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!

Agree with pp's, those 2 on the train are the very epitome of nasty, on the inside! I'm no beauty but I scrub up lovely for a party!

It's all subjective some people that others think are stunning are not to me and vice versa.

@NattyGuide you're not ugly in the slightest bit!! I know it's not the point of this thread but you've got a naturally pretty face and could look beautiful if you wanted and went all Hollywood with clothes hair and makeup - these days people idea of beauty is often more about how much visible effort someone's put into trying to look "beautiful" with masses of makeup, flowing hair that takes hours to achieve, body con clothes etc.
Also if you look at lots of so called beautiful women, some have a slightly quirky face that on a bad day someone nasty and not worth listening to could call ugly - which means beauty is all subjective in the eye of the beholder and not worth worrying about.
You don't even have a quirky face though so I'm amazed anyone's ever called you ugly - it must be more that you've been around some really horrible people so

@Festivfrenzy Hi there, Thankyou for your comment, I really don’t know what people see in me to be treated harshly, in person I might give off something iffy I honestly don’t know, maybe they sense my lack of self esteem or I walk un confidently, been like this since the age of 11 til now, started getting negative remarks from my own mother, never felt good enough for her, I was a cute kid apparently but she mentioned things like that and use to say what happened to me, obviously changed through puberty, I wasn’t the best looking teenager, but did get bullied at school I had large eyes and a boys haircut, boys were never interested until I hit 16, had a few boyfriends they ended up pregnant, my mother said I looked ugly as I had put a large amount of weight on, I use to be skinny, she ridiculed my weight like most of my family did, said I was lazy, I ended up being diagnosed with Pcos do that didn’t help, most my 20s I was big, but did get interest from men but the wrong uns, was called ugly never pretty, maybe passable to have sex with my self esteem has always been on the floor, or when I’ve got a small amount of confidence I get targeted by an insult or two, maybe I just attract nasty horrible people but I think it’s deeper, I need to love myself and not care what people think anymore, I’ve been too much of a people pleaser and thought I deserved all the negative treatment, just the last few years I’m realising I need to change my mindset as I’m letting others control my mind in the negative crap they have spewed out to me, I really started to believe I’m a horrible ugly looking person and that’s why people are nasty to me, but Thanks I can’t see pretty in me, but I know I need to really work on my confidence and self esteem as I can’t go on like this anymore ❤️

Apologies @Nattyguide we have removed that photo because a. we can't know if it's a photo of you or not, b. it was highly identifying and c. it was a photo of a perfectly lovely face.

Snooze. Most of us understand the point OP is making, these platitudes are so trite.

After a certain age we all level up. I used to be beautiful but haven't aged well and to be honest I don't care. Nobody looks twice at me now. I could have cosmetic surgery but really I'm content with who I am now. Looks are not everything.