Every certified late bloomer can pinpoint the moment they realized they were drafted in the loser league, though they thought they were an all-star. It’s that core memory when you discover that the universe has seemingly decided to cast you as a Chelsea (the “loser” best friend) instead of Raven (the star of the show). When you find out your classmates picture you as more of a Roger than a Tia or Tamera. In my case, I came to the devastating conclusion that I was not Lizzie, not Kate, and sadly not even Miranda — but fucking Gordo, in the 7th grade.
I was yapping with my not-so-secret crush when he looked deeply into my eyes and told me he loved my hair. Surely, this was it! He was going to ask me to be his Super Nova Girl, where I’d sit at the center table in the cafeteria to hold court for my fellow cosmonauts. Instead, this boy proceeded to tell me my braids reminded him of Allen Iverson, as in the 31-year-old NBA star. Apparently, this grown-ass man and I were twinsies!
Before cornow-gate, I was still under the impression I was due for a Vogue cover any day now, given I felt stand-up-comedian hilarious, academically brilliant, and rocked a pink polo with the best of them. In fact, I remained extremely vocal that I was on track to marry a certain rom-com star whose name rhymed with “grasping butchers,” and it was more than an innocuous celeb crush. This genuine, unabashed belief that I, a 13-year-old tween from Pennsylvania, had a real shot at ending up with Ashton Kutcher, a movie star who was already married to Demi Moore. The level of “delulu” I was born with would terrify today’s TikTok girlies.
But when the cool kids decide that you don’t have the “right stuff” The New Kids On The Block were singing about, you start to pick up their tune, even if you don’t want to believe it. I was surprised by the writing left on the locker room wall by the middle school hottie holy trinity (i.e. cheerleaders, rich kids, and class clowns in letterman jackets). For a while I assumed if I just bided my time (and waited for boobs) that one day the validation I was a main character would come from some omnipotent, cool, chill hottie goddess. This divinity, let’s call her, IDK, Beyoncé, would just call me up one day to welcome me to the cool girl club. Until then, I’d have to accept the pity invites to the suburban basement parties, knowing that I was not a contender for a closet makeout (even if I would’ve been way too terrified to last ten seconds, let alone seven minutes). Dances, Valentine’s Day, and homecoming games crept up like monsters I didn’t want to look at under the bed because I knew my name would never be suggested for the crown.
I’ll tell you how it feels being deemed an ugly duckling when everyone else is hot and touching: not well, bitch! The most frustrating part of blooming late was that I was a type-A overachiever otherwise. Why couldn’t moving up in the queen bee’s top 8 be as simple as acing a book report? Eventually, after an eternity of my dance card collecting dust, I kissed my dreams of being a main character goodbye, like Miley melodramatically closing the door on the Hannah Montana set.
However, by my sophomore year of college, things around me changed, even if I felt the same inside. I had wiggled my way into the friend group of my dreams, hormones did their thing, and I’d acquired a high-fashion wardrobe of H&M business casual. But knowing I looked like the other girls and feeling hot were totally different things. You could call it Hottie Impostor Syndrome.
I rolled with the hotties, but after years of being relegated to Loser Island, I wouldn’t dare act like one of them. I hid in the back of the digital camera selfies that filled the gratuitous Facebook albums. I accepted shots from hot strangers after everyone else was served because I still felt lucky every time I got an invitation to the pregame. And I wouldn’t dream a frat bro was flirting with me over a game of flip-cup, even when all the evidence showed that he was. (Here’s a hot tip for my collegiate late bloomers: if a straight male human being is speaking, there’s a 99.99% chance he’s flirting with you, a statistic I derived from boy math.)
Still, being a late bloomer in the friend group came with a few benefits. I spent time growing up as a person, which meant focusing on friends, school, and finding my footing in the world. Being the perpetual shoulder to cry on, instead of having my own drama to cry about when it came to boys andbitches, fostered selfless platonic bonds that would carry me through the messier eras I was so worried would never come. I also had the energy to excel academically, which helped me land the dream job in New York that, at the time, was rumored to be harder to get into than Harvard.
In my 20s, I danced in dive bars, devoured hungover brunch, laughed until I cried, shed stress tears on foreign soil, and loved myself just the way I was. Then, one day, like a pot that stopped being watched, I came to a boil. I looked at my life, looked at myself, and thought, “Oh shit, I bloomed.” I wish I could tell you some magical a-ha moment that has stuck with me all of these years, but as Leslie Bibb’s cunty character in the White Lotus said of life: you plant, and prune, and hoe (or in my case, don’t hoe) until one day you wake up with fucking flowers. The certified late bloomer of their trio, Carrie Coon, put it even more succinctly: time gives it meaning. Time allowed me to finally see that the decades I spent feeling awkward and ugly, were due to a feeling projected onto me, not a universal truth. Surviving my coming of age had subconsciously proven that outside opinions couldn’t define me. Without knowing it, I had stacked my confidence, brick by brick, and used those bricks to shatter the walls of status I’d found too high to climb.
I thought I was waiting for Beyoncé to text me back, but it turns out I had to coronate myself into the cool kids club. The only way to get my sexy sea legs was to run — not walk — towards showing myself off, rather than the humble tiptoeing my ancestors would’ve never co-signed anyway. See, hot people hide a huge secret: genetics can make you attractive, but you can only be hot if you know it. Moving through the world with pretty privilege is a choice. Hotness is a disposition, a lifestyle, an energy (with, of course, the help of going through puberty). Other people could see I was hot because, after earning it, I embraced it, not the other way around. I can’t count the number of times a stranger told me they loved my energy after I stopped behaving like the best friend and became the leading lady of my own life.
And because I got headgear on my 16th birthday instead of a car, I understand that with great hotness comes great responsibility, so let me share this with my late-blooming sisters-in-arms:
Being young, awkward, or in any phase of life that is cruelly uncomfy feels like an eternity because time is relative. It took me several hefty doses of hindsight to realize the designers at HomeGoods weren’t lying when they embroidered these words onto a sequin pillow: good things come to those who wait. When you finally bloom, all that struggling feels like the setup to a movie that just got past the previews. Dress the way you want, chat with the cute people, and be the girl you’d envy from across the room. If the chances of peaking feel impossible when you don’t start to rise until later in life, remember: I was a sourdough starter, and, if I do say so myself, the flavor turned out to be chef’s kiss.
