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Transcript

The Girl Who Never Made the List · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: When I was 12, the boys in my class had a tradition.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Every so often, they would write a list, the 10 prettiest girls.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: The paper would travel from desk to desk.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Someone would add a name.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Someone would cross another out.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: People debated who deserved to be there.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Mine never was.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Children don't know the difference between an opinion and a fact.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I carried that opinion with me as if it were the truth.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Without realizing it, I started collecting evidence.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I compared myself to other women,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: to friends who became models,
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: to women who always seemed effortlessly beautiful,
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: to the girls who entered a room and somehow everyone noticed.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I admired them.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, if I'm honest, I envied them.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere inside me, that 12-year-old girl kept whispering, see, they're the beautiful ones.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Years passed.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Life happened.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I became a woman, a wife, a mother.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I stopped thinking about those classroom lists, or at least I thought I had.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then, earlier this year, a friend called me.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: She owns a skincare brand.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: She asked if I would model for the launch of a new product.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I actually laughed.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Surely she had the wrong person.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: There were so many women more photogenic, more glamorous, more model-like.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I showed up.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: We spent a few hours taking photographs.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: It felt simple, beautiful.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I went back to my life.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Months later, walking through Milan, I looked up.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there she was.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Me.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: My face was covering pharmacy windows.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Printed on product boxes.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Looking back at me from places I had walked past hundreds of times before.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I stood there for a while.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I suddenly thought I had become beautiful.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: But because for a brief moment I remembered that little girl sitting in a classroom in Brazil.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: The one who believed she wasn't enough to be chosen.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: The one who quietly accepted someone else's definition of beauty as her own.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to hug her.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because the thing that moved me wasn't seeing my face in a pharmacy window.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was realizing how long I'd allowed a 12 year old story to shape the way I saw myself.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: The campaign didn't make me beautiful.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: It simply made me question the story.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's what healing really is.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not becoming someone different.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not waiting for the world to finally approve of us.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: But finding enough distance to ask, who told me this about myself?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And why did I believe them for so long?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could tell you that from that day on, I never questioned my beauty again.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: That wouldn't be true.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some stories don't disappear overnight.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: They soften.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: They lose their certainty.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: They stop sounding like facts and start sounding like old echoes.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's enough.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe healing isn't the moment we stop doubting ourselves.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's the moment we stop treating those doubts as the final word.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: What I needed was to stop asking 12-year-old memories to introduce me to the woman I've become.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: If I could go back to that classroom today,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't tell that little girl,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: one day your face will be displayed in shop windows across Milan.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because that isn't the point.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd kneel beside her and tell her something I wish someone had told me sooner.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sweet girl,
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: the people who made that list never imagined you'd carry their words for
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: so many years.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's time to put them down.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: They were never yours to carry.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: They don't get to decide how you'll spend the next 30 years looking at yourself.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, neither do the adults who came after them.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Julia.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Julia.