[Mental Note]
I have always seen myself in this one scene in Howl’s moving Castle. Sophie the Hat-maker, who has been turned into an old grandma, seek protection and another job in Howl’s magical castle. So she became his housekeeper, pleasing the creatures of the house until one day.
Howl, the handsome magician, took a bath without noticing that Sophie has reorganized his “hair chemicals”. The magician walk out of the room with banana-yellow hair, fly off the handles, and start a torrent of anguish-collapse-of-handsomeness anger. Sophie burst into tears and then said:
- You think you got it bad? I’ve never once felt beautiful in my entire life.
And that hits me, because, well, I feel just the same everyday, even though I think it is bad and mentally unhealthy.
It is paradoxical because the truth is if I ask someone: “How do I look?”, the answer would be: “You look fine” or mostly “You look cute and beautiful/great”. No matter how frequently I hear these compliments, I have always return to the dark corners of the internet, where people would say the same thing over and over again: That my nose is ostentatiously big, my eyebrows are ridiculous, I am too hairy to be a twink, my face look like the moon’s surface and my lips are not even asymmetrical, and my reserved attitude is a gigantic turn-off.
I think the thing about people who are close to me is that sometimes, if (in certain cases) not most of the time, they LIE. Sometimes I would look like a obviously total disaster or a blob of mental mess, and some friends would say: “You look great”. Of course I know them well enough to grasp their sense of beauty: they could die to see Taylor Swift, yet I don’t think they would sit with me in 20 more seconds without feeling uncomfortable. The harsh words from unknown people attached in my brain because they are true.
But how do I know if they are true or not?
Maybe there is a difference between what is true and what feels true.
I think one should visit the temple of aestheticians to answer this question. What is beautiful? A giant room filled with polka dots stickers on white furnitures or a snow-white Siberian dog with ocean blue eyes? Is beauty the lost-arm-Athena or the originally fully coloured sculptures of ancient Rome? One  surprising, albeit established, school of thought in the study of aesthetic claims that beauty entails both the gore and the angelic. The fusion of these two opposing features creates what is called beauty. So beauty, to me, is by no means Donald Trump’s big ass golden apartment or Victoria Secret’s line up. Part of the reasom why H’hen Nie is so popular is that because her beauty seems so familiar and close to life. It isn’t looks that kills, it is looks that feel like normal. We all know non-white skin (or whatever paraphrased version we have nowsaday: pearl skin, clear skin,...) is not our standard. Yet, I like H’hen Nie because, just like me, she exists as a gentle slap in the face of society’s established standard.
So... How do I really look? How can I even rate this without relying on other’s opinion?
The truth is the essence of look is blatantly nothing. Human, after all, are just a bunch of crazy apes with ever-changing attitudes on everything: clothes, eyebrows, breast and hair color. So looks are cancelled. If I were a self-help author, I would probably end here and say: “Well, as we can all see, Beaty doesn’t matter, but sometimes we can consider just stop complaining and start living”. Yeah, of course I know that others have it worse, and water in Africa doesn’t have children to drink. But I see this as a truthful moment for me to really believe that I am somewhat ... beautiful. Somehow, I still want to believe so. So now, I have this insatiable need to be beautiful, glamourous, gorgeous, even though I have deconstructed the definition of beauty itself.
But what about the feeling of being beautiful?
How can we feel beautiful? Maybe conforming to the stereotypes is not bad in the least. Style, gesture, body movement, makeup. 
But there is even more to that. Maybe there is another form of beauty, raw, charming, sexy even. Well, to me it is “learnedness”. 
Okay, okay, hear me out people. I am not convincing you that nerdy twinks with big  fat glasses are the new  Leonardo DiCaprio; so you can keep whatever ding-dong opinion you have about them. No, I would draw a parallel between the big brains and the handsome.
The bratz have physical features people admires: Chiselled chin, Large eyes, muscle or whatever the advertisements thinks is beauty recently (sorry im an oldie); people therefore are willing to form a crowd around the handsome (yes, not all people). We Asians do the same with smart people: They have the knowledge we envy, people are willing to listen to the experts, they are admired or even obsessed by our parents, teachers, colleagues, they have a voice. Being around a nice-looking man/women/them is just as easy as being around a wise one: they can help you with the homework, they may listen to you attentively and give non-destructive advises, they think more and understand better.
So, at least to me, cleverness is a form of beauty (or sexiness, may I say).
Anyway.
In a nutshell, after thorough considerations, I am disgustingly beautiful.
Lots of inspiration drawn from Natalie Wynn.
[This is a mental note, so some details may be mistaken for another. I write & have responsibility for my words, You read and give constructive feedback. Please stop treating spiderum like a Holy textbook] Thank you.
Khói - 20/06/2020