I know that you don't want to hear a generic 'beauty on the inside' word of comfort. But, I did want to share this with you.

One of my (male) friends from high school told me once we had graduated that he had noticed something about the evolution of ugly girls that we knew of or were friends with in middle school.

Either they tried desperately to become like the beautiful girls, focusing all their energy on fooling everyone into thinking they were skinny or had a pretty face or wore the cutest clothes, etc. They ruined themselves, spiraling into bad self-esteem, tunnel-visioned with what they lacked. These same girls - almost all of them graduated as these sniveling, dejected, dull young women. I don't know any of the girls that we talked about that seem really happy or have a gratifying life. In a way, they got used to their role of being ridiculous, desperate fakes and accepted that as who they were, and took on that persona permanently.

But there were also the ugly girls who tried to fit in (as basically all middle-school age girls try to do) and faced reality: no matter how much they tried, they would never fit in the beautiful girls crowd. A truly physically ugly person just can not fake physical beauty, or live their lives trying to. The girls who eventually flipped 'beautiful' the bird, and self-developed through middle- and high school became these strong, intelligent, funny women. A lot of them went on to achieve academically and established a great career after they got out of high school and almost all left that immature mentality behind. Law firms don't care how pretty you are. The government doesn't care how pretty social workers are, and suffering people do not care how pretty their doctors are. Most reader will never see an author until they finished the book and look at the grainy picture on the inside of the back cover - but they have already been won over before they see the picture. I think being faced with a crushing reality about themselves at a crucial age, and overcoming the loss of not being pretty (a big part of a girl's world) turned these girls into incredible adults.

I admire my friends' and acquaintances' accomplishments alone, not because they were the underdogs in middle school culture and came out of it alive and standing tall. But I also have kept up with them for 5 years, and the judging from the personalities they have turned out to be, I would certainly consider them 'successes' at being badass people. Social survivors as pubescent teens, and are now aggressively living the lives they want. I am sure their lives aren't perfect rainbows and daisy petals, but more importantly, they seem happy with themselves and their imperfections.

Just my two-cents. A shout-out to all the uglies who conquered life, much love from an average-looking person living an average life.

EDIT: I posted before I read everyone's comments. A lot of what I said was just reiteration of a lot of sentiments expressed in this thread. The ladies that diverged from the pretty-wannabes, and formed in themselves really cool chicks that emanate confidence, that decided they weren't going to be victims, were not just the result of some phenomena that happened only at my school. High-fives, ya'll.