Maybe I am a Narcissist
I often wonder if I am a narcissist. I joke about how everyone who sees me falls in love with me, and I carry myself with what could be interpreted as narcissistic self confidence. I know I am beautiful and that many other people share this opinion, I’ve known this since I was 13 years old. Does it make me narcissistic to think that I am beautiful? I obviously still get insecure. I hate the way I look without mascara, I hate the rolls in my torso when I lay on my side, I still am often self loathing. But, most of the time I look in the mirror and think damn I’m gorgeous. I guess the real question is where is the line between self confidence and narcissism, is there one at all?
It’s not like I have no basis for this statement. In fact I have plenty of basis for it, I have had people telling me I’m beautiful my whole life, I just haven’t always seen my own beauty. I remember the first time I felt beautiful. In fourth grade we had a puppet performer come to our elementary school. I had worn a fitted black skirt and matching shirt with mesh long sleeves. As we were leaving the performer told me I looked like Taylor Swift. I rode on the high from this compliment for weeks after that. Being compared to the gorgeous pop star not only made me feel beautiful but also grown up. I had a similar experience recently, when one of my friends stopped me as I was walking across campus and told me I had “main character energy,” I now think about this anytime I leave my dorm room, projecting my views of myself onto the people I see. This, I think, belongs in the realm of self confidence, the way I carry myself and hope others view me.
So when does this become narcissism? The word narcissist comes from the story of Narcissus, the man who starved to death because he fell in love with his own reflection. Now I would never stare at myself so long that I starve but, I do tend to think everyone else is in love with me. Well, that was hyperbolic. I don't think EVERYONE is in love with me, but I like to think I’m the type of girl who someone thinks about it for the rest of the day when we make heated eye contact. This is where I wonder if my self confidence is slowly bleeding into narcissism. I could sit here and deny it, and tell you it’s not my fault I was born beautiful, but that would be wasting everyone's time. I think all girls who believe themselves to truly be beautiful have not always felt that way. I mentioned earlier that I started seeing myself as beautiful when I was 13, I had been cat-called before this, had boys confessing their crushes on me, but never had I thought that this was because I was beautiful. The summer before 8th grade my family and I were at the beach and had gone out to dinner. There was a waiter close to my age who I had been making eye contact with and as we left he looked at me and winked. It felt like a scene from a movie, and I thought about it for months afterward. I could write paragraphs of interactions similar to this one that have transformed my perception of myself into what it is.
Every woman has that moment when they first see themselves as beautiful. Some experience this very young and some still haven’t. I’d like to theorize that every woman has this experience at least once in her life. The moment that shapes her view of herself and makes her more confident. Of course in an ideal world women would not need to feel beautiful to feel confident. She could feel confident because she is smart or talented. This is where the issue of beauty standards comes into play. Society trains us our whole lives that there is a way we are supposed to look. We are lucky that this is starting to change but when I was growing up the media I was surrounded with was all skinny (mostly) white girls with straight hair and perfect smiles. Even now when there is this culture full of body positivity it is still so easy to find myself staring in the mirror a little too long. Not because I think I look good but because I think I don’t look good enough. So maybe I am a narcissist, because I am doomed to starve to death staring in the mirror finding every minute flaw with in myself. Maybe I am a narcissist because I hyper fixate on how other people perceive me. Or maybe I am just a girl in a world where it impossible to be seen as perfect, where we are consistently fighting the standards that have been set for us. So next time you stare in that mirror tell yourself you’re gorgeous, smart, capable. Not because you are a narcissist, but because it is the truth, sometimes we just need a little push to see that.