To set the scene: it’s 2015, I’m a fresh high school grad, working at McDonalds to save up money for college next year. I’m working the drive-thru window, been at work since 4am, and it’s only 9:30 am. There are still six hours left on my shift and my feet are already aching. I’m powering through, as I always do, when a woman’s voice comes over the headset. She orders her food and pulls up to my window. I’m multi-tasking, trying to be sweet while grabbing her change and checking her meal status.

She stares at me while taking her change and suddenly asks: “Is that your natural hair color?”

I smile, “Yes, it’s natural.”

She sternly gazes at me, “Don’t ever dye your hair, you’ll ruin it. You can never get that color back.”

I grab her bag of food and hand it out to her, “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. I’m not planning to dye it anytime soon.”

“Just don’t. I’m telling you, it won’t look good.” She continues to stare at me even after I hand her the food.

“No worries, thank you very much. Have a good day.” I close the window and take the next order, trying not to show how irritated I am on my face.

Why am I so annoyed? Well, first of all, she was telling me what to do, which is annoying by itself to an eighteen year old. Second of all, it was once my life goal, as a child, to dye my hair a deep mahogany brown, like my mom’s hair. To me, that was pretty. I’ve disliked my hair since I was a little girl.

I grew up in Hawaii, ok? The women I considered the most beautiful in the world were Asian or Pacific Islanders, with their coffee brown skin, dark brown or black hair and rich chocolate eyes. I stood out of place wherever I went: all pale skin, white-blonde hair, and gray eyes. Like an albino peacock in a flock full of brilliant color (I say peacocks because they are EVERYWHERE in Upcountry Maui.). My standard of what is beautiful has nothing to do with my own face or coloring; I hated even looking in the mirror back in those days. I was the exact opposite of everyone I found beautiful, and I struggled with that constantly. I thought if I didn’t look in the mirror, I wouldn’t have to face the fact that who I was, and what I valued, was incredibly different from how I looked on the outside.

And the fact that my standard of beauty was so different from how I look have caused a lot of misunderstandings through the years. People, first of all, didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t really like how I looked. They insisted that because I had various standards of beauty that many other people (apparently) value (blonde hair, light-colored eyes, etc), I couldn’t possibly, truly, dislike how I looked. They also seemed to think my appreciation for people who looked the complete opposite of me was made up, as though I was just saying it to be inclusive or something. I got tired of explaining it, and kept my growing loss of self-confidence to myself. After all, everybody else kept insisting that there was no way I really felt that way about myself, I was just trying to get people’s attention or pity (another aspect of myself? I genuinely hate being in the center of attention. If I could choose a superpower, it would be to be invisible. If only…).

I still can’t totally feel happy with how different I look, but the value in myself, I realized, should not have anything to do with my ‘standard’ of what is beautiful. At least, it shouldn’t matter so much that I lose sight of who I am entirely, as a unique individual. Of course there is no reason not to find value in other people, but it is has become apparent to me that we, as individuals, focus entirely too much on ‘beauty standards.’

At some point, someone in society decided some aspect of a person’s looks was valuable. Could be their hair, their eyes, their shape, or any aspect of them, really; maybe even personality traits like being docile and accepting of other people or, lately, being sexy (which, honestly, how do you even go about learning to be sexy?? Is there some kind of class you can take? Or does asking that just make the point that I am not sexy… at all? Probably…).

And it may not even be society who teaches us these standards, maybe it is our environment. Nobody told me to find Native Islander and Asian women beautiful, I just decided that they were, because they were the main example of beauty in my environment. Of course, they would tell me how much they loved my hair and stuff, but I didn’t see myself through their eyes, I could only see these sweet, beautiful, intelligent women in front of me, and that was beauty to me.

And, again, I don’t think it’s bad to find people who look different from you beautiful, but I do think we should find ourselves beautiful, because there is only one of us in this world, and we’re never replaceable. It sounds kind of cliche to say it that way, so let me rephrase it a bit: although you can see your own flaws whenever you look into the mirror, remember that the people around you see you with a different pair of eyes. They see your strengths, your skills, and your beauty from their own perspective, based on their own understanding of beauty. Now, not everyone is going to find us attractive, but attraction is not necessary in order to find someone beautiful. There are plenty of people I admire that I’m not attracted to in a romantic or even friendly (as in wanting to be friends with them) way, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t beautiful or admirable to me. I am the beholder of their beauty, just as much as they are a beholder of mine.

Realizing that I saw myself very differently from how other people see me helped me to realize that all those ladies who bugged me about my hair were trying to tell me that they saw a natural beauty in me that I, myself, could not see. And realizing this has changed my perspective on myself. Perhaps, we are not the best judge of our own beauty, because we view ourselves with a pair of biased glasses. We measure ourselves according to the standards we put on other people (which is also a type of bias, but towards other people), and we try to justify changing our appearances by saying “I just want to look beautiful,” or “I just want to look like them, because everyone else seems to find them beautiful.”

Based on what? Some nice or even obsessive comments on their various social media accounts? (And people get weird in those comments, it’s basically fetishizing that person based on their looks.) Or maybe it’s because the person you are attracted to says they like that type of person? How is changing our looks to try and be someone else any different from coveting what they have? Just because we try to look like them doesn’t mean we will be like them. In fact, we often end up destroying what was beautiful about ourselves while trying to find that impossible ‘perfect look.’ And we won’t be satisfied after we do it, because we no longer look like ‘us.’

Which I guess also explains why all those ladies told me not to risk changing or damaging my hair.

I don’t want to change my hair color anymore, and I’ve given up on getting a tan (although that’s mostly because I don’t really tan, I just freckle…), I find my eyes unique, and I try to value my looks on a daily basis. I’m still working on it, but it’s so much better than it was. And I still behold the beauty of the people around me with the same sparkling eyes. That aspect of myself has never changed, and I don’t plan on trying to change it. Because, just like the genuine compliments I received from people, I hope the people around me can receive the same encouragement, and not compare themselves to others. We will never be the same as someone else, and that’s a very good thing.

So I leave you with this: We are the beholders of each others beauty, but we should also remember to behold the beauty in ourselves the way those around us behold us. We may be the opposite of what we consider beautiful, but that doesn’t make us any less beautiful than those we value. Always remember that.