Exceptionally unexceptional

I am not
what you could call
beautiful
gorgeous
or even the generic standby
pretty.

No
I am too flawed
too unique
to be any
of those things.

You cannot be beautiful
without makeup
with unplucked eyebrows
with freckles
and a body that
quite obviously
has had no exposure
to tanning beds.

I am exempt
from being beautiful
because I have short legs
braces
and scars
with so many stories
behind them.
I am not beautiful
because my body
is shaped like a pear
rather than
a noodle
or a stringbean.

The most I could
be described as
is handsome
and what girl wants
to be called an adjective
meant to describe
a guy?

Somehow
I am too ordinary
but also
too unique
to be beautiful
and to me,
there is something wrong
when such a contradiction
is true.

I
my face
my body
is average-
acceptable-
but in our society
acceptable
is no longer
acceptable.
Just to be acceptable
you must be
exceptional...

But how can we
all be?
For someone to be
extraordinary
doesn't there have
to be someone
many someones
who are ordinary?
If everyone
was exceptional
then wouldn't that
no longer be considered
exceptional?
Wouldn't being exceptional
then be considered
ordinary?
And if that was true
then wouldn't that make
all the people
who are ordinary
exceptional?

But no
none of this
will ever cross the minds
of those who strive
to be beautiful
to be impossibly
inexplicably
both exceptional
and ordinary...

Well I don't want
to be just
another pretty girl
unremarkable
unextraordinary
because I am trying
to be exceptional...

I want to be me
extraordinary
for who I am
extraordinary
for being ordinary...