When I was in the 9th or 10th grade, Cheryl was All-American, and she was getting all the pub. I thought to myself, 'Why isn't anyone paying any attention to me?' I used to wish that I wasn't Reggie Miller, that I was Reggie Smith or Reggie Jackson.
At 14, I'd have given my left arm to be a boy: I thought I was horrible and that no-one would ever find me attractive.
I remember hating New Kids on the Block from the sidelines because all of the girls loved them. They would just fawn over them. 'Oh my gosh, Joey I love you!' When I was younger, I really couldn't stand them.
Nice to know I have that effect on boys. I mean, Christopher doesn't even know I exist, and Brandon Stark practically throws up when he sees me. Having my brain transplated into a supermodel's body was doing wonders for my love life.
In those days, between the ages of 12 and 18 you meant nothing. You were the extra place at the side table if someone came to dinner. You were of no interest to anyone.
When I was in my teens and twenties, I could see friends expressing how radical they were, and I envied them, the way they lived, the way they dressed. Maybe there is a part of me that is reserved, even in rebellion.
I didn't have high self-esteem when I was a teen-ager, as I think most teen-agers don't.
Everyone is insecure, especially in high school.
I wish I knew at 14 not to put much thought into what other people my age said to me, cause we were all looking for the answers. So I wish I knew that other people really don't know any more than you do!
I had a lot of insecure moments in high school. It wasn't all peachy keen. But, I don't necessarily think that I hated high school and wanted to crawl into a hole either.
I was always the weirdo at school. When I became a model [at 16], I didn't tell anybody. I was terrified that the kids would rip me to pieces.
When I was 15-years-old, I took off my clothes and looked in the mirror. When I stared at myself naked, I realized that to be perfectly proportioned I would need twenty-inch arms to match the rest of me.
I was a very, very shy, insecure teenager.
I really never thought about the way I looked until boys came into the picture. Then it starts to be like, 'Am I wearing the right outfit? I have to do my makeup for school!'
One of the traps of adolescence is the sort of paranoid resentment that somehow you're never going to match up and that everybody else's life is going to be better and finer and fuller. That everyone else attended some secret lesson in which how to live was taught and you had a dental appointment that day, or you were somehow not invited. And the point of great writers like Wilde is that they make that invitation to you.
Movies make teenagers have quippy answers for every question. Nothing seems to faze them, and they're like, 'Oh, whatever.' You're not like that when you're a teenager. You're really earnest. Things really feel like life or death. And you kind of oscillate between emotions at one time. It's very emotionally draining being a teenager.
It's bizarre. In middle school, I thought girls were running away from me, so when they ask for a picture now, I'm like, 'Really, what?!'
The media tends to portray the teenage world as one where drinking and sex is taken for granted. In fact, I think most teenagers don't drink, are unsure of themselves, and feel awkward around members of the opposite sex.
So I was ugly. I was never fat, really, and I never wore headgear or had zits or anything. But I was ugly. I don't even know how ugly and pretty get decided - maybe there's like a secret cabal of boys who meet in the locker room and decide who's ugly and who's hot, because as far as I can remember, there was no such thing as a hot fourth-grader. - Lindsey Lee Wells
You were at school and you were pimply and no one wanted to know you. You get into a group and you've got thousands of chicks there.
For some reason, as a kid, I felt outwardly embarrassed to say that I liked rock music. I don't know where that came from. For me, it just wasn't cool - orchestral music was cool.
I was this flat-chested, big-footed, lanky thing.
At school I got teased because I was so thin and awkward-looking. But the girls on TV looked similar to me. I would say to my mum, 'The girls at school are teasing me, but I look like those girls on TV.'
I think watching too much TV as a kid led me to being very uncomfortable in new situations. To this day, when I drop my kids off at school, I still feel like I'm in 9th grade and I'm uncomfortable and insecure. Like anyone is paying any attention.
I hoped I wasn't blushing. It was bad enough I had to depend on my mom to drive me to my battles.
