When someone asks, "Have you ever been judged by your looks?" where does your mind go?  Do you picture some overweight, frumpy slob in ill-fitting clothing and a bad haircut?  Or do you picture someone petite and pretty, thin and youthful with a bright smile on their face?  The fact is, we all get judged based upon our looks, and it doesn't get any easier when you get prettier.

I'm no supermodel, and I don't want to be one, either.  I've spent most of my life battling problems with my weight, but the problems I have aren't with obesity--I've always been very, very thin.  As a matter of fact, the ideal body weight for my build is a minimum of 120 lbs, and up until very recently, I didn't even break 100.  It took me two years to gain nearly 20 lbs, and all it takes is one bad cold, one bout with the flu, or even just a rough week at work to drop 5 lbs as if it never was.  When I tell people this, they always say the same thing.  "I wish I had YOUR problem."

Everyone thinks they want to be young, thin, and pretty.  We are constantly fed these images of some false sense of beauty through malnourished models and plastic-enhanced celebrities, but the fact of the matter is this is an unreasonable ideal.  Truth be told, I think if most of the people who claim to envy me suddenly woke up in my body one morning, they would be outright dismayed by the life they'd been thrust into.

Despite what so many people like to assume, being young and pretty doesn't mean one has led an easy life, nor have they been coddled and sheltered from grief and misery.  I spent most of my childhood being bullied so badly that I carry emotional scars from it to this day, and at the age of 18, I lost my only sibling in a tragic accident.  I have been through psychologically abusive relationships and struggled to make it on my own as an adult.  I've battled health problems, faced food allergies, struggled with depression, and endured hardship the likes of which most Americans of my generation never know.

And yet, when I am at work, people see only the bright, smiling face of a pretty, thin 20-something, and they assume--as people always do--that because I look the way I do, then I must be a certain way as well.  One of my greatest pet peeves is when an employer responds to one of my complaints with "You're young--you can handle it."  Their assumption seems to be that because I am not yet a bitter, cynical, middle-aged woman that I must not know how unpleasant life is and I need to build some character.  They tell me I'm young, as if being young grants me a reprieve from needing food, sleep, or time with my family, or as if being young makes the bills easier to pay or the housework easier to do.

One of the happiest days of my life was when a hairdresser informed me that I had gray hairs.