OYM Day 20: Butterface

OYM Day 20: Butterface

I was never a good student. Not when I was growing up, anyways. I didn’t apply myself to anything academic and frankly, no one seemed to notice. I floated by with B’s and C’s, and to ice the cake, I straight up bombed my SAT’s. I showed up to take the test with zero preparation and it most certainly showed.

I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know what classes to choose, what an elective was, or how to raise my hand and say I needed help. The girl I sat next to in homeroom just told me what I needed to take and I hoped she was right. It didn’t even cross my mind that I could take classes that interested me, let alone guide me to a college major. During my junior year, my high school guidance counselor told me that attending a technical school was in my best interest, as he didn’t think I’d make it at a 4-year college. How did I feel about being a court reporter? This was after I had laid out the brochures for schools at opposite ends of the country, as well as a few overseas. I remember leaving his office, not bothering to collect them but instead leaving them spread across his desk.

I had big dreams as a kid, but none of them involved algebra or Indiana. In high school, my number one priority was my friends. My home life had all but fallen apart by that time and I just needed to feel like I belonged somewhere. And most of the time, my friends gave me that. I was not popular. Not even close. I showed up for my senior pictures dressed as Michael Jackson, for Christ’s sake (every year, at the school talent show, I and a handful of friends would do a dance to a medley of old school MJ songs…and I guess I just couldn’t let go).

All I wanted was to be discovered. For what, I’m not sure. But every morning, I would wake 2 hours before school started, even though my school was only 4 minutes away… and I would curl my hair, make a horrible attempt at covering a devastating rash of acne that spread across my face, and put on an outfit that I had laid out the night before. It was a process… and I guess when you have acne as I did, you want the rest of yourself to look as perfect as possible, to distract people from the real action just dying to be let out of your pores. But every day I just banked on the idea that a casting director would burst into my geography class, scan the room, see me and grab a hold of their chest.

“THAT’S THE ONE”, they’d say. “Acne? What acne?!” they’d continue.

I’d leave my books on my desk and be whisked away to my new life.

My junior year of high school was also the first time I heard the term “butter face”. I had asked to be excused to use the bathroom during class and when I returned, my best friend Kris told me that 2 boys had been talking about me while I was gone. The 2 boys he was referring to looked like if a human and a hyena had offspring, but hey, I’m sure they grew into their droopy eyes, jacked teeth, and large foreheads. It took me a good year or two to figure out what it meant. Initially, I thought the term might mean that I wore too much makeup so that it looked like my face was coated in butter. Or maybe the foundation I used to cover my acne was too yellow, like butter. Then I heard it in a movie and realized they meant that my body was attractive, but not my face. But her face. Butter face. Shout out all the high school goons making people feel insecure when they are literally the poster children for why we still live in a world full of aggressive, racist, entitled, hateful, ignorant dumb-dumbs. You’re killin’ it, guys!

I tried really hard. I wish I hadn’t. The only time my true self really shined through in school was when I was given the opportunity, and it was seldom. My hobbies were reading, making movies, dance, and cracking jokes. None of those words are football, so I was out of luck. But if someone…a teacher, a counselor, a coach, anyone… if anyone would have told me they saw potential in me for anything… I would have fought tooth and nail to prove they were right.

I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that I saw that potential. That the girl I’m looking at, with the overly done hair and the shade of foundation just a bit too light for her skin tone is really going to make a run for it in the future. That she IS funny, and charming, and has an advanced vocabulary for her age. And that she’ll eventually find the right treatment for her acne. And the few boys that used to pick on her in high school all grew up to look like trolls (it’s true, I checked).

And that her superpower will be spotting the potential she sees in others. And telling them, making them swear they won’t forget it.