by Karen Chen
Bowne Street is a haven for consolation prize girls. They’re the sort that you can pick out easily—she is, she is, and she is—and yet they vanish within a large crowd. Usually they walk in pairs or trios, their limbs drooping as if they are too tired to hold themselves upright. They’re girls with scrunched up faces. The onsets of puberty have made them too wide and too tall in the wrong places. It unsettles my stomach a bit to look at them, and I regret the feeling afterward but not before relishing in it a little.
I’m standing outside the laundromat on Bowne Street. Cars whiz by me—there are tan faces at the wheel and disgruntled ones in the back. A teenager who’s too attractive to be a consolation prize girl wanders around the corner and clicks her cute black boots rapidly across the pavement, trying to erase the feeling of Bowne Street under her feet. She crosses over to Holly Avenue just as her light turns red—of course, it’s in the nick of time. Girls like her have been blessed by the god of fortune since birth; instead of crooked teeth and acne, they have luck that radiates through their glossy smiles and flawless skin.
A man is practicing tai chi inside the building next to the laundromat, and the windows are clear enough to see through. I swivel around and settle into a casual stance.
By propping my fencing bag against the window with one hand, I can pretend that I’m watching the man swing his arms and legs around. I face the glass, looking into its depths. The ponytail holder in my hair flies out, my shirt is straightened, I stand with my legs pressed together so they look slimmer. I run a hand through my fair, hastily backcombing it so that it flows naturally. I read online that backcombing it this way gives hair volume, which has always been a mystery to my thin, straight locks. Months of experimentation with bathroom mirrors have taught me that if I tuck them behind my ears but let them rest over my shoulders, they won’t collapse and form a curtain over half of my face. I stand in front of the window, and a girl with hair that flows out of her scalp and along her ears—not in front of—analyzes me from head to toe. She has a nice mouth with equally thick upper and lower lips, and it is accompanied by dark brown eyes and perfect double eyelids. Even her right eyelid is a double today; sometimes it’s a single and on some mornings there are three or four faint creases above her eyelashes. Too many creases make her eyes uneven and lopsided, like two different ones pasted onto the same face.
A woman walks out of the laundromat and watches me look into the window, an indecipherable expression on her face. It doesn’t matter. There’s a little thrill in my stomach as I realize that today, I am fifteen and the prettiest girl on Bowne Street. It doesn’t matter that all this street has is a dingy laundromat, dusty martial arts studio, and convenience store—this is my road, and here, I am queen.
I spent eight birthday parties—ages six to thirteen—wishing for the exact same things: good grades in school and good fortune for me and my family. Everything I could possibly want was encompassed by those two wishes. My entire life revolved around the happiness I had with my family and friends, in addition to my stellar academic performance in school. I was satisfied with what I had and only wished for its continuation.
When I turned fourteen, my desires became more ambitious. On my birthday, my parents presented me with a tiramisu cake, complete with fourteen candles stuck haphazardly within the circle of madeleines. “Make a wish,” they chanted. I shut my eyes, clasped my hands together, and sent a mental prayer up to the heavens: Please, if you’re out there—for my fourteenth year, I want impeccable grades and good luck. And I’ve never wished for this before, but—I want to be noticed. I just want to be seen as pretty.
It was the beginning of a new hope, a new desire that had secretly begun to sprout inside of me. It felt rebellious—something deep and dark that had taken root inside my heart, staining my innocent childhood desires. And yet the seed had been planted in my heart long ago, back in the days of Mary Janes and Minnie Mouse and all sorts of beautiful things that meant the world back then but don’t matter anymore.
It was a commonly known fact that Sandra was the prettiest girl in my elementary school. It was the sort of thing that everybody knew without having to say it; a silent agreement. Sandra’s hair was as shiny as the first place medals the teachers awarded at spelling bees; her face was shaped like a perfect heart, her eyes unmarred by glasses or imperfect vision. She wore skirts and dresses that showed off her stick-thin legs to school while all the other girls wore jeans. I used to wonder if her knees froze when she wore skirts in February, but she was equally cheery all year round.
All the kids scrambled to grab the seat next to her during lunch, on the bus, in class. She wasn’t even all that nice, but she was pretty, and that alone made her popular. It was one of the harsh truths of elementary school. While I was off sitting by myself on a bench during recess in my pink Puma sweater and gray sweats, Sandra was surrounded by adoring groupies who hung on to her every word.
Most of all, what made her different than all the other girls was the way she walked. She stood straighter than everyone else and looked at people with expectation, rather than hope, that they would smile at her and say hi. Every time Sandra looked straight into my eyes, it was like she was saying, Come talk to me. I am interesting and funny and there is nothing you wouldn’t do to spend time with me.
For five years, I watched Sandra glow from within, exuding confidence and charm. I was intensely jealous of and deeply admired her at the same time. Her grades faltered in comparison to my straight A’s, but she had confidence and friends and never had to experience alienation—all because she was so pretty. Most of the time, it seemed like I was the real winner between the two of us, but there were many days when I had to sit alone on the bus or during recess when even that seemed foggy and uncertain. On some days, I wondered if I would trade an A to look like Sandra. On the worst days, I thought I would.
I wore a dress and my hair down for the very first time to school on the day of my fifth-grade graduation. “Your dress is so pretty!” “You should wear your hair down more often!” the other girls gushed. It was the first time I had ever received that sort of attention. Girls flocked toward me to tell me that I looked nice, and even though all the girls were required to compliment everyone else’s dresses (it was an amendment in Girl Code), I felt special. I was a star today.
Sandra walked up to me, her thin arms swinging by her sides. “You finally look like one of us,” she said approvingly.
I blushed. Later, when I looked in the mirror, my cheeks looked rosier, my smile wider. It was the beginning of the path I set out on, something I felt myself hurtling toward, and yet I couldn’t bring myself—or want—to stop.
My mother told me in sixth grade that I was the sort of pretty that only people over the age of 50 acknowledged. Middle-aged adults told my mother that I had calming features that settled nicely upon my face, which was “nice to look at.”
I had never been considered “pretty” within my elementary school class, since I came to school every day wearing rimmed glasses paired with sweats, jeans, and sweaters that I later (much, much, later) realized were childish and unflattering. When the other girls started wearing Aeropostale and Hollister, I still wore the same Puma sweats I had been wearing for years.
Pretty girls were the ones who were noticed, who received bouquets and boxes filled with love and adoration. They went on Valentine’s Day dates instead of joking about how cheap chocolate would be the day after, and they never had to worry about things like who would ask them to prom. For years, I saw them in movies, on the street, and in school. It didn’t matter if I thought I was more clever or funny than them; they were the ones that boys crushed on, the ones that always had a partner for science fair or class group work. I didn’t understand the nature of their magnetic attraction and how it manifested itself in eyes that are at times green and at times blue and a figure like that of dancers onstage. But that didn’t mean I didn’t try to understand. It didn’t mean I didn’t want to.
In eighth grade, I started spending longer hours in front of the mirror in the morning and at night. I took greater care to dress the way the other girls in my class did, and soon my closet overflowed with skinny jeans and cardigans. At night, I would cover my zits with toothpaste in hopes that they would disappear when I woke up in the morning. I tried to work miracle cures for my hair when it frizzed by patting it down incessantly with water and twisting all sorts of combs into it.
“You’ve become so concerned with your appearance,” my father commented one morning after he caught me lotioning my skin for twenty minutes. The word shallow hung in the space between us, unsaid but there all the same. But I didn’t think I was shallow. It didn’t really fit me; I had never been anything besides the nerdy girl with glasses. Yes, I was dressing better now, but I wasn’t spending an insane amount of time shopping for and picking out clothes.
But one afternoon in eighth grade, my friend Julia and I began a conversation regarding what we were going to do for prom senior year. “You’ll definitely have a date,” she assured me. “After all, you’re pretty.”
It was the first time someone my age had called me pretty and I genuinely felt they believed what they were saying. The second I got home, I stood in front of the full-length mirror, trying to see what the world around me saw. Straight black hair, glasses with black frames. Light blue skinny jeans and a black cardigan.
I spent fifteen minutes just staring and wondering. Most of all, I was filled with a quiet sense of pleasure and accomplishment. I had never been pretty before. It was a new sensation, one that straightened my posture and made me feel two inches taller. Beauty was confidence: I saw that in Sandra all those years ago in elementary school, and I could see it now in my reflection, looking back at me with a heightened sense of where she stood in the world.
My parents had always warned me about the difference between inner and outer beauty, but it seemed to me that there was a correlation between successful individuals and beautiful ones. Attractive people spoke well, carried themselves with a confident air, and were well-liked within society—all things I had always had trouble with. I began wishing for beauty on every 11:11 and on every birthday. I was convinced that if I was beautiful on the outside, I would be beautiful on the inside as well.
It started out as a mannerism I copied from the girls in my class: twirling and playing with my hair. But I began combing through my hair with my fingers every day in order to keep it straight and voluminous, and soon it became an obsessive habit. “Stop playing with your hair,” my father snapped at me, slapping my fingers away from my ponytail. “It makes your hair seem unclean, like you’re trying to pick dirt out of it.”
I ignored him. What did he know about beauty? What did he know about high school and how it was a dog-eat-dog world where you were judged for your outer appearance first and your personality second?
High school was a new world, and I had to adapt to the change in environment by adjusting my own habits. Instead of spending my time reading literature, I shopped for clothes online and Google searched things like “how to fishtail braid.”
It wasn’t a sacrifice, in my opinion. I had so many more friends now. I was brighter and more social, and I was finally, finally pretty. That’s all that mattered.
I turned fifteen and ditched my glasses for contacts on the same day. After that, people started looking at me longer and with new eyes. “You’re pretty,” they told me.
I was the same person I had always been, and yet all of a sudden boys found it worth their time to talk to me. On the day of my first kiss, he whispered against my lips, “You’re beautiful,” and it filled me with a type of joy that swelled up inside of me, threatening to burst like a balloon into a shower of affection and adoration.
Two weeks later, I’m standing up in the subway when I feel a hand brushing against my leg. I move over a bit, thinking that it’s just an accident, but then I feel the hand again, insistently attached to my thigh. When I look up, my vision fills with a man with glasses and a serious expression. He has a black bag that looks like the one my dad takes to the workplace. He could be my dad, or just somebody’s nice father or uncle.
After the subway, he follows me onto the bus. When he thinks I’m looking down at my phone, he stares at me.
I call my mother to pick me up at an earlier bus stop and rush out the doors as soon as the bus brakes. He follows too, walking at a languid pace. The moment I hop into my mother’s car, he begins to jog until he disappears into a maze of streets and avenues.
That night, I see him in my dreams, watching as I walk to school and go to sleep. When I look through the windows of my house, I see his reflection, staring seriously back at me.
It takes an entire week until the choking, apprehensive feeling goes away and I can take the subway again without worrying about being followed home. But the memory stays with me, imprinted on the back of my eyelids, making me shiver when I am alone.
The next time I kiss someone, I wonder if he’s just kissing me because I’ve started wearing contacts and now you can see how brown my eyes look when the sun hits them the right way. When his arms tighten around me as we hug, they now feel more like a viselike grip than a sign of affection.
Online and in real life, people tell I’m pretty, I’m pretty, but it fills me with a quiet sense of dread, and I start to wonder what I would be like if I continued wearing my sweats and glasses. Maybe I would be less shallow. Maybe my mind would be filled with real knowledge instead of the prices of skater dresses. And maybe I would be able to walk home confidently from the bus stop after 8 P.M. instead of sprinting with my fingers ready to push the numbers 9-1-1 into my phone.
I’m pretty—wasn’t it supposed to be worth it? And I start to wonder—this life I’m living, is it worth it?
One day on the bus, my bag strap gets stuck between my seat and the next seat. The man next to me is dressed in all black and wears sunglasses; he looks around forty. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I repeat my apologies twice when he doesn’t respond, just looks at me with indecipherable scrutiny. Deciding three apologies is enough, I stop. I’ve already turned around to look out the window when all of a sudden, he says, “You’re beautiful.” Then, “You’re so, so, beautiful.” He begins to murmur a long string of words under his breath, speaking in a deep baritone voice. I don’t know him. I don’t dare look at him or even move a single muscle away from its focus on the window.
Maybe, if I hadn’t changed, I wouldn’t be so afraid.
I am sixteen and the prettiest girl on Bowne Street. As I watch the cars ahead of me, I catch the eye of a man leaning against the bus stop pole. He just looks at me—looks and looks and looks at me, wearing a small smile that curves too much toward the side of his face instead of toward his eyes. He sweeps a hand through his hair, the same way I like to sweep a hand through mine, and I hold my stomach and look away.
Karen Chen is a 17 year old from New York City, New York. Her writing has been honored regionally and nationally by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards; in 2016, she was an American Voices Nominee. She was also a winner of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Promising Young Writers Program in 2013. In addition, she is a monthly columnist for English Salon, which is a publication used in many schools in China as a high-level academic resource that teaches English to high schoolers. Her work has been published in Visceral Brooklyn and is forthcoming in Yo-NEW YORK! In her spare time, Karen enjoys reading, fencing, and doing math.