I grew up in one of those houses where brains were prized over beauty. That’s not to say that I ever felt like I wasn’t attractive. I just felt like any beauty that I had wasn’t one of the qualities that I should specifically be drawing attention to. I wasn’t one of those girls who wore makeup or spent hours doing her hair because I figured that there were more important things to do with my time.

Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that we all care about our own looks more than we should. Growing up in that kind of home, I never really dealt well with feelings of vanity. For example, at one point I was visiting a friend in DC who mentioned that she really loved the Washington DC dentist who was doing her Washington DC teeth whitening and other Washington D C cosmetic dentistry procedures.

It would never have occurred to me to see a cosmetic dentist despite the fact that I do feel some self-consciousness about not having the whitest teeth in the world. To me, it seemed like a vain thing to do. To her, it was an obvious choice to make to feel better about herself. I don’t have any complaints about the way that I grew up but I’m definitely working on being okay with the idea that beauty can be valued in the same way that brains are.