The Unpretty

It starts out small--a niggling sensation at the back of your throat, a word you can't quite grasp on the tip of your tongue, a not entirely unpleasant prickling feeling where a blister is forming at the back of your heel. It grows to a monstrous size in no time to speak of--the gross and lingering sinus infection, the crazy-Internet stalking for that damn bit of vocabulary lost, the skin erupted and blood staining your shoe.

It's the curse of The Unpretty.

I have noticed that The Unpretty generally follows a bout of Extreme Prettiness, the latter defined best as the bloom upon the rose, the glowing reviews, the picture-perfect self. These periods are also rare, but oh so divine. The same cannot be said for its rival.

Extreme Prettiness is when all your clothes hang just right on your neatly proportioned frame (and match, and are clean, and fit, and were purchased in this decade, and came off hangers in the closet rather than from the unfolded pile from the floor of freshly laundered fashions from ten years ago.) Extreme Prettiness is when you expertly line your lids and subtly paint your mouth and dust on some shimmer in thirty seconds flat and the result is a dewy, doe-eyed, sweet bird of youth (not a splotchy, shiny, haggard hot mess whose heretofore minimalist hippie-chick routine appears to be no longer an option.) Extreme Prettiness is when you are so in love that everyone knows it at a glance from the after-glow look permanently emanating from your every word, gesture, and smile (instead of the good people of the world recoiling at your clearly woman-scorned-and-soured-on-the-male-race-screaming-drunk-karaoke-anthems-like-Bobby-McGee-at-your-horrified-friends.)

Extreme Prettiness is when you can stay out all night and party like it's 1999 and at dawn still look like you did when it was actually 1999. The Unpretty is when you wake up with your split ends floating in the toilet and a purple rim around your chapped lips.

The Unpretty is like The Mean Reds in the sense that suddenly you are ugly and you don't know what is causing it. Sure there are signs. The jeans that now come with a side of the dread muffin top. The zit that won't quit now spawning a little family of cysts on your cheek. The haircut that acquaintances comment on having happened without the requisite complimentary follow-up. The lipstick that looked lovely at cocktail hour now half-gone and what's left is spitting little flecks into your coffee cup at dessert. These little vanities taken one at a time are conquerable. But sometimes they wreak havoc on your physical being all at once and you join the ranks of The Unpretty.

Equal to the physical confusion that wrecks my concept of my looks when I find myself one of The Unpretty is the lightening-quick paranoia that sets in and consumes my every waking hour. I imagine everyone I know is secretly commenting on my appearance and what they are saying ain't good. I feel as though I have overnight gone from having a healthy sense of self to having no sense of self at all, if said self is now a hideous fat and wrinkled Jabba woman-monster formerly known as me. There is no perspective to be had.

Dressing whilst mired in The Unpretty becomes a tactical nightmare best left to donning a Snuggie 24-7 and completely giving up on all matters sartorial as well as social, as leaving the house and unleashing one's Gummo-ness upon the unsuspecting populace will not make one feel better. Unfortunately one can't call in sick indefinitely, so one assembles an outfit after several tries that manages to be as universally unflattering as it is constricting and possibly a little smelly. Mirrors are best avoided during The Unpretty but in the vain hope that things have significantly improved as quickly as they deteriorated one must go through the looking glass as often as possible, which leads to the discovery of new and devastating flaws (Is that a hair growing out of my forehead? Has that tooth always been a different shade than the rest? Did this shirt have a big hole under the arm this morning?)

The Unpretty leads to tears and recriminations and great wailing and gnashing of teeth, which as you might imagine does not go far in making the situation any better and in fact adds puffy eyes and a cherry red nose and another soupcon of crazy to the mix. Like Miss Havisham before her, in the throes of The Unpretty one retreats to the dusty corners of one's mind while sporting a moldy dress, recalling the good old days of one's great expectations [last week], when one was a sparkling dynamo of It Girl fascination invited to all the best places and breaking all the best hearts with wanton adorableness.

The Unpretty strikes us all, yet there is no warning bell. Suddenly you are ugly and you don't know why. In the past I have noticed it stealthily creeps away only a trifle less insidiously as it crept in, and this gives me hope for the future (i.e., summer.) Although I do sometimes fear that someday it may become a permanent state. In which case I will need a Snuggie and a lot of wine. But until that day, dear goddess, deliver me from the vain pomp and glory of my self-absorption but let me look Pretty while doing it. Because I am nothing if not shallow (except right now, when I am mostly just The Unpretty.)