Nobody's Ugly

I wanted to talk about appearance.  It's on my mind quite a bit.  I play with my appearance contstantly, almost everyday, because I find it amusing to alter my appearance.  I don't want to look the same everyday.  I love mirrors because they show me how something looks on me.
Growing up I despised the mirror, I didn't want to know what I looked like.  It frightened me to be photographed.  I often hid on picture day.  There are actually no photos of me during my freshman and sophomore years in high school.  I can't pin point the shift in my life, when the enemy that was my appearance became my best friend, confidant, and shelter from the outside world, but indeed it was for the better.
There still was a glitch though in the system though.  It was that I started to notice what others looked like.  We have a safety mechanism in our system known as our judgment.  It serves a purpose, we can't survive without judgment, the easiest example being we know a hot stove will burn our hand.  Sometimes though we use our judgment too much.  When we look at other people and deem them ugly or beautiful, it can damage us.  Although on some level this judgment is needed so we can determine what appearances make us feel good to be around, the reality of it is when we make a judgment about another person, we're stating indirectly how we feel about ourselves.  When you say someone is ugly, you're really saying you feel ugly.   Although it's nice to find someone beautiful, it's only nice when you can feel beautiful too when you think it; all too often we're saying they're beautiful in comparison to our perceived ugliness.
It's true, in my early modeling days, I had to look at thousands of images of other men when I sat down with photographers, and I hated it.  They would ask me what I thought of other models, and I thought they meant "tell me what is inferior or superior about this person to you."  If I saw even the slightest of what appeared to be a flaw with these models, I would point it out, sometimes even make fun of them.  At the end of it all I felt gross.  If I said someone was fat, that evening I would most likely look at myself in the mirror and think I needed to loose a bit of weight.  If I said someone had an ugly face, I started to notice aspects of my appearance that I wasn't comfortable with.  It also frightened me to think what others were saying about me when I wasn't there.
If we are ever to feel good about the way we look, truly feel good, we need to let go of any judgments we may have of the way we and others look.  We need to accept the appearance of all, and understand they look that way for a reason only pertinent to them.  This is not to say you need to pay attention to every appearance that crosses your path, but simply try it, look at someone you would normally deem as ugly, and look at someone you would normally deem as beautiful, and cease all judgment of that appearance and simply see them as beings, living, breathing, loving, just like you.  The moment you can escape your judgments, the moment you'll be able to feel good about your appearance, no matter what the situation.  It might take some time to develop an attitude of such, but trust me, it is worth it.