SCABs

I’m-posing syndrome. @dinglebobs

By Ben Conway

I get on the tube every day and that’s when it begins. Cameras, everywhere. My face, just on my neck it can’t be everywhere as well (that would be weird). I have this growing feeling from commuting five days a week since starting The SCA that people want to capture… my face.

 

I might be going crazy, because who would want to capture this mug? But it has been made clear to me throughout intense bullying in secondary school I have the facial attributes of an Alan Carr, Austin Powers love child; is that the key to my supposed attraction? The perfect Frankenstein mix of gay and hippy love god.

 

It can’t be true; do I deserve to be here? Some would say no. Others have been given the genetic gift of good cheekbones and naturally low amount of pores – I just moisturize in the mornings and suck in my cheek fat when no one is looking. The same goes for my stomach. I want to take this time to share. I wear Spanx.

 

On my commute home, while a man decided to lunge his armpit into my face before Oxford Circus, the front-facing camera of my phone turned on in the rush when it was below my chins. I saw it was there and it wasn’t a good angle. But I just… made it work? The shadow was wrong, the moment was wrong. EVERYTHING WAS WRONG. Why did I keep it going? Any normal person would have looked garishly at the grotesque sight and said to themselves “no-one will ever see this”. But I ignored that impulse and took the photo.

 

I needed to share my feelings with someone because I feel like it is something a few of us may be going through; one slip of the finger and the world could see a selfie that could take someone with 20:20 vision, to a -3,6. I don’t know what to do and where to go. I’ve tried doctors, but they all say that I’m seeing things – I do not know who to believe anymore. In this age of self-doubt and diagnosis, am I really who I believe I am. Am I really Ben Conway?

 

 

Hi there! If you made it this far, I thought I would spare you another nail-biting paragraph of nonsensical whiff-whaff, to explain that this is (if you didn’t get it from the title) a SCAB hijacking imposter syndrome. It seems to be something that has come up in conversation a lot and to anyone reading, the environment at SCA can be one that breeds feelings of being ‘a fraud’; when surrounded by similarly hungry, talented and driven people.

 

So to the people who have felt imposter syndrome, from a fellow peer, please do not feel that! You made it here and you rock. No one is better than the self you bring in every day and all that jazz about self-worth. Be the Ash Ketchum of yourself – the very best, like no one ever was (dun dun dun).

Related SCABs

Go back

Student Application

  • Fill out the Application Form below to be a part of our next Award-Winning intake.

  • MM slash DD slash YYYY
image