Hi, my name is Lauren and I am going to waste the next ten minutes of your life with pictures of myself. Earlier this evening, I was looking through a box of old photos and discovered that I used to be jaw-droppingly ugly ten years ago. Which is not to say that I am jaw-droppingly gorgeous, either. Looks-wise, I think I fall somewhere between “interesting” and “cute”. I know I’ve got good facial features (nice eyes and proportional bone structure) but with the way I dress and present myself (piercing, short hair), nobody but my mom and Ale would consider me beautiful. Conventionally-speaking, anyway.
I’m not sure how awkward your pre-teen years used to be, if it was even awkward for you to begin with. When I was 11 I started bleeding from my crotch and growing breasts; my spine also began to curve the wrong way, giving me the posture of a little old lady. Believe me, this was probably the most awkward year of my life. Besides constantly getting the back of my uniform’s skirt stained because those damn pads refused to stay put, I could see all the girls in my class blooming like lilies while I remained a dumpy little frog with bad hair and the wrong kind of glasses.
(This was, by the way, also the same era where I fancied myself as the Harriet the Spy of my generation. I spent my entire sixth grade doing nothing but scribble notes and stories in my notebooks while paying absolutely zero attention to my teachers. That is probably why I only learned the difference between an “adjective” and a “noun” five years later and why I still don’t know the sentence structure of the English language to this day. Don’t ask me what a gerund is.)
Anyway, just for reference, this was me ten minutes ago, with no makeup and no Photoshop.
Lauren Dado
Aged 21 years, 11 months, and 25 days
And for further reference, me at my most conventionally beautiful. See how I had that whole “I’m girl you want to take home to mom and marry” thing going back then?
Lauren Dado
Aged 17 years and something months
And this was me as a child:
Lauren Dado
Aged 6 years and something months
Only with teh fugly! Lauren Dado, aged 11 years over the jump.