I will be the first to admit that I am not overtly culture savvy, but I still have trouble wrapping my head around the brief phenomenon that the ten year challenge was. Pictures of people spread ten years apart, the excuse to flex a glow up on people’s timeline. It was, unfortunately, everywhere. It was, also, so nonsensical to me.

Here’s the thing: ten years is a full decade. Pictures of people ten years apart are essentially looking at two entirely different individuals; physically, emotionally, and mentally. To give credit where credit is due, sometimes that is the point. However, more often than not it’s a point of highlighting differences in looks. To show how much hotter you’ve become. So like. Why?

Ten years ago I was eight years old. Eight. Sure, since then I’ve developed a more mature image, cognitive reasoning skills and an understanding of existential dread. I suppose, objectively, I am more attractive than I was when I was eight. To be fair to myself ten years ago, I was also eight. I wasn’t meant to be attractive, I was meant to be eight. This is the same reason why I don’t understand the people who are twenty six and twenty seven sobbing in relief over their glow ups online. Ten years ago they were our age, and not to sound too self deprecating here, but in ten years I fully plan on seeing myself as I see my eight year old self now.

We are nowhere near grown yet, mentally, hormonally, emotionally, or anything like that. It always makes me sad when people put excessive value on being attractive at our age, because there’s truly no need to. It feels nice to look nice and all that, but why place value in how attractive you are when you’re still a dependent parasite sucking off of your family’s resources? Teenagers aren’t independent, aren’t mature, aren’t adults. Almost nothing that is happening in our lives is going to matter in a very short span of years, so why bother putting value on looking cute for people you’re going to abandon in two years? You’re not going to marry any of them, you’re never going to hear their opinions ever again, colleges don’t require headshots, it just seems so nonsensical. Our job is to be growing up, not being concerned with being pleasant on the eyes to everyone else.

It’s okay to be ugly and be fine with that right now. It’s okay to not put in effort and it’s okay to not be bothered by it. We’re all just awkward second evolution pokemon waiting to level up; there’s nothing wrong with it and it’s just how we are. We’re still children, so just be ugly and be fine with it. When you look back on yourself in ten years, I promise it won’t be with a critical eye of how unattractive you were, it’ll be with pity for the kid that was going through some of the most awkward developmental stages of their whole life.