I was the ugly one at school - the kid with the Coke-bottle glasses, the spots, the braces. I got picked on all the time. I was treated not just as ugly, but as an idiot. Instead of learning maths, I learned to despise myself.

My parents - I got the worst of both of them in the looks department - didn't really know how I was being treated at school. They couldn't understand why my grades kept going down and why I was a troublemaker. They sent me to all sorts of psychologists. I thought of killing myself - I could imagine myself at home, with the knife in my hand.

Going out with girls was torture - I had to make hundreds of phone calls just to get a date and the goal was to try not to get dumped on the street corner as soon as they saw me. By then, I'd worked out that at school the best reaction was to be funny about it so that I wouldn't get teased. I became quite a character.

But I was suffering from ''aesthetic anorexia''. I ignored my dentist and got rid of my braces and spent a fortune on glasses with lenses that didn't look too thick. I had laser surgery on my eyes - I didn't care that it was earlier than recommended. I had hair implants. I was thinking about other surgical procedures like another implant and liposuction.

I tried all kinds of diets, I spent hours at the gym. I was a total slave to the mirror - it was utter aesthetic desperation. I was trying to turn into a prince from a sad, ugly frog, but I still felt sad and ugly.

I decided to write a book about my experiences of being visually unappealing in Argentina, a country with the most beautiful women in the world. I called it Ugly. It was great therapy. There aren't any other books about what it's like to be ugly and not turn into a swan. I think an ugly duckling has to be happy to be ugly.

I realised ideal beauty is a racket. It doesn't exist. Most people can't spend the four or five hours a day in the gym that you need to have a perfect body, and starving yourself in a country where food is plentiful is a kind of ostentation. It's perverse.

I even said that there should be a tax on beautiful people to subsidise us ugly ones. The government ignored me, of course, but this month I'm meeting people from the education ministry to talk about devising some anti-bullying material to use in classrooms. Because of my book, teenagers confide things to me that they can't tell anyone else, so I want to use this and do something positive to help build ugly kids' self-esteem.

In my case, I transplanted all the insecurities I'd had at school into the world of work and I wasted 10 years. I'm trying to get over it. I'm 31 now. I went from being a loser with women to being a Don Juan while I was writing the book - I became an expert at picking up women in the street, but they were all one-night stands.

I've still only had one girlfriend in my life. Women used to give me the brush-off. Now they know me as ''the ugly one''. But lots of women are afraid of going out with me because they think I'm writing another book and they'll be in it. But things can't change until people do, and we can all stop relying on the mirror - especially the girls.

As told to Jude Webber.

我是學(xué)校里的丑小孩——眼鏡片厚得像酒瓶底、長(zhǎng)著瘌痢頭、戴著牙套。我總是遭到別人的嘲笑。人們不僅認(rèn)為我丑，還把我當(dāng)成傻瓜。我沒(méi)有學(xué)會(huì)數(shù)學(xué)，而是學(xué)會(huì)了鄙視自己。

我的父母——我集中了他們兩人長(zhǎng)相的缺點(diǎn)——并不真正清楚我在學(xué)校里受到的待遇。他們不明白，為什么我的成績(jī)不斷下降，為什么我總是搗亂。他們帶我去看各式各樣的心理醫(yī)生。我想到過(guò)自殺，我能想象到自己待在家里，手中拿著一把刀。

與女孩們出去對(duì)我是一種折磨——我要打上數(shù)百個(gè)電話，才能得到一次約會(huì)，目的就是不要讓她們一看見(jiàn)我就把我扔到街角不予理睬。后來(lái)我發(fā)現(xiàn)，在學(xué)校里，最好的反應(yīng)就是一笑了之，這樣我就不會(huì)被人取笑。我變得相當(dāng)有個(gè)性。

但我出現(xiàn)了“審美厭倦”。我無(wú)視牙醫(yī)的建議，取下了牙套，花一大筆錢買了鏡片看上去不那么厚的眼鏡。我做了眼激光手術(shù)，絲毫不介意做手術(shù)的時(shí)間比醫(yī)生建議的更早。我接受了植發(fā)。我正考慮做其它外科手術(shù)，例如再做一次植發(fā)和吸脂手術(shù)。

我試過(guò)各種節(jié)食方法，花了很多時(shí)間健身。我完全成了鏡子的奴隸。鏡子絕對(duì)是審美絕望。我努力把自己從一個(gè)傷心、丑陋的青蛙變?yōu)橐粋€(gè)王子，但我仍然傷心而丑陋。

我決定寫一本書，談?wù)勗趨R集了全球最美麗女性的阿根廷，貌不出眾帶給我的經(jīng)歷。我把這本書定名為《丑陋》(Ugly)。這是一個(gè)偉大的療法。目前還沒(méi)有其它任何一本書講述丑小鴨不會(huì)變成白天鵝會(huì)是什么樣子。我認(rèn)為，丑小鴨必須樂(lè)于丑陋。

我意識(shí)到，理想的美是一種噱頭。它并不存在。大多數(shù)人不可能每天在健身房花上四五個(gè)小時(shí)，練就完美身材，在食品豐富的國(guó)家讓自己挨餓不過(guò)是出風(fēng)頭。這不合常理。

我甚至提出，應(yīng)該對(duì)漂亮的人征稅，以補(bǔ)貼我們這些丑人。當(dāng)然，政府沒(méi)有理睬我的建議，但本月，我將與教育部的一些官員會(huì)面，討論設(shè)計(jì)一些課堂上使用的反欺凌教材。由于我的書，青少年向我吐露了一些他們不會(huì)告訴其他任何人的事情，因此我希望利用這一點(diǎn)，做些積極的事情，幫助丑孩子樹(shù)立自尊心。

就我個(gè)人而言，我將自己上學(xué)時(shí)的不安全感全部移植到了職場(chǎng)，我浪費(fèi)了10年。我正努力消除這種不安全感。我如今31歲。在寫這本書的過(guò)程中，我從一位與女性打交道屢屢失敗的人變成了唐璜（Don Juan，西班牙傳說(shuō)中的風(fēng)流貴族）。我成了一個(gè)采花專家，但這些都是一夜情。

在我的生命中，我仍然只有一位女友。女人們過(guò)去紛紛拋棄我。如今，她們把我當(dāng)成“那個(gè)丑陋的人”。但很多女人害怕和我出去，因?yàn)樗齻冋J(rèn)為，我正在寫另外一本書，她們會(huì)被寫進(jìn)書里。但只有人們行動(dòng)起來(lái)，事情才會(huì)轉(zhuǎn)變，我們都可以不再依賴于鏡子——特別是女孩子們。

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