I was the ugly one at school - the kid with the Coke-bottle glasses, the spots, the braces. I got picked on all the time. I was treated not just as ugly, but as an idiot. Instead of learning maths, I learned to despise myself.

My parents - I got the worst of both of them in the looks department - didn't really know how I was being treated at school. They couldn't understand why my grades kept going down and why I was a troublemaker. They sent me to all sorts of psychologists. I thought of killing myself - I could imagine myself at home, with the knife in my hand.

Going out with girls was torture - I had to make hundreds of phone calls just to get a date and the goal was to try not to get dumped on the street corner as soon as they saw me. By then, I'd worked out that at school the best reaction was to be funny about it so that I wouldn't get teased. I became quite a character.

But I was suffering from ''aesthetic anorexia''. I ignored my dentist and got rid of my braces and spent a fortune on glasses with lenses that didn't look too thick. I had laser surgery on my eyes - I didn't care that it was earlier than recommended. I had hair implants. I was thinking about other surgical procedures like another implant and liposuction.

I tried all kinds of diets, I spent hours at the gym. I was a total slave to the mirror - it was utter aesthetic desperation. I was trying to turn into a prince from a sad, ugly frog, but I still felt sad and ugly.

I decided to write a book about my experiences of being visually unappealing in Argentina, a country with the most beautiful women in the world. I called it Ugly. It was great therapy. There aren't any other books about what it's like to be ugly and not turn into a swan. I think an ugly duckling has to be happy to be ugly.

I realised ideal beauty is a racket. It doesn't exist. Most people can't spend the four or five hours a day in the gym that you need to have a perfect body, and starving yourself in a country where food is plentiful is a kind of ostentation. It's perverse.

I even said that there should be a tax on beautiful people to subsidise us ugly ones. The government ignored me, of course, but this month I'm meeting people from the education ministry to talk about devising some anti-bullying material to use in classrooms. Because of my book, teenagers confide things to me that they can't tell anyone else, so I want to use this and do something positive to help build ugly kids' self-esteem.

In my case, I transplanted all the insecurities I'd had at school into the world of work and I wasted 10 years. I'm trying to get over it. I'm 31 now. I went from being a loser with women to being a Don Juan while I was writing the book - I became an expert at picking up women in the street, but they were all one-night stands.

I've still only had one girlfriend in my life. Women used to give me the brush-off. Now they know me as ''the ugly one''. But lots of women are afraid of going out with me because they think I'm writing another book and they'll be in it. But things can't change until people do, and we can all stop relying on the mirror - especially the girls.

As told to Jude Webber.

我是学校里的丑小孩——眼镜片厚得像酒瓶底、长着瘌痢头、戴着牙套。我总是遭到别人的嘲笑。人们不仅认为我丑，还把我当成傻瓜。我没有学会数学，而是学会了鄙视自己。

我的父母——我集中了他们两人长相的缺点——并不真正清楚我在学校里受到的待遇。他们不明白，为什么我的成绩不断下降，为什么我总是捣乱。他们带我去看各式各样的心理医生。我想到过自杀，我能想象到自己待在家里，手中拿着一把刀。

与女孩们出去对我是一种折磨——我要打上数百个电话，才能得到一次约会，目的就是不要让她们一看见我就把我扔到街角不予理睬。后来我发现，在学校里，最好的反应就是一笑了之，这样我就不会被人取笑。我变得相当有个性。

但我出现了“审美厌倦”。我无视牙医的建议，取下了牙套，花一大笔钱买了镜片看上去不那么厚的眼镜。我做了眼激光手术，丝毫不介意做手术的时间比医生建议的更早。我接受了植发。我正考虑做其它外科手术，例如再做一次植发和吸脂手术。

我试过各种节食方法，花了很多时间健身。我完全成了镜子的奴隶。镜子绝对是审美绝望。我努力把自己从一个伤心、丑陋的青蛙变为一个王子，但我仍然伤心而丑陋。

我决定写一本书，谈谈在汇集了全球最美丽女性的阿根廷，貌不出众带给我的经历。我把这本书定名为《丑陋》(Ugly)。这是一个伟大的疗法。目前还没有其它任何一本书讲述丑小鸭不会变成白天鹅会是什么样子。我认为，丑小鸭必须乐于丑陋。

我意识到，理想的美是一种噱头。它并不存在。大多数人不可能每天在健身房花上四五个小时，练就完美身材，在食品丰富的国家让自己挨饿不过是出风头。这不合常理。

我甚至提出，应该对漂亮的人征税，以补贴我们这些丑人。当然，政府没有理睬我的建议，但本月，我将与教育部的一些官员会面，讨论设计一些课堂上使用的反欺凌教材。由于我的书，青少年向我吐露了一些他们不会告诉其他任何人的事情，因此我希望利用这一点，做些积极的事情，帮助丑孩子树立自尊心。

就我个人而言，我将自己上学时的不安全感全部移植到了职场，我浪费了10年。我正努力消除这种不安全感。我如今31岁。在写这本书的过程中，我从一位与女性打交道屡屡失败的人变成了唐璜（Don Juan，西班牙传说中的风流贵族）。我成了一个采花专家，但这些都是一夜情。

在我的生命中，我仍然只有一位女友。女人们过去纷纷抛弃我。如今，她们把我当成“那个丑陋的人”。但很多女人害怕和我出去，因为她们认为，我正在写另外一本书，她们会被写进书里。但只有人们行动起来，事情才会转变，我们都可以不再依赖于镜子——特别是女孩子们。

• 6小时掌握学英语的秘诀！——点击看答案
• 专治男女记不住单词的秘密