Beauty Beyond Binaries is a biweekly column about the intersection of beauty and identity on allure.com by writer, TV host, and activist Janet Mock.

I knew very early on that I was not pretty. No one ever called me pretty. It was not the go-to adjective people used to describe me.

Throughout elementary and middle school, I was used to hearing other words: Smart. Studious. Well-spoken. Well-read. They became pillars of my self-confidence, enabling me to build myself up on what I contributed rather than what I looked like.

Yet I was enamored by the pretty girls in class, the popular ones who walked into the room and shifted the gaze of the majority without effort, the ones who won class elections, were crowned Miss and voted Most, and who seemed to collect all the trophies and Valentines. I was equally fascinated by the pretty girls and women who were lauded in my favorite films and TV series as well as the ones who took center stage on MTV.

Pretty girls are not identical, of course, since “pretty” is subjective and means different things for different groups of people. Still, there are shared, agreed-upon commonalities. “Pretty” is most often synonymous with being thin, white, able-bodied, and cis, and the closer you are to those ideals, the more often you will be labeled pretty — and benefit from that prettiness.

As a young trans girl, I wondered what it would be like to be seen not only as a girl but as a pretty girl. Like many teens, I struggled with my body and looks, but my despair was amplified by the expectations of cisnormativity and the gender binary as well as the impossibly high beauty standards that I, and my female peers, measured myself against.

This anguish began to subside as I embarked on my medical transition at 15 when how I saw myself inside began to slowly and steadily reveal itself on my outsides. I began to finally see myself. By 16, others saw my self-image as well, and I began to notice the way people treated me shifted. They no longer stared at my body in confusion. They no longer questioned my gender because I began to present more clearly as a girl — specifically, a cis girl. Suddenly, I was successful at “passing,” blending in with the pretty cis girls in class I had once watched in fascination.