How I went from feeling ugly to loving selfies

Hi there, I'm going to do a post today which is quite personal - it is about feeling ugly. It is quite a personal topic but I'll like to share this journey I took to come to terms with my self image. I grew up feeling ugly and just accepting that it was my fate in life to be ugly. Let's start at the very beginning in my childhood - I was brought up believing that I was ugly and I didn't just mean like "oh he's never going to be a supermodel but he's average," I mean my parents went out of their way to tell me just how ugly I was for a very strange reason: my parents had their own issues with their self-image, especially my mother. She never felt beautiful, my father was never the kind of man who would praise her for her looks, assure her that he found her attractive and surprise her with a bunch of roses just to brighten up her day: no his approach was more like, "you're so ugly but I took pity on you and married you, so you should be eternally grateful to me for having made that choice." To be fair, my father was no oil painting either to put it mildly, but neither of them were interested in making any effort to either assure each other in that department or to try to look attractive to the other party. Their concept was very simple: I'm married, I'm off the market, I'm not looking to seduce anyone so I can afford to get fat and become as unattractive as possible with no consequences. To be fair to them, their attitude on the matter was very typical of most Singaporeans of their generation and that was instrumental in convincing me as a child that I was so ugly. 

I remember how my mother got really angry with me when I suggested that my classmate's mother (let's call her Mrs Lee, not her real name) was beautiful. To be fair, she wasn't exactly some kind of beauty queen - rather, she was simply an estate agent and thus made an effort to look presentable to her clients when trying to make a sale. Thus she was always smartly dressed and you could see that her hair and make up was always immaculate. Ironically, my mother had never ever met Mrs Lee before, their paths simply never crossed. But my mother immediately decided Mrs Lee was a whore, a slut trying to seduce men and was nothing short of a prostitute from Geylang who offered $20 blowjobs. My mother's justification was that Mrs Lee was a married woman with children, no respectable mother would disgrace herself by tarting herself up like a whore. That's just the way my mother deals with the challenges of feeling less attractive than other women around her - rather than try to make herself prettier by making more of an effort with her appearances, she simply demonizes any woman who is deemed pretty or attractive. The lengths my mother would go to were quite extraordinary: once she accused my sister of using perfume and my sister said no, that's just the new shampoo making my hair smell nice. My mother smelled my sister's hair and then the shampoo to confirm that it was the source of the scent, she then (in a most dramatic manner) proclaimed the shampoo to be the devil's work and poured it down the drain in the street outside. She was so angry with the shampoo that no one dared to challenge her when she was in that state, but that's how she felt about any effort on my sister's part to try to be attractive - no, she wanted my sister to feel as ugly as she did and she made it very clear how she felt about even something, as innocent as my sister's choice of shampoo. 

So that's the context of my childhood whereby I was brought up believing that not only was I ugly, but being ugly was the norm and that any form of vanity (associated with being attractive) was the ultimate sin. Was I ugly? Well, allow me to to describe myself to you from those days: I was this kid from a working class family in Singapore. I wore thick glasses and being poor, I never had nice clothes or expensive trainers. I remember my school bag was this free bag that was given away by this tour agency - so whilst my classmates showed up at school with the most fashionable sports apparel and a bag with the Nike logo on it, I was advertising Nam Ho tour agency on my bag. Of course, the rich kids in school poked fun at that bag and thus with both my parents and my peers going out of their way to tell me I was not just ugly and unattractive, I guess it was just something I accepted like being right-handed and I got used to it. After all, when I was growing up, my favourite form of escapism was watching American TV programmes like Beverley Hills 90210, Twin Peaks and the X-Files. My vision of what good looking guys looked like were based on the heroes in those TV shows and clearly, being the nerdy, geeky, working class teenager from a poor Singaporean family (oh and I suffered from really bad acne in those days as well), I knew it my head that I looked absolutely nothing like the heroes in the programmes I looked up to. I hated looking so ugly though, I remember in 1994, my self-esteem was so low I refused to be photographed that year which was such a shame as all I have are the memories in my head of what I did that year but I couldn't bear to look in the mirror - never mind allow myself to be photographed, so I don't even have a photo from 1994. 

Some people may wonder what it is like to feel ugly: it's quite complex. I know this guy from work,  so let's call him Conan (not his real name). Conan is not just fat but morbidly obese, yet he has just given up when it comes to his battle with obesity. He makes no effort to try to watch his diet - even when he has a cup of coffee, I see him add four lumps of white sugar into a small cup of coffee (but I don't say anything even if I am silently judging him). I don't want to guess what is going on in his head but clearly, Conan has just accepted that he is fat and doesn't want to do anything about it. So he goes on eating whatever he enjoys eating (in massive quantities) and he is also a very heavy drinker as well, he has scant regard for the impact of his health and the rest of us around him just shrug our shoulders. After all, Conan is an adult who can make his own decisions, it has never occurred to me to try to give him any kind of health advice pertaining to his weight situation. Conan simply accepted that he is fat the way I supposed I accepted that I was very ugly as a teenager. But just because you accept your fate in life doesn't mean you're happy with it - allow me to illustrate my point: I was very poor as a child, I saw my richer friends enjoy a much higher standard of living and whilst I accepted that my parents couldn't provide me with all those things that my richer friends had, I couldn't help feeling envious and jealous of my richer friends. Even if I were to stop myself from ever complaining or saying a single word to acknowledge those feelings of envy jealousy, they were still there in my head all those years, tormenting me and making me feel really depressed about the whole situation. But that's my point, we often have too much pride to even talk about our problems. 

Thus I went through all those years fighting those feelings: I was poor, working class and ugly. Feeling sorry for myself wouldn't change all that and I wanted to at least retain some shred of dignity - I didn't want the world around me to know how I felt about the situation. Perhaps that's the same way Conan puts up a brave face about his obesity - when I meet him, I would greet him and say, "hi Conan, good morning, how are you?" He would reply and say something like, "good morning Alex, I'm fine thank you, how about you?" He doesn't start telling me how he frustrated he feels about his obesity and that's a perfectly normal response. Even if we are frustrated with something that is wrong with our lives, we often choose not to say anything about it with our friends. We just put on a brave smile and pretend that everything is just fine. In any case, I turned to two other things in my life to try to deal with my self-esteem in a healthier manner. Firstly, I studied hard and got good grades. Secondly, I trained hard and became a brilliant gymnast; so at least I could say to myself, "yes I'm poor and ugly, but at least I'm very smart and great at sports." I was at least able to focus on the two things that I was indeed very good at, so I could at least try my best to try to forget how ugly I felt whenever I looked in the mirror. For the first 20 years of my life, I don't recall anyone ever telling me that I was good looking but there were plenty who called me ugly. I don't think my experience was that unique, I believe many others went through the same thing. So my regular readers will probably know that I have an Instagram profile which is mostly full of my selfies - so how did someone who grew up feeling so extremely ugly all the time transform into this egotistical narcissistic who loves posing for the perfect selfie when most kids who grew up feeling ugly continue feeling ugly all throughout their adult life? 

What transformed me and saved me was the world of drama and theatre: it started in my A level days when I did theatre studies & drama (TSD) as an A level subject and for your practical exam, you needed to pick two items from this list. Firstly, you had to either be an actor or a director (I chose acting) and then you had to specialize in one technical aspect like lighting, set design, costume, hair & make up, sound or choreography/stage combat (I chose sound). However, as an actor, I did work with a fellow student who picked costume as her technical aspect for the exam: I remember how she went through the script in great detail, meticulously picking out every single piece of costume for my character down to the finest detail. I remember how she had to borrow a rather expensive ring for me to wear on stage and she told me, "please be very careful with that ring, I had to borrow it from my uncle and if I lose it, I swear he would kill me." I did wonder if it was worth all that trouble: would the examiners even notice the right and if they could, how much of the detail of that ring would they be able to notice without actually me holding my hand right up to their faces so they could examine the ring? But given how low my self-esteem was in those days, I loved acting because it allowed me to become someone else on stage during the performance, I could stop being me and I could totally inhabit that character I was playing and if my performance was good, the audience would believe that I was that character and not just some drama student. Thus I embraced that whole aspect of transforming myself into the character once I got into costume and stepped up onto that stage: it was like magic, I loved it so much and I really enjoyed being someone else and not myself. 

My regular readers will know that I resumed acting when I settled down in Europe and I have worked on some productions with extremely high budgets - I had a role in a 2017 German film with the highest budget ever and no expenses were spared on getting the right items to create the perfect costume for each and every single character in the film. I recall that in 2014 when I was in Cologne, Germany playing the role of a mafia boss, they made me try on over 30 rings because they felt that my character would wear an expensive ring. The two costume designers were having this super long discussion in German as to what kind of message the ring should send out: should it be ostentatious? A show of wealth? Should it be something that demonstrated membership of a certain mafia gang? Or should they avoid something too over the top and opt for something expensive but subtle? Oh the irony was that in the final product, it was virtually impossible to even notice the ring they selected in the end on my finger because there wasn't a close up on my hand with the ring. They went through all that trouble over such a tiny detail and in the end, it wasn't even seen at all. But nonetheless, this kind of process demonstrates just how important the role of costumes are to the character in the world of TV: when we see a character on our TV screens, the costume designers want the viewers to form an impression and opinion of the character based on what they see at once. Is he a confident man or someone who is quite nervous? Do people respect him or do people look down on him? Do we want our viewers to be scared of this man? When you start asking questions like that, that is when you realize why they fuss over every little detail like the ring the man would wear. 

I hate to be shallow but one of the key turning points for me was in early 1997 - that was when I got contact lenses and I swear it really boosted my self-confidence when it came to my self-image once I was able to show my face in public without those thick geeky glasses. It was one of those things that changed my life - I only regretted not having done so a lot earlier given how comfortable and convenient it was. For the first time in my life, I was actually happy with what I saw in the reflection when I looked in the mirror and quite frankly, I had no idea simply getting rid of the glasses would result in such a huge impact because hindsight is 2020 of course. If I had known, I would have gotten contact lenses a lot sooner. 1997 was also the year I moved to London for my university studies and I enjoyed socializing on the gay scene then - now for those of you not familiar with that term, it means going out to gay bars and clubs where you can meet other gay men and socialize. If I went to a regular bar or club, chances are I would be chatting up a straight man but in a gay bar/club with a name as blatant as G-A-Y, then the guys there can at least remove that element of doubt, knowing that any guy you chat up is gay. Allow me to share with you an experience from that period: I went to a gay bar with a friend (let's call him Michael, not his real name) and Michael is very handsome. But after an evening of chatting, he left the bar with another good looking guy and I went home on my own. I realized that even if I befriended these super gorgeous gay guys in London like Michael, they would friend-zone me; they would gladly hang out with me but when it came to sexual attraction, I was still out of his league. Given that I had grown up feeling ugly and thus I simply accepted that to be the case in London and that the contact lenses weren't enough to make me more attractive on the gay scene. 

I managed to make peace with my self-image through the world of acting: if I look back at my acting career, I have acted so many different kind of characters. Allow me to name some of the more memorable ones from that long list: a Chinese soldier at the Tiananmen Square massacre, a palace guard, a Japanese government official, an antiques expert, an evil mafia boss, a kungfu expert in medieval China, a dishonest shopkeeper, a breakdancer, a karaoke champion, an angry businessman on a flight, a super successful entrepreneur, a K-pop singer, a court translator, an unhappy chef, a ninja, an estate agent in Shanghai, an Inuit comedian in Bratislava, a professional gambler, a radio DJ, an investment banker, an advertising executive, a concert pianist in Prague, a scary ghost, a Russian NGO aid worker, a footballer, a drug dealer, a secret agent spy, a conman in Beijing, an assassin killer, a surfer, a soldier who gets killed when he gets shot in the head in the battle field, a Taiwanese accountant who loves football, a Cambodian dancer, a policeman and a priest - I've been both Santa Claus and Santa's elf and the most extraordinary role has got to be when I played a straight man who was running away from his girlfriend after he was told that his baby son was severely autistic. After having played that many roles, I then came to the conclusion, "why do I have to be 'myself' - what does that even mean? Why can't I just decide what kind of character I want to be and then I can write my own script to my life story, do my own costume design and be that person I want to be. I don't have to be the person I was growing up in Singapore because I have left that person behind a long time ago when I got on that flight to London a very long time ago. Thus if I could play all those diverse characters as an actor over the years, then surely I can play the character called, "the person I would like to be". 

Mind you, not all actors go through that process even if they have been acting for years. In 2010, I was in a film where I was the protagonist's brother, so it wasn't a lead role but I had plenty of fun with it as I was paired up with this actor whom we shall call Wolf (obviously not his real name). We played a pair of gangsters who terrorized the neighbourhood, shooting people in the head, committing terrible crimes in East London and hanging out with drug dealers, pimps, whores and other casual criminals. The funny thing about Wolf was that he was nothing like the character he played: his character was this bald, evil, violent gangster who would take great pleasure in executing his enemies by shooting them in the head; but in real life, Wolf was quite an effeminate gay man who dabbled in cross-dressing. He was a struggling actor who had a part time job in a train station to try to make ends meet - whilst his character was so powerful, ruthless and confident, whilst in real life, Wolf was the complete opposite of all that. I remember that evening after our last day of filming, we chatted for a while and I could see that Wolf was clearly emotional that the experience was coming to an end. He had really enjoyed his time on the project not just because he was doing what he enjoyed the most, but there was an element of, "time to go back to my miserable life, I can't join you guys for the party tonight as I have to be at the train station tomorrow morning at 7:30 am as that's when my shift starts. It has been fun, I'll never forget you guys." I did think, why does it have to end here Wolf? If you're so miserable with your life, why can't you become more like the character you played in the film as you clearly liked being this character? That character possessed all of these qualities you'd like to have so why does it all have to end now just because the camera has stopped rolling and the director has yelled 'cut'?

Don't get me wrong, the character Wolf played in the film was a nasty villain and I'm not suggesting for a second that he abandons his quiet life working at the train station for a life of crime. Let me tell you about this scene we did together: in this scene, Wolf questions my loyalty after he suspected that I might want to gang up with my sister to double cross him so he pulls out his gun and points it right at my head, he then warns me that he wouldn't hesitate to blow out my brains if he even thought I would dare to think of doing something like that. There was this uncomfortable moment when he held my gaze and we stared right into each others' eyes until the director yelled cut. At that moment, I remember saying, "woah, you really scared me there, that felt so real." His response was a weird one, he said, "oh really? Wow, thanks! It felt incredible, that was so much fun, I want to do it again!" Given the kind of person Wolf was in real life, he would never be that aggressive and assertive, he would never ever threaten someone like that but when he was in character, oh he was very convincing indeed. I think Wolf would love to be equally confident in real life but that simply wasn't the case even if he was so convincing acting as the scariest mafia boss in East London, I didn't feel that I knew Wolf well enough by then to tell him to change his life, give up his poorly paid job at the train station and become a man far more like the character he really enjoyed playing. After all, I had only met Wolf on the first day of the shoot and so I barely knew him at that point. In any case, he simply went back to his quiet life and then we lost touch after the project. But in this case, acting was just a bit of fun, a form of escapism for Wolf but it didn't fundamentally change him at all, which was a shame. 

A lot of haters would say that not "being yourself" is somehow a betrayal, being dishonest or fake. But I think that's a false premise, after all, I was so utterly miserable as a teenager growing up with low self-esteem. What have I got to lose by becoming someone else as an adult, someone whom I actually liked and could feel comfortable with? I get the feeling that a lot of these haters suffer from the same self-loathing and low self-esteem, they probably have a lot of issues and don't like what they see in the mirror yet they have never ever had the benefit of an acting career - they have never experienced being transformed into a totally different character through the magic of showbiz (and a large budget to spend on everything from special effects to costume design to stunt coordinators. And of course, I need to give myself some credit in the acting department as well - when an actor steps on stage to play Hamlet, he needs to convince the audience to suspend their disbelief and buy into the story that they are watching Hamlet on stage and not just some actor doing a Shakespeare play. This involves a certain level of skill that not everyone can have and that's why not everyone can simply change their image and become another person, a nicer version of the person they'd like to be. Most people think they don't have a choice in the matter because they don't have the tools or skills to do the kind of transformation an actor would on stage but what they don't realize is that my circumstances are different - I actually do have the resources, tools and skills to become a different person, a better person, a person that I actually like; so either they can't understand this process at all or they are just jealous, as they are unable to undertake that same transformation that I went through. 

For a lot of these haters who simply don't understand the process that I had been through, regardless of whether or not they are happy with their self-image, they would simply conform with others from their community, often turning into their mother/father in due course as they get older. For most people, this process is totally normal because that's exactly what their peers around them do. My regular readers will know that I used to work for an Estonian company and one of my former colleagues (let's call her Natalia, not her real name) there has turned into a very overweight, grumpy middle-aged woman (just like her mother). It seems that Natalia has done a cost-benefit analysis and that she has decided that it wasn't worth her time and effort to try to look beautiful or to conform to any kind of conventional standards of beauty for women in Estonia today and that she would rather just abandon any notion of a diet or using cosmetics/fashionable clothes to make herself more beautiful and attractive because pleasing others is just too much hard work. Natalia is just an average Estonian woman who works in an office, she doesn't have access to the kind of tools or resources that a wealthy celebrity like Rebel Wilson or Adele would have to lose a substantial amount of their body weight in order to conform to gain the approval of others. Thus I simply back off when it comes to the issue of Natalia's body image, it's none of my business and it is a Pandora box that I just don't want to touch. The key difference in my case however is that I never did this transformation to try to please others around me, I simply wanted to please myself, improve my self-esteem and be happier with what I see in the mirror. I don't care what anyone else thought about my image as long as I am content with the person I have become - is Natalia really pleasing herself by going down this 'I don't care' route then?

Thus the character that I've decided to play is that of a very successful businessman who is always in a suit and tie - that's the image I present through Instagram and there are a few reasons why I have chosen that character: firstly, if I was a costume designer on a movie set and I was told, "you need to dress this character coming in to meet you later, his character is a very successful businessman, he is the CEO of a big bank and the moment he appears on the screen, we want all the viewers to get that image of a super successful businessman at once. Don't be subtle with him at all because this character only appears in two  short scenes in this movie, so we really need to make sure the viewers get that impression loud and clear within a split second." Yeah, so that's the brief I've taken to craft my image, it's not about being subtle, it's quite the opposite - it's taking the business suit and tie image to quite an extreme within that theatrical setting and having a lot of fun with it. Oh yeah, I am really enjoying this process! I like the image I have created because if I am going to be this bald, middle aged 45 year old man, I may as well play the role of the successful businessman rather than do what Natalia in Estonia is doing and simply give up on trying to look attractive. Here's the irony: as I gave up trying to please others and trying to please myself by crafting an image of the man I'd like to be, I started getting so much attention online and that was never something I sort to do. I am still astonished at the number of likes I get for some of my post on Instagram even though I'm really seeking to please myself. Okay, even if a lot of that attention is in the form of younger people seeking a rich, older sugar daddy, for the first time in my life, I'm having scores of women chat me up online everyday and I just can't stop laughing at the situation as they're totally oblivious to the fact that I'm obviously gay. 

Before I finish, can I just point out the elephant in the room please? I still have the same face all these years and as for my body, I'm a lot heavier now than I was when I was 18. Back then, I was the same height but about 22 kgs lighter because of all that gymnastics training. So undoubtedly, I had a much better body that was all muscle no fat compared to my relatively average dad bod that I have today. Yes I wore glasses back then but I also had a full head of hair and all I had to do was take off the glasses but today, I need a wig given how bald I've become. It's not like I have had some extensive plastic surgery in my adulthood to become more attractive - quite the opposite, apart from swapping the glasses for contacts (and then I got Lasik in 2015) I've gained weight and lost all my hair. Thus logically speaking, I should feel less attractive and more ugly today, but the journey has been in the opposite direction. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that feeling confident about how you look and liking your image has far less to do with your weight or hair, but far more to do with your self-confidence and making the most of what you have. But is it really that simple though? Could Conan and Natalia simply say, "I'm perfectly happy being the way I am, there's nothing wrong with being a bigger person and I'm going to take loads of selfies everyday and upload them onto social media to encourage more body positivity - I want to show the world that bigger people can be happy too!" Quite frankly, if either of them did that, I wouldn't quite know how to react. On one hand, I truly believe in accepting who you are and becoming the best version of yourself that you can be. On the other hand, the two of them are so morbidly obese that ignoring their weight issue must be a form of self-abuse as I am genuinely concerned about the state of their health. Is there a compromise we can find? 

So that's my rather long journey to get to where I am today, what do you think? Have you ever felt ugly? Why do people end up feeling ugly and how do they deal with that feeling? Is feeling ugly or attractive all about being able to please others around you to seek their approval? What about simply feeling happy with what you see when you look in the mirror and how can we focus on pleasing ourselves when it comes to our self-image? Have you met people like Conan and Natalia before? Is it necessary to experience something as dramatic as becoming an actor to realize that we can simply 'act' the role of another character - a character that we like? In your mind, what kind of character would you like to be? Mind you, I bet even my regulars readers would be shocked that I felt so ugly at the age of 18 I refused to be photographed back then - that's a far cry from the way I would upload selfies onto my Instagram almost on a daily basis! How do we make peace with what we see in the mirror? Please do leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.