Special to The Trussville Tribune
By Taylor Elliott
Vitiligo.
The word rolled off the doctor’s mouth with such ease – without her even missing a beat.
Last Tuesday I was diagnosed with a rare skin disease that changes the pigmentation of my skin. Basically, the skin cells in my body that make pigment (or color) are being destroyed and patches of white spots have started to appear on my skin.
Before I dive too deeply into where I am today, let me rewind and tell you a little about who I am. My name is Taylor Ryan (as if that wasn’t obvious by the name of this blog) and I am eighteen. I am your typical teenager – I love hanging out with my friends, I love to shop, and college can’t come soon enough. I worry about all the things most teenage girls do – how I will perform in college, whether people at school will like me, and (whether I like to admit it or not) my appearance.
Last November, I competed in Miss Alabama Teen USA. It was my fourth year competing and my last shot at winning before I went to college. After a lot of hard work and a stroke of luck – I won! I was ecstatic and I hit the ground running in order to get ready to compete at Miss Teen USA.
Then Tuesday happened. When the doctor diagnosed me with vitiligo on Tuesday, I had a million things running through my head. How quickly would it spread? What would people think of me? How do I make it stop? The truth is – there isn’t anything that can stop of the process of vitiligo. There are treatment options, yes, but none are guaranteed to work. My appearance will likely change and I will have to get used to that.
During my time reigning as Miss Alabama Teen USA, I have spent a lot of time telling girls that their outer appearance isn’t what defines beauty – that true beauty is more than just skin deep. Now is the time for me to prove that I actually believe it.
As a teenage girl, so many things try to tell us what beauty is. Magazine covers tell us to be paper doll thin, television shows tell us true beauty lies on the outside, and high school guys reiterate the belief that beauty lies in the outer appearance (whether they mean to or not). In fact, in a study commissioned by Girls, Inc., seventy six percent of girls say they worry about their appearance – they worry about their ability to look skinny, dress right, and whether people at school think they’re pretty. I have worried about these same things. So, it was time to figure out if I really believed that beauty is more than just skin deep.
After my diagnosis, my mother asked me to write down everything that I found beautiful in her, my sisters, my grandmothers, and my best girl friends. I made my list (reluctantly) and wrote down all the qualities I found beautiful in all of the women in my life. My list (photo below) answered my question – I have always admired inner beauty over outer beauty. Of all the qualities I love about the women in my life, not once did I list their hair, eyes, the size of their jeans, or, even, their skin. I don’t love the most important women in my life because of their outer beauty. Instead, their inner beauty is what makes me love them.
However, I have to admit that I haven’t always judged myself by those same standards. I have countless times told myself that my outer appearance was what defined how pretty I was. I have spent hours working on my outer appearance so that people would think I was pretty. How sad is that? I have wasted all this time thinking I had to lose that extra five pounds or had to buy that extra concealer in order for others to find me beautiful when what I find beautiful in other people has nothing to do with their exterior. My focus from here on out is going to be on my internal beauty – how can I be more like the beautiful women I know? Throughout my life, I have worked on my internal beauty. I have tried to be kind, I have tried to be caring, I have tried to be thoughtful. My focus needs to remain on building this interior beauty I see in myself.
In two weeks I will head to Miss Teen USA. The competition will be focused on external beauty and I will be competing against girls who are unarguably gorgeous. Over the past week, I have wondered about how I will be compared to them by judges who have just met me. Would a judge really be able to find a girl with an odd skin disease pretty in comparison to other contestants who have perfect skin? The truth is – I don’t know what the judges will think. I don’t know whether they will notice the spots on my shoulder, back and stomach and wonder what it is. However, I know that my true beauty lies within. And I won’t ever fall back into my old habits of judging myself based on my exterior. I am beautiful, despite any skin spots, because I have worked on my internal beauty and will continue trying to improve my beauty from the inside. I am anything but simply skin deep.