A message from an ‘ugly’ woman

[Over40Overdating]

I am, by all conventional standards, an ‘ugly’ woman.

I am not, and never have been, beautiful. Never pretty or attractive. On a good day with some good light, I could possibly pass for striking.

This awareness has crippled my self esteem for years, to the point of developing a phobia of mirrors and pictures. I have no pictures of me from 14 until recently.

Tonight, on my way home from work, 2 young women got on the trains opposite me and started discussing and laughing loudly about how deformed and ugly my face I was.

I didn’t challenge them because I am middle aged and knackered and didn’t fancy my chances with two very loud, much younger women, but I realised I don’t actually care.

For so long, someone calling me ugly or unattractive to my face would have been my worst nightmare but it happened and instead of the world ending, I’ve realised I no longer care about my face or how it’s viewed.

I don’t know if it’s age, peri menopause, life experience or being too tired to care, but for the first time in my life I feel like I am more than the sum of my facial features and very much like who I am regardless of what I look like.

I feel free. Like a giant weight I have been dragging around my whole life has suddenly dropped off. I wish I’d had this realisation decades ago! I wish I could tell younger me my wonky face doesn’t actually matter in the grand scheme of things. I have a life I am proud to have created and many things to celebrate and not a single one of them relied on me having a conventional looking face.

So fellow ‘ugly’ women, please come join me on a ‘DGAF’ thread.

Reassurance about your face ‘not being that bad really’ is banned.

Celebration of all the many other things you are than your physical appearance encouraged!

My face, I don't mind it
For I am behind it.

A couple of empty and non evolved human beings.

• young lovers see beauty in perfection and old lovers find beauty in flaws - that might be slightly incorrect but you get the gist.

I am growing tired and bored of this narrow & white supremacist western idea of button nosed, big lipped Anglo beauty.

Its boring, it’s tired & it’s uninteresting & the vanity and trap of beauty is also just exhausting.

I figure that when I age and at 39 I’m start to, it’s not going to hurt me as much. I’m seeing my very beautiful friends starting to look mature & I think the loss of that thin & beauty privilege will be felt.

Oh and it it makes you feel better, in Australia, a woman with crazy road rage that I was going at speed limit, made fat guestures at me & then mined throwing up out a window.

I was mildly insulted but not really.

My 7 year old boy said she looked like our beautiful friend Ronee but “if Ronee was on drugs”. He then went on about how scary this woman was and dangerous & horrified.

Later when he told me I had lumpy legs it was in the most casual, funny & silly way. He’s also said my big bum is very cuddly during winter.

I could care less what empty people think & pity them for not knowing the love & admiration that transcends big lips & slim hips.

zoxox

I remember many years ago, in the metro in Paris, there was a young woman who was probably my age at the time, she wasn't pretty at all, she was even quite ugly...but she radiated something charming and unique.
I don't know whether I was the only one in the world who felt that with her, it's not relevant, the fact is: she seemed happy in her own skin, and that made her special.

For years, when I was not happy with how I looked, I was just thinking about her, about her IDGAF attitude and it helped me tremendously.

So thanks OP, and I'm really happy for you that you've come past those nasty experiences, I don't need to see a photo to say that you're a great person!

As I’ve hit middle age I care less and less about how I look. I have no one to impress.

Society now more than ever seems so obsessed with looks. Lot of friends have had Botox and are chasing those glory years of beauty. it’s sad. I think the more attractive you are the harder it is to get old and watch your looks diminish.

I know some absolutely drop dead gorgeous women, but one in particular is a horrible person and it shines through and I can’t see past that no matter how beautiful she is. It really is only skin deep.

im sorry that happened to you on the train.

The 2 ugliest women I know, know they are ugly and don't try to change it. They are also the kindest, most positive and strongest people I know- not because they're hardened by their ugliness, just because they focus on more important things!

It’s high time we were all judged on much more important criteria than the arrangement of facial features. I love your post and the freedom and power that comes over in it. I can appreciate conventional ‘beauty’ but it’s purely superficial and it’s how I measure a thing, not an actual person! With people I am drawn to kind eyes, a genuine smile and a sunny outlook - at least they give me clues to the genuine worth of the person. I am so glad you no longer give a hoot about your perceived placing on the superficial, worthless, ugly - beautiful scale.

I like this - thought invoking. Xx

Bedtimeteadrinker - 😋 Sweet thoughts & Hugs to you 🤗 ❤️
Loved your story . ....
Ps. You need to carryn a large middle finger stick in the car lol

Love your cartoon mirax. Those girls who were rude are certainly ugly on the inside and it will probably take a lifetime of experience for them to learn the error of their ways - if indeed they ever do.

I've always felt ugly, in fact when I was young, a lad pointed out to me on the street that this was the case. He was a prat and probably drunk.

However, I did manage to find a husband who thought I was beautiful - I always joked that he had defective eyesight. We were both a bit quirky, I guess.

It was 1990. Same year as the world cup was in Italy!

F

Yes, but not as vocally or fearlessly as women are. Could you imagine a solitary woman abusing a passing man on a street? This scenario on the train would have been far less likely to occur between a strapping six-foot male man and two women. The fear of male violence is too great in women. Groups of (usually drunk) women can be obnoxiously rude to men on their own, safety in numbers.

OP I’m not going to patronise you by telling you that you objectively meet the current standards of beauty. But you sound like a bloody great person and I’m pretty sure that if I knew you IRL, i’d find you beautiful and attractive. Which is a very, very different thing from fitting a specific popular aesthetic.

I have a strong preference for people who are what the french call. ‘jolie-laide’, a term which is often translated as ‘ugly-pretty’ but goes deeper than that; it describes the beauty and character and attractiveness of a face that’s arrestingly imperfect.

also, imagine the holllow emptiness of being as insecure and infantile as the women who laughed at you. Not worth a second thought.

Fuck them op 🍷

@SurprisedWithAHorse

I'm hiding this thread after this post. I've tried to interact reasonably with you, no issue that you have a different opinion than me, but (even tho I thought I was inured to MN & its harsh ways!) I've found your posts directed at me both insulting & hurtful.

You seem entirely unable to accept my bona fides, or my different opinion, while saying the same of me - it's not true though! I haven't argued against anyone's view or belief, only to say, genuinely, I don't believe anyone is ugly, and I find the kind of categorical thinking that assigns women (or anyone) to such trite groupings depressing & flawed.

What hurts is your insistence, not that you disagree with me (completely fine!) but your constant accusations that I'm being disingenuous or fake.

Equally the idea that I'm only seeing my viewpoint - but that's the point of a forum, for each of us to give our own views! It's not saying we don't accept others'!

Once again, I feel very sorry for women who have been subjected to nasty comments or treatment in the context of how they look or how they others perceive the look.

Until you’ve been the friend who was never asked to dance whilst your friends all coupled up, were chatted up as a dare, had insults hurled at you in the street, had people crop you out of photos, been ignored at a bar as everyone around you was served, had strangers match with you on dating apps solely to tell you how ugly you are, been rejected as a romantic partner because you tick every box except pretty and generally been made to feel less than because of something that is totally and utterly out of your control, you can’t actually understand the weight of that one word that you think can be easily dismissed.

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

So true. I see my unpleasing face as other people's problem.

I am sorry if I hurt you.

But I'm afraid I really don't believe that you couldn't pick out a person who fell very far short of conventional beauty standards. I can believe you wouldn't care and wouldn't treat them any differently for it, but I'm sorry - I do not believe that you could put me next to Margot Robbie and not notice who is more conventionally beautiful.

I don't believe you don't know what's meant by an ugly person. When you say you've never seen one, it invalidates people who have spent their lives suffering the kind of cruelty and prejudice that many posters have bravely shared here. It doesn't really help them to be told that you personally don't think they're ugly; you know what's meant by it and although it is obviously well-intentioned, it doesn't help to claim it doesn't exist. It clearly does.

The problem isn't that some people are ugly. The problem is that they are treated horribly for it.

I think we've found the beauty equivalent to "I just don't see race"!!! 😂

I realise it is well meant and probably does signal a lovely person, but it is a bit naive as to the structural nature of all kinds of appearances.

I remember a few years ago I walked into a bar and a bloke said "Christ, look what just walked in". I was really ill at the time and had been on drugs that had taken me from conventionally pretty to really not. I think the thing that offended him the most was my short hair, a result of my illness, but clearly a red flag to a bullshit misogynist.

Something in me just broke in pain at that moment. The difference in the way you are treated according to how you look is immense. But I looked at the guy doing it and he was just a piece of shit. I listened in to his conversation when his friends arrived and he was uneducated, ugly and way less successful than me.

After that, my illness got worse and the drugs got stronger and ruined my looks even more. But I stopped giggling at bad male jokes and trying to please with the way I dressed and started wearing what the fuck I wanted to be comfortable. And I mean what the fuck I wanted, not some elegantly dishevelled look that masquerades as that while taking ages to put together. I discovered there is a kind of wild joy in not giving a shit and getting on with it anyway. I haven't even thought about how I look to the male gaze for years. I do not give a damn.

I would never describe someone as ugly unless but I understand that it's not my place to tell someone how to describe themselves. It is similar to the "I don't see race" line.

I think many many people have unconscious bias and it's ridiculous to say we aren't affected by this. I get the bus every day to pick up my son, 90% of the time someone (usually men) offers me to go in front of them, I'm certain this happens because I'm young-ish and probably viewed as attractive. These type of encounters happen on a daily basis. If I looked a different way I'm sure it would be different. My husband who is a black man has such a polar opposite experience to me on a daily basis where he is viewed with suspicion.

Our looks do affect how we are treated and we have to question and fight internal biases we grow up with

I think many many people have unconscious bias and it's ridiculous to say we aren't affected by this.

I know I am. I'm not proud of it but I really felt it when I watched the BBC production of Wolf Hall. I love Mark Rylance and I think he's an amazing actor, but the casting director knew what they were doing when they chose him. It's a much more sympathetic portrayal of Cromwell than has been done before, and I don't think it's any coincidence that they cast an actor who is much, much better looking than he was to help get that viewer sympathy. I probably reacted better to him when he looked like Mark Rylance than if they'd cast someone who actually resembled him.

Every childhood story we grow up with... The baddie is a witch who is ugly. In the middle ages they believed if you were more beautiful you were closer to God. These ideas permeate.

I think it’s more “healthy” for want of a better word, to get to your 50s and not care anymore. Does anyone see Madonna as anything other than sad right now? (Although she is in her 60s now). The filtered pics, the toy boy boyfriends, ignoring health scares to try and prove she’s as fit as she was in her 20s. it all comes across as a bit (well, a lot) desperate.

I have a long time friend who was attractive in her youth. Every other day she’s posting filtered pics on FB and I genuinely feel quite sorry for her that she doesn’t feel she can be her authentic self. She looks absolutely fine for a woman in her 50s but uses so many filters she looks in her 20s in those photos. And I know she doesn’t look like that in real life.

I think 50s is the point where you either stop giving a fuck. Or you are influenced by all the celebs who still look good in their 50s and you aim to achieve that. But where does that striving end? 60, 70, beyond? The one certainty is that age catches up to all of us in the end.

I’m sorry you experienced this.

I am not pretty now. I used to be attractive, but I haven’t relied on my looks, and I am grateful for that now that they have faded. I’m quite overweight, but I am funny and thoughtful and try to be kind.

I remember walking through the streets of a small city a few years ago behind a group of girls, and while everyone looked at them, no one looked at me. It was a liberating moment as I realised I was, to all intents and purposes, invisible. I can wear bikinis because no one is looking at me. I can chat to blokes without their wives worrying about me. It’s great.