"I look back at photographs and I remember at the time I thought I was not very attractive"

A photograph freezes a moment, but memory preserves the emotions that surrounded it, including the quiet cruelties we inflict on ourselves. The reflection is less about the images than about the lens we used to view ourselves when those images were taken. To look back and recall a time of feeling unattractive is to recognize how perception can be distorted by insecurity, cultural standards, and the relentless self-surveillance that often accompanies youth.

There’s a melancholy in realizing that a younger self, perhaps glowing with possibilities, couldn’t see what others might have seen. Beauty, especially for women and public figures, is often framed as a test one can fail. The bar shifts; the mirror is unforgiving; the camera becomes a judge. Years later, hindsight offers a gentler gaze. The same photographs that once prompted critique can invite tenderness, exposing not new facts about the face or body, but the old tyranny of an inner voice that insisted on deficiency.

Memory here works as an act of reconciliation. By acknowledging that past self-judgment, the speaker grants herself grace and, by extension, gives others permission to do the same. The statement challenges the myth that confidence naturally accompanies youth. Often, the opposite is true: we are least able to appreciate ourselves when we are most scrutinized. Time softens that scrutiny. Distance uncovers an ordinary radiance, a way of being in the world that doesn’t hinge on symmetry or approval but on presence, vitality, and work well done.

There’s a quiet lesson about the cost of harsh standards: how many moments were dimmed by a belief that didn’t deserve the power it held? To revisit those photographs is to mourn what went unseen and to practice a new way of seeing. The face hasn’t changed nearly as much as the eyes that are finally ready to recognize it.