What I gained when I lost pretty privilege.

Tips on navigating the world after you've lost your sparkle.

Several years ago I had a bit (a series) of a mental breakdown(s). There were many contributing factors after a life of bumps and bruises but my mind finally said “if you won’t give me peace, I’m going to take a piece out of you”.

Some might believe that my breaking point was nursing a newborn while monitoring online bilingual kindergarten, primarily consisting of native Spanish speakers, with a child who in fact did not speak any Spanish at all. Of course all the while monitoring my third graders classes (upstairs) and my own part time remote workload. Did I fail to mention my husband is a first responder? So yeah, he was gone and I was living a life my nervous system couldn’t have ever dreamed of.

It turns out, when you push your body to the absolute brink- it cleverly finds a way to shut it all down and that’s exactly what happened. While I was temporarily unavailable to this reality, my mind was twisting and bending reality to try and make sense of what life had become.

After that, life was a little different. I hope you never experience truly questioning your sanity, but once your mind plays tricks on you, it’s incredibly difficult to trust yourself again. Each day became a battle of anxiety, exhaustion and survival mode while my world fell away piece by piece. Of course now, in 2025, we know that the pandemic was just the beginning of the unraveling but- to my past self it was a monumental moment.

Eating was extremely comforting during that time, and when my own eyes saw empty shelves and people desperately gathering survival supplies in person my body started stocking up for the long winter. I’d like to think this was a little bit of ancestral epigenetics at play. Historically, my family line has survived a few famine’s and I think I know why. This was when I had to let go of everything and just trust my body, listen to her and relearn to trust my instinct and sometimes my instinct told me that bread was actual heaven. No regrets.

Of course this is on the heels of my absolute healthiest pregnancy, my only medicated pregnancy, and I had reached a near euphoric milestone that coincided exactly with my best hair era- I had truly mastered the SAHM lifestyle and I had receipts. In my last pregnancy I actually lost weight, which is questionable, but I felt confident, I felt healthy, and I felt like ME. Then it all came tumbling down.

I gained 30 pounds and what is a breakdown without an extreme hair chop. I got busy with a razor and gave myself the queerest haircut I could imaging and thus a new version of me was born. This version was not small, she had zero fucks to give and she was *barely* holding on. I fought each day to be here, moment by moment I begged for the strength to continue- she had zero time to put on makeup or plan her outfits. Plus, I would sweat my makeup off profusely as I bravely left the house to go to the dentist, even though everything in my body told me not to go. I now understood what it is to “let myself go”. I expected to feel ashamed but instead I began to feel liberated as I noticed the public starting to have a different response to me.

No one was rude, I didn’t not receive any comments. Truly the only thing that happened when I lost my pretty privilege is that people acted as if I didn’t exist. After a harrowing time of being drenched in sweat each morning as I awoke, I wasn’t afraid of being perceived anymore. I realized that with little effort I could exist in the world without carrying the burden of being desired. When you let go of controlling the narrative of your appearance you are free to develop into the purest version of you. When being pretty is a part of your personality it limits you to expressing only what you think is acceptable. I’m so glad to be done with that.

Finally, I was free and I had a few years before my hair and self confidence would grow back, but I had a pretty little secret. I knew that deep down inside of me there was a hot person and that right there made all the difference. I took notes on how new coworkers would treat me based on my experience, and I am currently experiencing the most delicious come back of returning to my healthiest self while the onlookers see me move from the goo phase to a butterfly.

“Letting myself go” was the best thing I could have ever done for myself to loose all the toxic waste in my life and move forward with a clean slate. Obviously we are bombarded with media that tells us to never be caught fat, and that it’s fine to call teachers ugly, because obviously the only value teachers bring to our lives is whether they are some kind of Wendy Peffercorn beacon of childhood development, which is weird. The experience of losing this privilege was brutal, but the progress I’ve made from it is insurmountable. I can only imagine how life could be if we all allowed ourselves the feel the pain of loosing privilege in exchange for a more equitable future.

Photo by Shamblen Studios on Unsplash