Everyone who knows my family (the Belaúnde's) can testify that I come from a family of unbelievably beautiful girls. Whenever our family is gathered for weddings or even funerals, most people often mistake such gatherings for beauty pageants or some other such parades! Now somebody curiously asked me the other day to share with them my experiences of being a ‘beautiful girl’.

You see, being perceived as’ beautiful’ has its own ups and downs. In fact, the downs always seem to have an upper hand. I don’t know of anyone who enjoys being told they are beautiful. Not surprisingly, my journey as a supposedly beautiful young woman hasn’t been all that rosy to this day. It’s been more of a curse than anything. For one thing, if you are deemed as beautiful, people always overlook other qualities about you then focus more on the so-called beauty part of you, which is often an injustice I must say. Some of these beauty pageants are not helpful either. They tend to portray beautiful young girls as just pretty and empty shells. I have never been a beauty queen myself; the closest I have ever come to participating in such contests was back in primary school when my sister walked away with the crown while I clinched the third position after we were both forced to participate in one such contest.

The one thing I dislike most about being deemed beautiful is the wrong attention as well as the negativity. Some people can be so mean and hateful! The first time I tasted a dose of such negativity was when I was in my teens. Decades later, it’s been a downhill spiral! If it’s not your friends being competitive with you even for trivial things such as the colour of your lipstick, then it’s the opposite sex hating you for not entertaining them!😘💕