When I was a senior in high school, I participated in a speech contest, and I’m ashamed of myself whenever I am reminded of it. I didn’t win, but that’s not what bothers me; I didn’t do my best because I was trying to be someone other than myself.
Teen Drama Time (oh, how embarrassing it is now!): I was in Speech Class with my boyfriend at the time, as well as his ex-girlfriend. As you can imagine, I sometimes felt the need to compete with her in an effort to show her? him? me? that I was better.
During this time, I was also preparing for my summer trip to Italy, my first trip abroad and a super-exciting adventure. Part of this preparation meant that I needed, by honest-to-goodness order of my primary care physician, to prepare my fair, freckly skin for being out in the blistering sun for two-weeks by building up a tan so I wouldn’t have my whole trip ruined by a nasty sunburn on the first day.
The girls in my class started noticing my bronzing skin, and I got all sorts of compliments from the Barbie Doll Crew I used to despise for being shallow. I loved the new-found attention on my looks – my acne was fading, and it felt so good to be told I had beautiful skin!
Enter ex-girlfriend from stage right. She had noticed the change in my features as well, but she wasn’t quite so fond of its effects. Before class one day, she sneered across the aisle, “You might think you’re pretty now, but just wait ’til you lose all your hair from chemotherapy!”
I had had a long talk with my doctor about the realities of skin cancer, moderation, and the adaptability of the human body before deciding to move forward with her plan, so I knew that what this girl was saying was uneducated and was aimed only at hurting me. But I didn’t know enough to let it go.
I spent the next few weeks writing a paper on the medical facts of skin cancer, the biological utility of fair and tanned skin, and the likelihood of contracting a serious-enough case to warrant chemotherapy as drastic as would make one’s hair fall out. It was all spite and no real substance – what I was saying had nothing productive or positive to teach anyone; it was pointed at one little person whose opinion didn’t really matter to me, but who I wanted to show up anyway. Fickle and blind, I surged forward and chose that writing to memorise and recite to the whole school, knowing that when she heard it, she would know it was directed at her.
I kept adding colour to my skin, and I kept getting the compliments I loved from people I barely knew. I started wearing different clothes, got blonde highlights put into my hair, and wore heavy make-up every day. I felt like I was finally fitting in with what it was to be beautiful, but I didn’t realise that my definition was all wrong – or that it wasn’t even my own definition of beauty at all! I stopped wearing my favourite purple shoes because someone had called them silly, and I enjoyed them less than this special popularity.
I tried my best to memorise my speech in the weeks before the contest, but my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. I wasn’t angry about her remark – time had quickly healed that smarting pain – and so the passion that had fuelled the piece was missing. They were just words on a page, and they seemed sillier and sillier each time I read it out loud. Stubborn as I was, though, I wouldn’t give it up, choose a new topic, and write a new speech. I stuck it out because I thought that was what it meant to be brave: doing something shocking to prove a point. Oh, how I pity that girl as I look back on her now!
On the morning of the contest, I chose an all-white ensemble that made me look like a caramel macchiato, and I got up on that stage with renewed vigour and the phrase, “I’ll show her,” stuck in my head. But because my head was filled with getting revenge and looking perfect on stage to impress my new fashionista friends, there was little room left for the actual speech. I fumbled my way through it, forgetting the next lines more times than I should have, and when I was finally through it, I couldn’t look out into the crowd as they applauded. I knew that speech didn’t belong in a serious competition, and I knew it could’ve been outstanding if I had done something I actually cared about; I had failed my teacher, my school, and myself. I felt like Mulan in the Matchmaker’s house; I had made a huge mess of things, and I just wanted to hide my eyes.
I got compliments from teachers and students about how brave I had been to go up on stage in front of so many people and speak, but their praise only made me feel worse. I knew speaking in public had never been difficult for me, and I knew that when it had counted, I hadn’t been brave in the ways I should have been. I had stood up there on that stage as someone other than myself because I was thinking too much about what other people thought. I felt so embarrassed that I had thrown away a real opportunity to speak out – that I had spoken for a good many minutes to a huge crowd of people about tanning, for goodness sakes! How superficial and dismissible I must have seemed to them then!
The funniest thing? The girl, the one who had inspired the whole speech, was absent that day with the flu.
I did learn an important lesson that day, and I’ve tried to live by it ever since. I stopped trying to get darker and darker, wore my make-up the way I wanted to, and let my highlights grow out. I realised that it was much more comfortable just being me, and I stayed that way.
And when I was asked to speak at our class’s graduation ceremony, I didn’t waste the chance to make amends. I didn’t falter, I didn’t fail, and even though there was no prize that day, I walked off the stage in my favourite purple kitten-heels feeling like I had won one anyway. The praise I got following the ceremony was meaningful because it came from people I loved and respected, but also because I knew I had done my best.
It can be hard to fight the expectations and visions other people have for who you should be, and you will probably not always succeed in feeling confident. However, if you stay true to yourself and persevere through those moments of questioning, you will find a wonderful, beautiful woman emerge – more beautiful because she is real. Remember this quote from e.e. cummings: “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
A Happy Working Song 