Truly, never underestimate the power of a single word.
So yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and I felt like dressing up. There wasn’t a big reason why, I still don’t have a boyfriend or anything, but I’m in college now, so I can wear whatever I want whenever I want to, and I wanted to wear makeup yesterday. I don’t really wear makeup often, so it was kind of a big-ish deal for me. I didn’t do anything too complex, just some lipstick, mascara, and eyeliner, but like I said, I don’t do makeup very often.
Unfortunately, I’m usually not really happy with the state of my body at any given time. I get bad zits, I’m overweight, genetics gives me dark coarse hair all over my body, and none of these things gives me any kind of happiness to look at in the mirror. I’ve been trying to work on it, though, and I’ve gotten a bit better.
I’m proud to say that I am pursuing a Bachelor’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Acoustics. As great as that is, my college is only ~20% female, leaving me with lots more guy friends than girl friends. I have no problem with that, just stating the facts, but the point is, when I walk into class, it is far more likely that I will sit with my male friends than anything else. I have two good friends that I usually like to study with and such, and their names are Alex and Dan. They’re friends with each other from high school, and are constantly alternating between the super dorks that convinced their principal to let the music department put on “Into the Woods” because they liked the song Agony, and the super idiots that put the Mom Friend™ in me on edge, constantly.
So I get to my Statics course 10 minutes early (like the goody two-shoes I was raised to be), and sit down, playing on my phone, back facing away from the door. A few other people trickle in, and then, probably 5 minutes until class starts, Alex and Dan walk in. At this point, I had basically forgotten that I was even wearing makeup, and looked up at them to say hi. Alex said hi as usual and sat down. Dan, on the other hand, double takes, and blurts out a single word,
“Wow!”
and just looks at me for a second. I, of course, being the oblivious dingleberry that I am, oh so intelligently answers with a nice, confused, “What?”, then promptly remember that I did, in fact, try to look nice today.
Alex, who seems to be even more thick-skulled than I am, looks at Dan weird, and starts telling us about his day. The professor shows up, class begins, life goes on. Nothing else was said on the matter.
But god damn, as much as I know that I dressed up for myself and I don’t need validation from anyone but myself to know that I looked good, that one itsy-bitsy little three-letter word made me feel better about myself than I had felt in a long time. For goodness sake, I came back to the dorm and started singing I Feel Pretty from West Side Story.
So, moral of the story, never underestimate the power of a word, no matter how large or how small.
