Cute Baby, Ugly Teen?

On the wall above my piano hang three portraits. The first portrait from the left is of four-year-old me, wearing a striped black-and-grey baseball shirt and khaki shorts, clutching a plush dog. The second one is a drawing of four-year-old me in the same clothes but in a different pose. All the way to the right is two-year-old me, in a snazzy black suit, white dress shirt, and red tie. In each picture, my face is a kind-of-but-not-really pale Asian white, not a Caucasian white, with cheeks that are “sooooooo cuuuuuuteee,” according to people who have seen the portraits. The smile on my face in all three is one that (I think) I can replicate now; it’s a my-cheeks-are-hurting-please-stop-taking-pictures type of smile that still ends up pleasing to the eyes. When friends and family come over for little gatherings, they don’t notice the glimmering piano recital trophies, the clinking academic medals, or the decaying piano. Their eyes immediately glance up at the wall, mesmerized by the portraits, muttering (or shouting), “Aww! You were so cute! What happened?” It never bothered me until Mr. Delo gave out the personal causal analysis assignment. Now I wonder, what did happen?


One of my godsisters reminds me about my baby portraits every time I see her. She claims that the innocence in my baby face is something that I can’t imitate now, even if I tried. “When you were little,” she explains, “when you did something wrong without knowing it, your face was just so cute. Now, your face doesn’t look the same, and it’s partly because you’re older and you know right from wrong.” Another godsister agrees. “You were such a chubby little innocent-looking boy. Now you just look nerdy!” My best friend has a much simpler reason. “It’s because,” she whines, “you’re too old to look cute.”


So, I got older; that’s what happened. My godsisters were right. I didn’t know anything except for what my parents taught me. My parents taught me right from wrong since I was born, but finding me in the kitchen with a broken plate would end up in an “aww, look at his face” reaction from other people. Growing up, however, it was expected of me to be proficient with right versus wrong, and seeing me in the kitchen with a broken plate would end up with me being scolded. There’s something about a cute baby face that I can’t copy anymore, because I’m too mature to mimic the face and the mindset.


Is there really a cutoff age for being cute? Mke, a weekly magazine from Milwaukee, asked six people their opinions on age and cuteness. Five out the six people (the sixth didn’t answer the question) said that there’s no age that’s too old for being cute. An internet blogger, whose username is Jezebel, says it’s a girl thing: “Cooing uncontrollably over my ex-boyfriend’s ‘little old man’ baby picture… reminded me of the way my roommate talks to her cat, and my mom talks to her dog and miscellaneous other spontaneous women-type stuff: like oh-my-god is it some hormone that causes this stuff?”


In an essay written for thisisby.us, a website that exhibits good writing, a writer (known only as ‘moreanonymous’) believes it is the perception from other people that make the baby cute. “Usually children who were conceived accidentally rate high on the adorable scale… because they’re unexpected….” (I fall into that category; I was an accident. Like the Confederacy, I was “made in Virginia.”) “As these babies grow up, however,” he writes, “they get less and less cute. It’s because of the knowledge they acquire.”


On Valentine’s Day, 2006, I sent my best friend a little note with four-year-old me as its background. She can’t get over “how cute I was.” All I hear from her is “I just wanna pinch your cheeeeks!” and “Eww, you’re so ugly now, you’ll never be as cute ever again!” She likes to rub it in, just to make fun of me. It’s probably true that I’ll never look or act the same again, but that’s a good thing. Too many girls would be hounding me otherwise.