It's My Face, Isn't It?
On illusive, instantaneous likeability.
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a healing newsletter for 80s babies by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.
A social phenomenon has been plaguing me. While I’ve started putting a name to it in my adulthood, it’s really been a boulder in my backpack since grade school. Some people, for some reason, are instantly adored, immediately accepted, and effortlessly loved. I have never been a member of their ranks. While this involved feelings of pain and rejection in my youth and a certain level of jealousy as I grew up, I’m 41 and I’m going to need people to just fucking like me already.
It might be my face, I don’t know. That’s what I’ve always assumed, that there’s something about my face that people just don’t instantly enjoy, because sentiments often emerge before I’ve even opened my mouth. It isn’t a matter of pretty/unpretty, those aren’t even real things, I think it’s something much more primal and human than any modern beauty standard we’ve invented and started charging women money to achieve. I don’t think I have a face that people warm to instantly, I think I’m more of an acquired taste. Rough gig for someone living in the Instant Age, I can assure you.