived me during those times. (Only 1-2 years because unfortunately finding the self control, discipline, and motivation to actually be attractive is nontrivial.) I’d say a majority of the genuine compliments I’ve gotten in my life have been during those 1-2 years. Most of these compliments have been from people who are not close friends -- rather, classmates or acquaintances or random strangers -- but they divulge information about how the general public views me. And I care so much about them because in a way, these are actually the most genuine judgements -- they aren’t sugar coated and said just to try and make me feel better (with the exception of my relatives, who can be brutally honest instead of sugar coating things). These are peoples’ genuine impressions of me, when they don’t know much about me yet. On the flip side, when I have been less attractive, I have been ignored and overstepped a lot more -- rendered invisible a lot more -- especially by people who were attractive and charismatic, a category of people that definitely isn’t worth ignoring. Even if I don’t see myself interacting much with random people who I don’t really know, basically any time I make a new in-person friend, it will need to start this way: all we’ll know is the first impressions and the vibes that we get from each other, and that will determine whether we start talking or not.

Because I shape my personality around how I am perceived, thinking that I am perceived well gives me a huge confidence boost. Well, actually not just thinking, but knowing. Not just my friend reading this blog post and reassuring me that they will be my friend no matter what, but a random person who barely knows me, telling me that I radiate positive energy or give off the vibe that I want to. Without this, I have no way of knowing what people actually think of me. Who knows -- my friends could be pretending to like me because they aren’t rude enough to tell me the truth. If people treat me less than I would like to be treated, I immediately conclude that my perception of myself is too high, and doesn’t reflect how people actually see me. If people aren’t as kind to me as I would like, I immediately conclude that I’m not attractive and charismatic enough. I know it’s not a very good mindset, because the other person’s personality can definitely be a factor too, but I do know from firsthand experience that these are things I can do to significantly improve the way in which people treat me.

All this talk about being perceived well, and yet I don’t think I’ve actually put effort into it since high school. Throughout freshman year of college, I barely put any effort into my appearance because I was so focused on academics. I stopped wearing contacts because glasses were more comfortable and allowed me to get more work done, even though they made me look like much more of a nerd. Exercising and eating healthy became much lower on my priorities list, and so I became significantly less fit. Now that it’s summer and I have much more free time, I can actually think about these things again… but the fact that I went a year without thinking as much about how I was perceived, gives me a new perspective. Although I don’t think I was perceived very well, and wasn’t as confident because of it, I did survive. In a way, I feel old and jaded, like I have grown a little bit out of the mindset that my appearance and how I am perceived on the outside should dictate my life. I have also observed, even before college, that most of my achievements and things I’m known for have not been correlated with the physical human that I am -- rather, they’ve been things I’ve done at my desk with just my brain… including this blog.

But I definitely haven’t outgrown it much at all -- my perception of how attractive and charismatic I am, still strongly correlates with how excited I am to meet up with people in-person and how much my personality shines through during said meetups -- and I still blame my own lack of attractiveness and charisma for the suboptimal in-person social interactions that I have with people. It’s just become part of my personality: I’ll try my best, but I don’t expect in-person social interactions to go perfectly or even that well, since I am not perfect or even that well perceived.

3. I want to be known for who I am, not who I appear to be

The worst way to put it is that I kinda feel like a main character trapped inside a side character’s body. I know I’ll never be the main character, but I kinda subconsciously want to, and that’s why I have such complicated thoughts like these. There are barriers ingrained in human society preventing it, like the fact that I’m 151 cm tall, and many people still see me as a juvenile. I still get comments on the streets in chinese about being a “cute child”, I was mistaken for a 12 year old at TSA security last year, and in 7th grade, my teachers didn’t allow me to walk a few blocks from school to my dad’s office at 3pm since they were worried about my safety. I’m usually fine with being seen as the little sister of the friend group, except for when people are having a conversation while standing up and it’s slightly harder for me to see their faces or hear their voices because of the vertical distance, or when I’m talking about some technical topic and people doubt that I know what I’m saying. The most that I can really do to appear more intimidating and knowledgeable when I have to, is to limit how much I smile, and appear serious and confident -- which often ends up happening anyway since I’m so focused on the conversation or what I’m saying that I neglect to put effort into smiling. And to try to prove myself on paper as much as possible, so that I don’t have to prove myself as much in-person.

When I was young, my mom often told me about the topic that she wrote her college essay on: How she wished that humans were just free-floating spirits, minds with emotions, rather than bodies. How she felt that her body had weighed her down, and the pursuit of physical validation had distracted her from the pursuits of pure knowledge and understanding that she actually yearned for. Over time, I’ve related more and more. I do feel that curating my brain and personality how I like it is a more pure and creative endeavor than curating my physical appearance. The former feels more open-ended and authentic to me, while the latter is only skin-deep. I would like to live in a society where you don’t judge me based on how I look, but rather on how I think. And that is precisely why I made this blog.

Yeah, I've discussed it with myself
And I'm disgusted with the way
We are told to have a certain face
A certain weight, be flawless
We aren't pixels on a screen
No, we're humans, we breathe
Every single thing we see, curated
It's overrated

These expectations, they keep weighing me down
My heart is begging me to get the hell out of my head
I'm gonna live inside the upside down
For a minute and pretend

- NCS “Perfect 10”