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I uploaded this book on the 29th April 2019 and never never could I imagine the amount of support I received. Never could I imagine how much this book meant to people. I had to change the acknowledgments because I have to send a message out.
Pizzaface started out as a random idea, I was washing the dishes thinking up random scenarios as I usually do and Pizzaface was born, (there was a first draft which was in the 1st person but it was really bad). I didn't want it to be a coming out storyline, or centered around Noel's sexuality, honestly I don't even think the word gay was even mentioned. I wanted this to be about Noel's growth, about his coming out into himself.
I was once like Noel I guess, I didn't hide my face like him, or get my hoodie pulled off my head, but I shut myself away, binged on 'how I got rid of my acne videos' wasted so much money on treatment after treatment which ironically just made my skin a lot worse. I thought that once I'd clear my skin, I'd be happy, I'd be beautiful, people wouldn't make grating comments about my skin which I found so hard to control.
But it was so lonely. I can't exactly pinpoint what changed, my skin didn't miraculously clear up, I just didn't have time to worry about it, suddenly I had to prepare for exams and moving and growing up. I didn't have time to worry about my skin, I just washed it with black soap, slapped on moisturizer and that was it.
Maybe it was just down to growing up, maybe it was down to me not stressing about it, but then that made me think of a question, why did I care so much about it?
My straight answer would be the media, everyday you switch on the TV, log into instagram or watch a YouTube video, there's this agenda pushed that to be beautiful you need to look a certain way, you need to have clear skin, and the funny thing is, as a teenager myself, acne is the most normal thing to have growing up, so it always baffled me as to why it was treated as an anomaly, as something to distinguish and get rid of. It's normal, so why don't we treat it as such?
And not just in the media, but even here on wattpad or in the YA books I read, the characters usually always have clear skin, cocky smirks, leather jackets and are all pale with long hair.
I wanted Noel to be beautiful, I wanted Noel to be beautiful without conforming to beauty standards set by society.
I had a lot of readers messaging me saying that they wanted their own Myron, or were waiting for their own Myron, but what I wanted to make clear, was that, yes, Noel had support from all his friends, but at the end of the day he learned to love himself on his own. He put on those colourful clothes and walked to school without a care. And like Dylan said "you have to be your own soulmate", how can you expect someone to love you, if you don't even love yourself?
Life isn't a fairytale, I didn't have a cute boy with bushy eyebrows and an obsession for Steven universe telling me that I was beautiful, I had to learn that for myself. And I'm still learning, I think I'm always going to be learning, and that's okay.
Don't let whatever makes you different rule your life, whether it be the condition of your skin, the colour of the skin, the way you talk, the clothes you wear, whatever it may be, don't let it control you, control it, embrace it.
Noel had to learn to love himself with his acne before he could learn to love himself without it.
If you got this far, thank you. Thank you so much, I feel like I keep on repeating that it means a lot to me, but it really does. This book was never about getting reads, but if I could help just one person, that would be enough.
