The word “beautiful” was one I associated with women who did not look like me. I grew up in an upper middle class suburb surrounded by girls with long, straight hair and skin tones ranging from fair to olive. Colored eyes were always preferred over my common dark brown ones. I did not really know what to make of myself to be completely honest. Every guy I liked always wanted the features I lacked.

I recently came across a project I made in the fifth grade concerning where I saw myself in the year 2023. In the short paragraph (which included my owning three cars, a jet and a private beach by the age of 28), I wrote the sentence, “I will not be married.” What may be identified as an independent girl’s efforts to put her work first was actually my apathy towards the actual prospect of me getting married in the first place. I was my generation’s own modern day Oscar Wao — or so I thought. No matter how hard I tried to embrace and immerse myself in the likings of Bryce, Tommy and Brett, they somehow always strayed to the blonde haired, blue eyed girl, the girl I would never grow to be.

I am lucky enough to have grown up at a time in which people are becoming more accepting of one another’s differences in terms of physical appearances. Today, I see more diversity on television shows, posters and advertisements than the 10 year old me ever imagined I would. Never before have I seen so many beautiful women who look like me, talk like me and have the same body shape — women who are praised for their accomplishments and being a different kind of beautiful.

Except, the beauty I see — the brown eyes, dark skin — is not something that is simply admired, but means through which others attempt to assert their power. Perhaps they are the very differences such people have from one another that make them feel the need to identify those differences in the same method as did some’s imperial ancestors. The fetishization of women who look different is something to which every “different” looking woman is subjected.

How am I supposed to feel? Beautiful because I fulfill the desires of men? How is that feeling beautiful when I feel equivalent to a raw piece of meat? For centuries, minority women have fallen subject to fetishization. Whether she is black, Asian, Latina or any mix, a physically “different” woman will always feel a little less than human at one point in her life.

I personally do not feel beautiful when all I think people see is a piece of walking meat, as it is with fear that I approach every potential date or partner who perhaps “has never dated someone so exotic before.” To be "exotic" means no more than to be the "oriental" rug under one’s feet.

My fears of being fetishized, walking in the street alone at night and never being good enough for someone to want a relationship with me are all possible realities that in all honesty, are not that far-fetched the moment I open my eyes every morning. To live in hopes of acceptance with a low self esteem whenever I meet someone like Brett from elementary school paired with the possibility that I may not be “good enough” for him brings me back to my Oscar Wao self, wondering what people really mean when they call someone "beautiful."