“Here I am, I’m standing at the most ridiculously glamorous Hollywood party. I recognise every person here, I’m dressed up to the nines and I should feel on top of the world… and yet, all I want to do is run and hide in the toilet.
My whole life, I’ve felt like the puzzle piece that doesn’t fit. I LOVE my job, but I find this ‘showbiz’ world totally alien to me. I’m not cool, I’m not that person who says just the right thing at just the right time, and I never really betray any reaction to anything. I’m like a bloody Andrex puppy – constantly excited with a relatively shiny coat.
It would appear in magazines and newspapers that I’m quite the party girl. Thanks to my job at T4, I’m photographed with lots of different celebs, so I certainly like I’m in with the in crowd. But the truth is, these are just flittering moments, captured at various industry events. I am certainly not ‘in’ and to tell the truth, I never have been.
School was horrific for me. Constantly an outcast for being different, or a geek, or just being a bit chubby at the time (hey, what can I say? I learned at a young age to make nice with the dinnerladies). The thing is, I’m only now, at the ripe old age of 25, OK with being an outsider. Because as an outsider, I really feel like I have a broader view and more space to be me.
All the people I know who are in that so-called in-crowd lead somewhat limited lives. They always go out with the same groups, wear the same sorts of clothes and go to the same cool places. But I think there’s a freedom to not being tied into that. And if you look around, there are a lot more outsiders than you think.
The world is a little like a puzzle, in the respect that we all have our different shapes and sizes, but we also have our own set place which makes up the final picture that is our society. And that’s just it, all puzzle pieces are different – even if you bend, fold and contort a puzzle piece to fit a space for which it is not intended, the final picture will come out wrong anyway, so what’s the point? I heard a great saying when I was younger, which was: ‘Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light.’ The insight and character strength that comes from being a bit different is PRICELESS.
I have been every kind of bullied: emotional, physical and racial. I’ve had ‘ugly bitch’ smeared across my school locker in make-up, I’ve had my body battered, I’ve been called ‘fat paki’ [UMM, I GET HER POINT BUT WRONG TO KEEP THIS IN?], I’ve been the only girl in my WHOLE year at school to not get invited to birthday parties. Why? Because I hadn’t kissed anyone yet, because I wouldn’t try coke in the toilets, because I dared to admit that my mum was my best friend, or that I quite liked studying and my favourite music was jazz.
I look back at my old journals and they are full of self-hatred, packed full of me condemning myself for not being prettier, richer, more popular. It infuriates me to see how much time I wasted beating myself up for just daring to find my own feet as the person I was going to be one day. Looking back, I wish I’d given myself a break and spent more time making like-minded friends.
The funny thing is, when I auditioned for T4, I was no scenester – I knew nothing about pop culture. I had NO fashion sense. I was just a naive 22-year-old English teacher, with no clue about anything other than who I was. When I was offered the job, I naturally asked, why on earth they picked me and they said: ‘Because you were different from all the others. You stood out.’
And that was the first time I started to develop a little faith in myself. I also realised that the coolest people on earth are the BIGGEST weirdos – Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Tim Burton, Grace Jones etc, etc, etc… And no revenge is sweeter than success. So to all the girls that made my life a misery for 17 years, who are now adding me incessantly on Facebook... you know where you can shove that.”
