You as in "Ugly‪"‬

You as in "Ugly" is this sixteen-year-old author's accidental collision with unconventional beauty. Change is inevitable when seventeen real life, real deal and often hilarious “girls” demonstrate beauty in qualities like bravery, resilience, and gratitude.   In the end, the reader and writer realizes it’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of unconventional beauty that actually make the “ugly,” beautiful. 


“It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” says everyone and anyone who’s ever been concerned with a teenage girl’s self-esteem. Apparently, those seven words—or nine if you’re really picky about contractions—will fix a lot. They’ll fix insecurities. They’ll fix self-consciousness. They’ll even fix the fact that none of us can open a magazine or turn on the TV without being bombarded by images of a million pretty girls. So thank every ounce of goodness for those seven words.  


…Or not. Any teenage girl will tell you it’s not that simple. One person can easily say, “Sheep are blue,” but a billion drawings, movies, and farms will show you that they’re white—and in a few very rare cases, black. Beauty is the same way. It will never matter how many times that one person tells us to look inside ourselves if the world around us doesn’t. As a result, we develop this obsession with the way we look and what people think of the way we look. It can be something as simple and innocent as the clothes we wear, or it can be as dark and scary as an eating disorder. In the United States alone, ten million girls suffering from anorexia or bulimia. That’s ten millions girls, who really don’t know they’re beautiful; who think beauty lies within the size label on their clothes.  It’s time to take a real life, real deal look at what is and is not beautiful. 


Author Bio: Lia Emily Ho began writing her first book, You as In Ugly at 16.  She quickly discovered despite her youth, a teenager's observations and insights were worth sharing and finished the book a month before her 17th birthday.   Born in Los Angeles, she currently lives in Honolulu with her family and tabby cat. 


keywords: Beauty, Inner Beauty, Girls, Self-Esteem, Popularity,  Humor, Values, Fashion,  Boys, Teenagers