Middle school is a particularly challenging phase of life that most would not choose to experience again. From “the brace face” to random pimples and body developments you never asked for, the tween years feel nothing short of uncomfortable. I myself wouldn’t say that my over-tweezed eyebrows and ripped jeggings were going to land me on the cover of Vogue, but I still find it disheartening how common it is for people to hate how they looked in middle school.Â
Anyone would be disgusted by an adult openly making a mockery of a middle schooler’s appearance. It would require unbelievable audacity and demonstrate a complete lack of kindness, but isn’t that exactly what happens when we harshly criticize our twelve-year-old selves? We discuss the glow-ups we needed, yet fail to recognize the love our bodies deserved. Our past selves, even beyond our childhood years, are often treated with a cruelty we’d never tolerate from others, and this mindset extends far beyond middle school days.
True self-acceptance isn’t just about loving who you are now; it’s about loving the unhealed version of yourself. The one who made embarrassing mistakes, said things you still regret, and didn’t reach the goals you once set. That version of you, whether you’ve embraced it or not, carried you to the place you stand today. Rejecting them doesn’t erase their presence — it only adds shame to the person you’ve become. When you place blame on those earlier chapters, you’re withholding acceptance from the person you are now.
I didn’t fully grasp how much this concept affected me personally until a comment a friend made truly opened my eyes. I was passing around an awkwardly posed headshot from family Christmas photos years prior, discussing how horrible I felt I looked, when she stated, “Don’t talk about my friend like that.” It caught me dead in my tracks to realize that I was speaking about myself in a way I’d never talk about someone I care for. In that moment, I recognized how hard it can be to extend acceptance to the versions of ourselves that no longer feel like us.
The way we speak about every stage of ourselves matters because we still carry each of our past selves with us today. I am as much the girl who wore stretchy denim disasters as I am the college student trying to figure out the path to my future. When I remember a younger version of myself and cringe, I recall that both she and I were trying our hardest to keep up with the modern world in the only ways we knew how. We are all just doing our best with what we have.Â
So, the next time someone asks to see a photo of what I looked like in middle school, I hope I can approach it differently. Instead of saying how “ugly” I was, I want to smile at the girl who was doing her utmost with what she knew then. We’re all learning as we go, and every stage of life comes with the effort it took to keep moving forward. Our earlier selves got up, showed up, and tried, even when it wasn’t easy, and that effort deserves recognition, not ridicule.