pretty?

Now Playing: We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Country Mix) by Taylor Swift (and I used to say 'never say never')

I am very unphotogenic. I can look fine in the mirror, someone takes a picture and suddenly I look like a troll.

I don't like cameras.

I've never really thought of myself as pretty. When I was younger it used to really bother me, and I would try so hard to try and conform to this ideal of beauty I had in my head and being endlessly frustrated that it didn't work. Even now I'll do my hair up, put a bit of foundation on, experiment with lipstick.

But sometimes...it is really, really liberating being unattractive.

Sometimes I choose the most nerdy combinations of 'holey trackpants and geeky t-shirts' to walk the dogs in and mentally claim victory when I can walk around the block without some seedy tradies in a van or some cashed up bogan in a cheapskate sportscar that ain't fooling nobody honking their horn or leaning out the window to whistle at me. This doesn't always work, because apparently now dishevelled hair is sexy and guys are now trying to sell that 'WE DON'T LIKE GIRLS WHO WEAR MAKEUP' thing. (fuck off. seriously. we all know you're lying) But sometimes people take look at me, snort in that way that can only possibly mean 'pfft. nerd.' and I'm suddenly very smug because I can be a bitch sometimes. I can be *cruel*. I can also be a bookworm slob.

I'm good at multitasking.

I mean, on school photo day I bullied my sister into perming my hair and put heaps of makeup on. I swung into form with all the grace of a baboon and people kept staring! And whilst it was very nice to get some attention and a few *appreciative* looks and a very cute and awkward email when I got home...honestly, I just wanted to bury my head in a book.

I think the reason that I'm very very cynical about people checking me out is that I'm an old fashioned teenager who spends lots of time PMSing on a steady diet of chick-lit, rom-coms and cookie-dough ice cream. Every single time I've liked a guy, he goes for the look and then just fucks off! Or the guy who likes your conversation and blah blah but then is like 'uh, I just want to be FRIENDS' and then goes to chat up the pretty girl with nothing good to say but 'Oh my gosh, like'. Or, I've been experimenting with the highly dangerous situation of 'I really like you...BUUUUT....' which is...I don't know. Don't do it. So as much as I like attention and flirting and kissing and all that other stuff girls aren't *supposed* to like...I'm not a huge fan of the look-and-go. I don't entirely see it as a means to an end, I'll enjoy the moment, but it's that moment you never want to end that always, inevitably, ends. You catch a train and you go home. I mean, it's like you reach the threshold of action potential and then fuckall happens (I have become *such* a psych nerd). You've got all this adrenaline and excitement and then you realize that the Mummy Boy is a Dickhead.

So me + attraction = ...nothing really. Nothing worth writing about, but somehow I've managed to do four years of that.

At least I know I can kind of garner some attention. It's a lot of fun and I don't think it's degrading at all, to be...you know, me. But I think I'll wait until it's worth my time, when not everyone I know are seventeen year old assholes who are legally obligated to stay within a square mile radius of me and are very very bored. And have only just recently become aware that I have breasts. I swear, the reaction to my entrance to the ball was *hilarious* - it's amazing what a thai silk dress and three hours in a makeup chair can do to even the nerdiest of nerds. Every time boys see me in a dress and heels the look on their faces is so mindblowingly hilarious I immediately kill that aura of feminine mystery by cracking up like a drunk hobo.

When I was little I was an early bird. I would get up at four in the morning and do nothing at all, just sit in bed and marvel at how it can be morning but still so dark (I was a slow kid). Then I'd make myself a four-thirty cup of tea.

These days, I stay in bed until three in the afternoon whenever I can.

Because I'm a lazy asshole who stays up til midnight doing absolutely nothing that is in any way meaningful, I spend a lot of time inhaling breakfast and then winding myself trying to catch my bus which is always annoyingly right on time (unlike the afternoon bus, in which the 4:02pm comes at the exact same time as the 4:32pm just to annoy me). I call these my ponytail days, because that's all I have time to do.

I know I look like shit - 5'3" wearing a snotty private school uniform with all the rebellious disdain of a state-schooler, earphones in, book out, hair in what is possibly the sloppiest ponytail in history. Rings under my eyes, hormonal breakout, the whole shebang. In school uniform I have roughly the same silhouette as an elephant, and I must recall a turtle in the way I lumber along with my schoolbag on my back. It's how I used to dress last year in the eleventh grade when I gave up on the whole institution of love and other animals. It's how I used to dress in primary school after all the boys politely told me that they'd rather eat snails than go out with me. It's a silent protest. I'm ugly, so what?

But I'm happy. I'm happy to blend in, sometimes, to just be in my own little world and not have to worry about the consequences of people wondering what my lips taste like or what I'd let them do before they run off to someone that they can date without their friends lynching them. Because when I'm 'pretty', I get attention from people I know don't give a shit. Boyfriends of the Future will have to somehow want to spend time with grumpy sleep-deprived dishevelled me in pyjamas and ugg boots as well as glamorous dressed up curled hair me in sparkly thigh highs. I'm still the same person, dammit, still the same crass sense of humour and dry cynicism and dubious intelligence. My best friends still smile at me on ponytail days. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder...or how many times you've given someone chocolate.