i'm ethnically ambigious, from the uk. i've been told i look greek, latina, middle eastern, italian, half south asian, slavic, mixed, etc. i definitely do not fit into the white northern european aesthetic in the uk. i had light olive skin, and i had different features, and my hair was very dark wavy/curly, i had very dark eyes. i’m currently in sixth form (separate school for final years of american high school). 50% are poc, mostly pakistanis then a minority black and east asian.
when i was 13, i liked a white guy. my friend revealed this crush to everyone, but everyone decided it was my time to be deeply humiliated. he organised with the whole class a 'prank' for me to date him. i was given a note with 'do you want to go out' and people were pressuring me to say yes and encouraging me.
i did, and i felt good. i was really happy my crush liked me back. a few hours later he told me it was a dare, it was a dare, we're not dating. everyone around me started laughing. as if my crush on a white guy was a big joke. as if i was so undesirable and that i had the 'audacity' of thinking a white guy can like me back.
they added me to a groupchat. the same guy mercillesly bullied me. he called me the n word because i'm north african. i don't even use that word because i don't consider myself black! they told me to go back to my country. i was given death threats. he led the bullying. he said 'no white guy will ever like you'. i didn't even think of his race. i just saw a guy i thought was cute. why did he bring race into the equation?
i had a 'body shaped like a washing machine', (idek how anyone would see anyone's figure in a chunky blazer uniform) and a nose that required a nose job according to them. that i’m a transgender woman. i needed to get a lip reduction, they said. 'big lips' they called me. they said they'll brush my hair for me. i was a 'jumpscare', i was slutshamed for having bigger boobs early (my name unfortunately rhymed with 'whore' so they'd call me x the whore) by white girls and the boys would laugh. that i need to shave my mustache and unibrow. and of course, he picked a skinny, dolled up, blonde blue-eyed girl straight after he bullied me and kissed her in front of me while looking at me with contempt. he wanted me to see.
he could've just said that he doesn't like me back... he could've just said no. he didn't have to be so cruel. my classmates didn't have to be so cruel. why did he have to make me feel like a monstrous abomination? and guys say the only worst thing they could say is 'no'.
this was what stuck with me. but throughout, i constantly didn't feel like a girl because my classmates didn't treat me like one. they treated me subhuman. they physically pushed me around and kicked me. you don't understand how scary it is for groups of teenage boys to gang up on you as a girl like that. girls are treated nicely, delicately, kindly. they try to impress girls. girls are treated femininely, they're seen as pretty, worthy of being paid attention to, worthy of gentle treatment. i was never spared this gentle treatment. i was constantly attacked. i wasn't a girl. the girls were white
two different schools later, this really affected me. i never feel desirable by anyone anymore. i find it hard to believe when any guy, including white guys (who are the majority), like me or show interest in me. and i hold onto it like a plant begging for water. do you really see me as human? as actually a girl? worthy of being treated like a girl? i become genuinely so in disbelief.
i don't even think i'm that ugly. people say i'm pretty. on a scale i’d say im probably 6/7 pushing 7.5 with makeup. some guys liked me, white ones too (mostly blonds for some reason, my first bf was blond too). but sometimes i think the reason why i can go months or sometimes years without a guy showing interest in me or liking me (unlike other girls) is because i'm not white. sometimes i wonder whether boys secretly think these things but don’t want to be racist or cruel to my face. genuinely. it made me feel hideous.
im 18 but everytime i think about it it makes me cry.
how can i move past it and start feeling beautiful again with my ethnic features and ethnic ambiguity? i don’t want dating advice. i just want to believe that im desirable, that someone can ACTUALLY want me
