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When I was 14, I thought I looked terrible. I wore these typical Slavic shoes with metal bottoms so you could always hear me coming and this really ugly princess skirt and blouse with the top button closed. I had a boy haircut, a baby face covered with pimples, and a really big nose.

At twelve I looked like a girl of seventeen. My body was developed and shapely. I still wore the blue dress and the blouse the orphanage provided. They made me look like an overgrown lummox.

I was like most teenagers. I wanted to look more conventional - you know, to just be the pretty girl in school.

When I was 15, I didn't think I was the prettiest at all. But then something happened when I was 20-something - I thought, actually, I really like what I look like. Just because I don't look like everybody else doesn't mean that I can't be just as beautiful.

I've grown up a little bit. I'm almost 40 years old now. But everyone was introduced to me when I was 18 and I looked like I was 15. I've been around a long time.

When I was 18, and my looks were what I was - and all that I was - it did feel very limiting.

I'm learning to accept everything that I am. I've accepted that I'm not going to be a stick-thin-model kind of girl. When I was 14, I was tall and spindly. By the time I turned 18, I had become a woman, and my body's not going to go back to what it looked like when I was 14.

It's not like I cleaned up with girls. I always looked young and I was very small; I hated being 'cute.'

Oh, I had, 'No one will ever fancy me!' I had that well into my teens. Even now I do not consider myself to be some kind of great, sexy beauty. I don't mind the way I'm ageing. No reason to panic just yet. I think I look my age, and that's fine.

I think I was lucky in that I wasn't one of those girls who are told they are pretty the whole time. I never got that. Nor did I ever obsess about my looks as a teenager.