I grew up believing I was ugly. As you can see from my photo, I wasn't, but because I had a younger sister who had what seemed like all the attention, I thought I must be unattractive. It's not that my sister was prettier than me, because everyone says she wasn't, but she had that certain something, that little spark that I lacked, so people were more drawn to her than to myself. My mother never mentioned anything about my attractiveness, but rather she criticised me at every opportunity, although she says she was doing it to make me better. Better in what way, I'd like to know. All that happened was that I was really insecure, very shy and blushed dreadfully whenever anyone spoke to me. My sister, on the other hand, knew she had attractive physical qualities: everyone used to remark on her curly hair and her dimples. My hair was straight, but it was no less beautiful than hers, and I had dimples too, albeit not so pronounced as hers. But the odd thing is, I never even realised I had them. Because no one mentioned them, because I never smiled at myself in the mirror, because you couldn't really see them on the photographs we had, I just thought I hadn't got them. It took a long time for me to realise that I was actually attractive. Even when I was voted the prettiest girl in the class in the fifth form, I still had difficulty in believing it.