Let me start off this post by saying I, Emily Friday, am a jealous person. I am a typical Scorpio, and I have had these jealous traits for as long as I can remember.
Even when I had just started primary school, the jealous feelings towards others had already kicked in - I remember one of my classmates, a beautiful girl, long blonde hair, seemed perfect, boys loved her and she had so much confidence. It's amazing really how I picked up on these things from such a young age, but the jealousy overtook me. At first, I felt admiration towards her. I wanted to be her, I wanted to be friends with her. But, as it turned out, she had a pretty ugly personality. She was sometimes mean to me during school, even high school, and I suspect she was like this with a lot of people. I suppose that's when my feelings towards her turned to jealousy - I didn't like her as a person, in fact I was close to hating her, but for some reason I was still so jealous of her. Her beauty, her confidence - it almost didn't seem fair that such a horrible girl like her be blessed with such good looks. Yet, her confidence obviously landed her a lot of friends, and everybody seemed to like her, which I could never really understand. It wasn't just this girl I was jealous of though, - even my close friends I felt envious towards, and it was something deep rooted inside of me, my own insecurities, that made it so hard to control.
I think, ever since then, my self-esteem and worth in myself has been hugely affected. I've never valued myself enough - if it wasn't that girl I was comparing myself to, it was another one, always someone prettier, better, cuter etc. I was never comfortable being myself. I always wanted to be someone else, or at least a better version of myself. For some reason, I just never felt like I was enough, that I was good enough, because I was constantly comparing myself to other girls.
Over the past few years, I've learned to silence that green eyed monster inside of me more often. I think it got easier once I left school, as I was able to stop comparing myself to other girls on a daily basis, and it felt like the competition of being the best looking girl was finally over. That's all it ever felt like to me, to be honest. Constantly having to compete with others was exhausting!
Apart from that, those feelings of jealousy only propped up occasionally, or whenever I was exposed to media and unrealistic ideals of women's beauty. I became more accepting of my own looks, and trying to be
me instead of someone else, but tonight, these exact feelings that I had always experienced in school resurfaced again.
I was casually on Facebook, just browsing people's profiles. I actually stopped doing this as much as well, once I left school - Facebook is always a great cause of jealousy, I think, as we become envious and more aware of other people's popularity, confidence, looks etc. It's ridiculous, really, social networking sites don't represent our real lives, yet we all fall gullible to it and then begin to question our own lives because of it!
But anyway, I came across this girl's profile, and I think I have actually seen her before. Not in person, but I think I remember seeing her facebook a few years ago - I'm not friends with her on there, but I somehow found it again, and honestly, the gorgeousness of this girl is unreal. As soon as I click onto her profile pictures, there's tons of amazing photographs of her, and I'm immediately sucked in into the jealousy/self-hate spiral. I can deal with pretty girls - I've learnt to accept that there will be other pretty girls in life, and that I am pretty myself, but this doesn't matter and shouldn't be a reason for me to be upset. What really irked me about this girl though, however, is that she appears pretty much
perfect. I know she probably isn't, underneath all the make-up, hair, and fake tan, but nonetheless she looks flawless. She has perfect hair, a perfect face, a perfect body, the lot. And to me, I didn't even think perfection on that level of physical attractiveness existed, unless you were a celebrity and insanely rich. But here she was, with an amazing dress sense, 100+ likes on her photos, and boys falling to her feet. The jealous little girl in me rose back again, and I immediately hated this girl. What annoyed me about her, especially, was the fact that she dressed in very skimpy clothes, almost slutty, and I therefore assumed she must of been a slag. Even if she wasn't, she was portraying herself in this way, obviously to desperately seek the attention of guys, and this irritated me. I already don't have much respect for girls who dress and behave in that way, I have a hard time liking them, and therefore took an immediate dislike to this girl. However, as much as I didn't like her for this reason, there was no denying that she was absolutely beautiful. As much as I tried to put her down, find flaws in her, it didn't change how she looked, and it didn't make me any prettier.
After this, however, I suddenly felt very inadequate about my own looks. I started to see myself in a new light, almost in a derogatory way compared to her, and I believed that because I didn't look like her or look as good as she did, this made me unattractive, and simply meant I wasn't good enough. As well as this, I just felt an overwhelming sense of pity, started feeling sorry for myself, and almost felt like it was unfair that this girl could be blessed with such good looks, whilst I'm here, looking the way I do.
All of this just made me wonder - why is it I feel the way I do? Such hate and rivalry to girls who are more physically attractive than me, in my opinion, and why is it so hard for me to deal with? I found
this article about women feeling jealous of other women, and it really spoke to me. It made me realise so much actually, about myself, and the whole emotional feeling of jealousy to begin with.
It kind of made me realise that this girl, the girl from my school years ago, and every confident, attractive woman I've ever seen, is all I've ever wanted to be. It's not necessarily that I want to look exactly like them - but I want to be like them in the sense that they are authentic to themselves and really embrace their beauty and uniqueness. I hated this girl because she's doing everything I've wanted to do - she's living how she wants to live, looking how she wants to look, embracing everything about her looks and what she's been given, living confidently in her own skin - everything I want to do, but have been too scared to. We are seeing other women being true to themselves, expressing their individual style and beauty, and when we realise that we haven't been doing the same, this drives us to jealousy. We've not been giving ourselves what we want.
I think once I start to fulfill my own authenticity, be true to myself, and fully embrace the beauty of my unique self, then those feelings of jealousy towards others will eventually begin to disappear. I've always found it hard to make friends with other girls for the exact reason of competition of rivalry, but really, we should admire those who embrace themselves like this, and use them as inspiration for ourselves.
I'm really going to make the effort in embracing who I am, dressing how I've always wanted to, basically being me, but to my full potential. I look forward to fully basking in my beauty, individuality, and femininity! :-)
