In the second grade, every single day we would take a class bathroom break and after we were done we would line up. Most of the days I was near the front of the line and so every single day my teacher, with the perfectly styled light brown hair with the golden highlights and perfectly done makeup, would lean over to me and say, “Bad hair day?”
She even said this… on my good hair days and because I never knew how to respond to that I replied with “Yep.”
At seven years old, I learned the difference between feeling good and feeling pretty. It did not feel good when my teacher and I had this exchange every single day. However, on my good hair days, I still felt pretty.
As a 20-year-old college student, my friends have expressed to me their opinions about the difference between feeling good and feeling pretty at this age.
The problem is, one can put on makeup and feel pretty, but that doesn’t mean that they feel good. In fact, they can feel pretty, and groggy or gross, or sad and unmotivated. They can feel pretty and not good.
But one can also not feel pretty but feel really good.
The moral of this life long lesson is that how one feels or looks on the outside does not always match how they feel on the inside and vice versa.
Both my seven-year-old self and my college self and friends have been exposed to society’s standards. Maybe my second-grade teacher thought if I had blow-dried my hair like hers it would have been a good hair day. Or maybe if someone doesn’t wear makeup to class, people won’t comment on how they look sick or tired.
Although outside appearances can often give us context clues as to how someone is doing, never assume and simply rephrase your thought rather than ‘bad hair day.’