am i pretty?
no, but seriously
I spent my 18th birthday crying, my tongue stained orange after drinking three cans of Sparks, asking my party guests if they thought I was pretty. There’s no way to answer that question. Everyone responded affirmatively, but I was inconsolable. I knew I had asked an impossible question, and just kept repeating it. I needed to know the truth.
I recently went to my LiveJournal to see if I had written about this incident, but only found a post containing a few photos of me and my friends dancing with glow sticks in a mostly empty basement. It ends with this: “whoever invented sparks is my hero. what a night.” Was I too embarrassed to recount what had happened? Did I care? Did I talk to any of my friends about it the next day?
My preoccupation with beauty and whether or not I possessed it coincided with my use of the Internet as a teenager. I first began uploading photos of myself to the now-defunct blogging platform Xanga at the age of 14. My dad had a 1.0 megapixel camera and I would borrow it from time-to-time, sneaking it up to my room to take pictures of myself after teasing my hair and throwing together outfits I probably wouldn’t wear out of the house. I became well acquainted with the ritual of snapping a photo from above, then turning the camera around to see if I had gotten a good shot.
I would have questioned my level of attractiveness regardless of the Internet, but being online added an entirely new element. I was able to seek confirmation from strangers, and sometimes people I looked up to.
When I first began using LiveJournal in 2003, I quickly fell into the world of rating communities. On the platform, communities functioned as groups for users with shared interests (celebrity gossip, dying your hair unusual colors) to connect. Rating communities, however, were exclusive groups that you had to “apply” to be a part of. As a prospective member, you would fill out an application and post it for the currently accepted members to vote on. Applications consisted of basic questions asking about your age, location, and taste in music. They also required you to upload multiple photos of yourself. Members would then vote “yes” or “no” in the comments, sometimes adding additional commentary over a band you listed or pointing out a specific flaw in your appearance.
Nothing could have prepared me for my first rating community application. I wish I remembered the details of where I applied, or had a decent archive of my interactions on these scattered/mostly deleted communities with names like: HOTFUSS 80% looks, 20% personality; OMG_THE_SEX Are you the sex?; Hierarchyx We tell it like it is. Rating communities were peripheral to scene culture, but each one varied slightly. Some leaned more indie, others were more preppy, but they were all nestled in online subculture. Some were harder to get into. Others would auto-accept the first few members to get the ball rolling. The ones with short applications (mostly pictures) were the most brutal.
I was immediately rejected. I had never been so acutely aware of my own appearance or the flaws in my appearance. My photos were bad. I was ugly. I had failed. It was the first time anyone had pointed out that anything was wrong with my eyebrows. They were too bushy, not shaped well. After that application, all I could see were two giant eyebrows stuck to my face. I have this memory of accidentally shaving a portion of my eyebrow off because I was too scared to pluck them. Eventually, I started getting them threaded at a kiosk in the mall.
Rating communities were like sororities for alt girls online. There was something more painful about being rejected by my perceived “peers” than by popular kids at my high school. I was like them! Or at least, I thought I was.
So, I slowly learned how to take pictures of myself. How to perform the beauty I sought out. There would always be some girl with the username capitols or consonances or clavicles who I deemed was prettier than me. I would obsessively save photos of girls into my “haircuts” folder on my computer, knowing I didn’t just want their hair but also their face and presumed lifestyle.
After some digging, I’ve unearthed an old accepted application of mine to a rating community called __yeahhh. I applied on February 26, 2005.
1. Name, age, location: Amalia, 16, Indiana
2. Five of your favorite bands: 1. Rilo Kiley 2. The Unicorns 3. All Girl Summer Fun Band 4. Blonde Redhead 5. Deerhoof
3. Promote in your journal & provide a link if you wish: I don't like promoting, sorry.
4. Four or more clear pictures:
glo_worm_glo: yesss. gorgeous. Add me?
baby__fuckyou: WEAK YES. 1, 5, & 6 .. ARENT FUNNY. 1 IS DISGUSTING, BUT I HAVE TO GIVE YOU CREDIT FOR YOUR MUSIC & YOU'RE CUTE, BUT THOSE PICTURES DO NOTHING FOR YOU.
___sesso_: no. once i saw your icon i immediatly said no. because i fucking hate when people take pictures of themselves brushing their teeth. i don't see the point to it. but you are cute.
mass__romantic: YES. modd. you look fun to be around, and i love your lips.
capitols: no. you are not pretty.
I even ran a short-lived rating community named ___robotlove. It eventually evolved into a community for people to post about robots. I’m not sure why robots were so popular in the early 2000s. Did Rilo Kiley’s Science Vs. Romance have a hand in this? A blog post on the aesthetics of early 2000s LiveJournal is forthcoming. After a year or two, I abandoned rating communities altogether, deciding they were cruel and a waste of my time. The “haircuts” folder persisted.
I’ve never met someone who remembers any of these online spaces. Even a cursory Google search leads mostly to posts within LiveJournal. It doesn’t seem like much has been written about them and sometimes they feel like something I made up entirely.
Websites like HOTorNOT were the mainstream equivalent of the rating community. I could upload a picture of myself and anonymous users would rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, leaving me with an average attractiveness score. Perhaps this was a more accurate metric of my objective beauty. I would go on to upload multiple photos of myself to the platform. One of the photos I uploaded was a blown out picture of me taken by a friend. The middle of my face is so drowned out by the flash that my features become slightly imperceptible.
I’d return to the website throughout my adolescence every time I felt that pang, that desire to know the unknowable. A desire that is still very much present in me all these years later. A desire that still shapes the experience of being online.
In the end, it never really was about beauty, but more about being looked at. My attractiveness would morph depending on the image or the lighting or the pose or the person on the other side commenting yes or no, 7 out of 10. I’m not sure what my friends could have said to me on my 18th birthday to console me, to get me to stop asking. The question gets re-worded, but it remains.
I recall users from "nonuglies" even after nearly 20 years. They were impossibly cool to me at the time, early influencers I suppose. You are so right that it was as much about personality - if not music taste, a novel hobby or interest would score points. Indifference (even feigned) an absolute must though. I'm glad someone else remembers rating communities too.
So interesting to hear about this forgotten history! 🩵