self-hatred and a diet coke

when hating your body and face is the norm

(Disclaimer: the essay touches on unhealthy body image-related behaviors and disorders, without naming them, from a first-person perspective. Some aspects of the discussion may be difficult. Proceed with caution.)

It’s in the way I brush my hair. Part it in the middle, not too in the middle — just a little to the right side, as for some unidentified, superstitious reason I’m convinced it makes my face slightly smaller, not so round, more symmetrical. Since I was a teenager numbing my brain with endless get ready with me’s on YouTube, painfully conscious of the discrepancy between what is and what could be, I knew I’d spend a lifetime trying to be smaller and more symmetrical. Obviously, that’s the best use of my time.

“Let me see it. Oh, alright, just don’t tag me in this.” I don’t want the picture posted, or any pictures that haven’t been taken or curated by me. Funnily enough, I’m only capable of appreciating my photos in retrospect. Don’t like yours? I’ve got a secret formula for you: time. Wait a couple years, and you’re guaranteed to look back in tears and say damn, I looked good. I was just fine. Not now, god, no — I haven’t earned the right to enjoy myself in the moment. There’s a warm familiarity to feeling disgusting. There’s an underlying sense of unease to being enough. What is left of me with nothing to fix, tweak, or alter?

It’s in the way he said “You look so good, have you been working out? You were way too skinny when I saw you last.” Rationally, I know he meant it as a compliment, but my primal brain starts yelling at me to evacuate to the bathroom in hopes of evading a panic attack, heart sinking to the floor of the restaurant. He thinks you’re disgusting. It’s retribution, not desire. In this moment, in the mirror, under yellow-toned overhead lights, I make a promise to myself I’m never eating or lifting a single thing again. It doesn’t matter that I’m proud of my fitness progress. It doesn’t matter that when he last saw me, my life was a mess. I used to be smaller…and maybe more symmetrical.

It’s in the way I pose for people. Yes, posing, like the Renaissance ladies. No, not for painting sessions. For human interaction and small talk. I can’t run the risk of anyone catching me in the wrong pose; god forbid you glare at my shoulders or my nose from the wrong angle and realize that my constitution is not akin to Gabbriette or Kaia Gerber. On a quest to conceal a secret so outwardly obvious, I get bold enough to outrun perception and outsmart reality; I’m assured that I can trick everyone into seeing what I want them to see. I’ll cancel plans before I show up unprepared. I’ll do anything to not be seen. I’m suffocating on my inability to love myself, and I’m enjoying every second of it. 

On my knees, hands coupled in a solemn prayer, waiting to look better. I know it’s meant for me — beauty and I, we’re birds of a feather, aren’t we? She’s everything to me. I need her, she couldn’t care less. They say if you want something bad enough, it will happen eventually. I don’t know. Beauty, in the way that I’ve been taught to recognize and appreciate it, has never manifested for me, and I’ve been trying to make starts align for nothing short of a century quarter. Here comes the rumination, the thrill; anything but acceptance. It’s a gnawing void. I need a reinvention plan. More discipline. A new diet. A syringe of something here and there. I need a lobotomy at Claire’s. How much is salvation? Is it over the counter? Can I have it delivered tomorrow? Ironically, I stopped liking myself around the same time I stopped ordering regular Coke. Or was it vice versa? Can’t remember. It’s self-hatred and Diet Coke only these days.

It’s been decades of this tug of war. Self-observing, awaiting punishment, polluted desperation, always looking for the best ready-made plan to get me to the front of the line or through the day. It takes everything from me, the promise of a better body and face as self-inflicted damage that hurts in a way that is both gross and satisfying, making grand gestures as we hold hands, but it never loves me back. I don’t think my behavior is purely about chasing beauty or thinness anymore; it’s morphed into something more sinister, more abstract, and plain useless. It may just be about chasing adequacy — something I feel I’ve forgotten ever since I became hyperaware of my appearance. Floating above sea level, climbing over one fence after another because there’s always something to sweat and work for, bound by the ticking bomb that is my youth. I'm not an idiot, so I know I’m never getting to the mountaintop of being perfect, but I keep trying regardless. A miracle is due, and I may as well be an idiot after all.

What bothers me most is not the act of trying itself. What bothers me is I know damn well there is no end in sight on this serpentine. We’re willing to put everything on the line to get to the grand finale of beauty, a paralyzing state of achievement in contemporary nothingness. And while I’m pretty sure my debilitating obsession with looking better is a sickness, I feel completely sane not just living it, but projecting it onto others, letting it carry me through life via every decision, and, well, admitting it to 5,000 of you, because I already know how many will relate. Why is this okay? Why do we enjoy hating ourselves so much?

self-hatred is sexy, noble

Referring to one of my essays, our journey to ultimate beauty is not something we embark on, but something we grapple with. Hating yourself is the agonizing but glamorous status quo — in fact, you’re the odd one out if you refuse participation. There’s a reason the above essay is my most popular post. Reframed as self-care or enforced as empowerment, deeply embedded in what it means to be a modern woman online and offline, the race is not to be avoided: from dumb office breakroom chatter about calories, fasting, and Botox to aggressive self-care content ricocheting through the algorithm, beauty is the panopticon of womanhood, watching your every step as you bargain for its fleeting approval. The rules for escaping self-hatred are different depending on where you go. In some circles, you’re rewarded for restriction and discipline: think righteous Huberman-pilled propaganda, most fitness communities, and pro-ana online circles. In others, your efforts must be camouflaged to signify effortlessness: think of the French girl archetype, denying plastic surgery rumors, or models claiming their diet is actually burgers and fries. Regardless of the means you use to achieve beauty, how far you’re willing to go, and how much you own up to, what matters is the result. “You don’t have to applaud, but you have to watch,” Emmeline Clein writes in Dead Weight, “Follow me on Instagram and Twitter and OnlyFans, and I’ll be artistic and sad and skinny in an infinite circuit.” Earn the right to be watched and admired for your sacrifice, that’s what you’re here for. Nobody cares about your journey: secretly, everyone knows you’re struggling. Secretly, we’re in this together, and we’re all complicit. But we also know that self-hatred is the driver for all things great and noble, and breaking free would make for a rather boring story.

self-hatred is profitable, insatiable

If you’re happy the way you are, no beauty product or collagen powder can be advertised to you as essential. Shareholders would prefer it if we hated ourselves just enough to seek salvation: since total self-hatred would lead to indifference towards any form of improvement, we need to feel like the solution is right around the corner. Marketers know this. Influencers know this. Our purchasing power is reliant upon our being desperate sad but not hopeless sad — you need to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel so you can buy more stuff to ease, or shall we say postpone, your suffering. The beauty and wellness industries, disingenuous as they are, continue to perpetuate these lies, convincing us that the pursuit of the ultimate aesthetic is not just achievable, but somehow empowering, doable, and good for you. No matter how many lip oils you own or how long you go without dinner, there will always be a new way to feel inferior. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, a defining work on mass culture by M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno dating all the way back to 1947, still surprisingly relevant and evergreen, it says: “The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises... The promise is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu.” Living in oscillation between self-hatred and knowing that your greatest fix just might await you at the esthetician’s office, the gym, or your local Sephora aisle both keep the $617.2 billion beauty industry, coupled with diet culture, afloat.

self-hatred is safe, indulgent

As much as we’d like to believe disliking ourselves is a state counterproductive to our well-being, that is simply not the case. Self-hatred, in its essence, can be a wonderful form of delayed gratification. I noticed this when I started actively working on my self-esteem: as some (not all, evidently) of my negative body image convictions eased their grip on my mental state and I was finally comfortable wearing more than the same three outfits in rotation, shedding the need to be so effacing all the time, I noticed a weird form of cognitive dissonance emerge: I wasn’t happy. I was terrified of the person I was becoming. Scared to let go of all that shameful control, aligning with a reality where being okay with my body and face was the norm, not a miracle, became nightmare fuel. Because then the responsibility of granting myself not just self-respect, but the life that I wanted would follow, and I knew damn well no one was going to give it to me on demand — I no longer had an excuse to deprive myself of happiness. In On Self-Respect, Joan Didion writes: “To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent.” Hating yourself is the only armor standing between you and self-respect with its infinite force and potential. With a more adequate sense of self, your shortcomings can no longer be written off for later, and classifying yourself as a broken woman waiting to be saved by Their Majesty Beauty & Thinness no longer gets the job done. Here I am, standing, perfectly worthwhile and capable here and now, and I have no idea what the hell I’m going to do with all of these roads not yet traveled and cities not yet walked.

We may think we want to enjoy the faces and bodies reflected to us in the mirror. We may also have a list of all the things we believe have to be sacrificed and outsourced to get there. That’s what it seems to come down to, at least: is there anything we won’t do for a little twirl and a smile before heading out of the house for cocktail hour, rather than rummaging through our closet for an hour just to cancel? But if this feeling was something to cultivate rather than obtain, would we need it as much? If there was an end goal, what would we do upon getting there? All’s fair in war and beauty, and if I can’t hold something in my hands and not have it slip through my fingers the moment I look away, then I’m not sure I need it. Pursuit for the sake of pursuit won’t suffice: if I can’t identify with something, then it’s not mine to pull the trigger on. If the game is rigged and the rules keep changing, then I don’t have to play it.

This post is not about self-love as an antidote. If you know me and what I write about, you probably know I’m the last person to tell you to exercise self-love, be that filler or therapy. Preaching acceptance in a world where every system is designed for us to feel the polar opposite is just collective gaslighting. Culturally and socially, we’re running on self-hatred petrol — not because we’re bitter or scared, but because we don’t know any better. Expending all our energy on getting smaller, prettier, and looking younger, we don’t have much left to cultivate positive emotion around the self, no matter how monumental such satisfaction could be. And though we’re held back by cultural messaging, multi-billion industries, and our self-sabotage, I want to try something else today. Instead of blaming myself, I’ll start asking the real questions: why is everything fueling my self-hatred? Why is it okay for me to exist in a constant state of deprivation, lack, and control? Why is it okay to spend most of my income on beauty products and procedures? Are you proud of me? Am I good enough? Why do I care so much about making you proud? Who’s profiting from my misery? Because it’s not me or the girl next to me. It’s not Gabbriette even. It’s none of us. It’s something bigger than just patriarchy or capitalism. It’s a machine I’ve yet to name. But we’ll get there.