There’s something ethereal about scars. They catch the light differently, interrupting the smoothness we’re taught to desire—and yet, that very imperfection demands attention. A scar says: I’ve been through something, and I have a story to tell for it. It’s the punctuation mark in the prose of a person’s life, the tangible proof that healing has happened—or at least, that it’s happening.
I once met a man who had a scar on his lip. It was extremely faint and easy to miss. But I noticed it—I can’t tell you why, I just did. Like a moth to a flame, I was drawn to hear whatever he had to say, regardless of what it was. Come to think of it, the scar somehow added depth to his character.
I met a lady once whose scars were brutal and ragged, yet so regal and powerful. She wore her scars like a scarf on a chilly day and sweat on a hot day. She did nothing to hide them, except the occasional bangs or body socks on days she couldn’t stand the eyes of pity or the intrusive questions.
I know someone who ensures that their scars are covered, hidden away from the judgmental eyes of the world. In fact, they hide their scars so that they do not scare off those who see them. To them, scars equate to imperfection.
Scars mark where pain met endurance. They map the geography of what we’ve survived. They make us stand out uniquely and boldly, highlighting a painful past that birthed a glorious monument—the scar. Scars are also a testament to a life lived.
These three individuals each handle their scars differently. They represent the three categories of people in this world: those who hide their scars, those whose scars easily go unnoticed and those who wear them boldly.
In today’s world, there is an obsession with smoothness and perfection, balance and spotlessness. This obsession has led to many trying to erase scars and any other form of imperfection.
Leonard Cohen, in his song Anthem, sang, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” That’s the paradox: the flaw is what makes the masterpiece. We aren’t perfect beings, and that imperfection is what makes us human. As I like to say, we are perfectly imperfectly perfect.
Scars Are Internal as Much As they are External
Scars go beyond just the physical; there are internal scars caused by wounds of trauma. Internal scars are mysterious and hard to identify. You can’t see them, yet they shape posture, confidence, and even relationships.
They alter the way a person listens, communicates and forgives. Internal scars are quiet. They can’t be traced with your fingertips, but they can be felt in conversations, in the way someone pauses before trusting, or in the way one’s eyes dart across the room.
When someone carries an inner scar with grace, there’s an invisible gravity about them—the quiet kind of strength that doesn’t need to announce itself. To an observant soul, this is irresistible. It’s the difference between a song sung in perfect pitch and one sung with feeling; one is technical, the other unforgettable.
And this—this attention to the small, unspoken details—is where introverts come in. Introverts tend to fall for the subtleties: the nervous laugh after vulnerability, the light tapping of the foot before a decision is made, or the tight grip of one’s hand during a casual walk. They notice the crack in the voice or the pause before confession, the telltale signs of a healing wound. For introverts, attraction is about the truth behind the subtle actions. They fall not for the flawless, but for the fragments that reveal someone’s realness.
Introverts are connoisseurs of subtlety; they fall for details. The faint line near the eye that says I’ve cried here before, the slight tremor in a voice carrying unspoken history, or the heat behind a smile.
The poet Rumi once wrote;
“I said: What about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road.
I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning.
I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?
I said: Pain and sorrow.
He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
Here, Rumi touches on the quiet truth that scars—both internal and external—are not merely signs of pain, but portals of transformation. A soul without scars can be compared to an unread book on the shelf, just gathering dust.
Finding scars attractive is not a morbid fascination. It’s a recognition of depth. Sylvia Plath once confessed in her journals, “I want to be important. By being different.” She wasn’t glorifying pain—she was acknowledging that the marks we carry are proof of being alive, of feeling so intensely that the experience had to leave a trace.
To love someone’s scar—the one on their face or the one behind their silence—is to love their story, their survival, their unedited humanity. So, finding scars attractive is not to romanticise suffering, but it’s to recognise human texture. It’s where attraction roots itself, not in beauty as symmetry, but in beauty as truth. Perfectly imperfectly perfect.
In the movie Five Feet Apart (2019), the beauty of scars was brought to life through the scene where the two protagonists showed each other their scars. It spoke volumes, even when the two didn’t say a word in that moment. The scene magnified the depth of what it means to show another your scars, to open yourself up completely, to strip yourself naked after stripping yourself naked.
Scars are attractive because underneath them is a story of pain endured, of healing, and a life lived. In his song Scars, James Bay points out that ‘we lived through scars, meaning that they allow living to be done vivaciously. To live is a risk, to scar is inevitable, and those scars must be worn with grace.
So, when I say scars are attractive, I mean exactly that. If you see my scars and flinch, then you truly do not see me.
Scars, whether carved into skin or soul, tell stories. They’re the narrative beneath the surface; they scream endurance, they scream survival and beauty rediscovered in pain.
How did you get your scars?
