To be beautiful?

[Mindgoneblanko]

Aibu to want to be beautiful and to wonder what it must be like to be beautiful and know you’re beautiful? How does it feel, if you are?
Have you been aware of having more opportunities in life, people being nicer to you etc, based on your looks, or has it been detrimental in any way?
For the record, I’m not hideous, ok I’d say or was when younger, but definitely not highly attractive/very pretty/beautiful

Someone please put me out of my misery! Who is Samantha Brick?! Google isn’t helping - I can’t work out the link to this post

I do see women being jealous of good-looking women everywhere.

Jessica Alba, the actress, who is stunningly beautiful, said she was bullied so badly at school, that she had to eat her lunch in the nurse's office, so she wouldn't be beaten up.

I wonder do men also bully better looking men.

I didn't make the most of myself when I was young , permed hair, not a great dress sense ( and I was slim back then too) can't wear heels then or now and mostly was a bit grim in the groomed look stakes.
There are more beauty salons and products these days so I think people make more effort and it's not that expensive to get your eye brows done or a manicure or something which can enhance you a bit. Plus I've never been good with make up , it tends to run or smudge.
As someone once said to me ' you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear ' lol 😂 but you can try I suppose..

I was quite pretty when I was younger and I got so much free food! That was the best bit, really. Strangers, especially men, were always very helpful. I used to be on and off trains a lot and hardly ever had to carry my own suitcase up the stairs. I had terrible mental health issues though and was very unhappy.

Now I’m fat and nobody looks twice at me (or gives me anything for free) but I have a lovely family and a happy life. I wouldn’t trade my life now for how it was back then at all.

Lucky I've always been a fat speccy bastard so no need to worry about losing my looks 🤓

Men don't seem as jealous of other good looking men do they? I think their egos tell them ' I look like that anyway' and just let it all hang out! Men do have a different mind set about it.

@Jennydot she wrote an article for the Daily Fail about how hard it was to be beautiful and how women were soooo mean to her. She was a totally average looking blonde lady in her 40s

I'm not beautiful but when I was around 16-24 years, I had some traits that that society typically deems beautiful e.g. Youthful skin, Slim, long hair, spent money and time on makeup etc. And it actually made me insecure. I would get attention from men that would make me feel extremely good, and then I'd have extreme lows when the attention eventually stopped. Getting staired at and hit on by some older men at work etc. made me feel insecure too.

Whereas now I'm middle aged mum, with belly, aging skin etc. And I dont get any male attention - I get ignored even - but I feel mentally better.

I have always been ugly, and it's very hard. People do just look through you and gravitate to the more outwardly attractive people. I'm often told that I'm a beautiful person inside, but I have to say that it never seems to make up for the lack of attractiveness on the outside. I think life would have been considerably different if I had been more attractive, which is sad, but a lived reality.

I was 'hot' for a few years. Not beautiful - my sister is beautiful - I think I just had good tits, a good smile and good hair 😂 now I look about 10 years older than I am and I've no idea when I last got my hair done...so that's over haha!

Apart from more attention from occasional interested men/women, no difference to my life.

My sister however - she's stop-to-look-as-she-goes-past beautiful. She's been upgraded on flights and to hotel suites, taken for dinner by literal millionaires she's met on the train to London, offered jobs she's not remotely qualfied for, people are just generally really positively inclined towards her. It helps that she's lovely, of course, but before she even opens her mouth people just want to help/impress her. I think we're just naturally inclined towards beautiful 'things' and she fits a very specific ideal of physically beautiful that people find appealing and gravitate towards. It seems like fun!

The thing with these threads is that you don't know if the responses are from beautiful people or Samantha Brick types. I think we need photos from those claiming to be beautiful

Beauty alone isn't enough. I know beautiful women and men who have great personalities and don't seem to be aware that they are good looking. They can be very successful and I wonder if their looks help with that, I think it definitely does. But I've known physically beautiful women and men who have awful personalities and they never seem to be able to hold on to their 'catch', or make the most of opportunities which come their way.

Beauty shouldn't be judged by male attention, it's nearly always unwanted, but I have noticed that women who are 'girl next door' pretty get a lot of male attention, women who are beautiful get attention from over confident dickheads.

I think that Samantha Brick is very pretty.
She obviously had a lot of attention and was flamed on Twitter etc for writing about her experiences , which I thought was a bit mean at the time really.

Samantha Brick was very clever to hit right into the misogyny of the Mail and society in general. We still remember her for one article ten years later.

I don't think she believed a word of what she wrote but damn she knew her target.

It’s always a thing where women aren’t supposed to say that they are attractive or good-looking, which are a bit different I suppose and it drives me crazy. An average man often acts like he’s the greatest thing.
I’m not a man-hater I promise!
I’m definitely an odd looking person but I’ve been stopped and told I was beautiful (I’m short and now 46 and still get this shit).
I’ve also had more creeps than normal people in my life.
What I see is an oddity when I look in the mirror but after a fair amount of abuse in my life, how would I know?
I often wish people weren’t verbal. Then it’d be much easier not to care somehow

Beauty is a powerful thing. My first introduction to it was in a fictional story ' lord of the flies' where Simon is chosen to be the gang leader as he is blond and good looking. I remember my English lit teacher telling us that his looks alone got him that ' job' so to speak over the more average boys on the island. It's a very dark tale , but it taught me that beauty is so compelling. Us humans do like beautiful things.

I was averagely pretty (think Spice Girls attractive) but I have a friend who was a 5’10” model and the spitting image of the blonde one from ABBA. She was, and still is, breathtaking and a super brainiac to boot. Many men and women were vile to her. Men thought they had the right to just approach her wherever she was and would be really horrible to her when she rebuffed their advances. On one occasion a man in the street actually spat at her when she wouldn’t date him. She had some awful boyfriends who weren’t interested in her, just what she looked like on their arms and in their beds. Luckily, she met a fellow nerd who saw past the platinum blonde hair and big blue eyes, and they are very happily married now. It was hard for her for a long while though.

My sister was really beautiful when younger. It was annoying, random guys would walk up to her, and interrupt what we re doing/ our conversation, to talk for an hour and ask her out. It was unbelievably hard shaking these guys off, quite often we had to leave the place, just to get away. Everywhere we went women of all ages gave her the up and down look. I found it easier going places without her. Since she hit 50, she's lost her good looks and slim figure. She's trying to get her looks back by using a lot of lip fillers, tattooed eyebrows, botox, bleached hair and lots of fake tan. She actually looks dreadful now, like an overweight version of Pamela Anderson. For the first time in my life, I'm the better looking one! Only took me 40 years! 😂

Everyone I know who are practically perfect have had horrible experiences their entire lives - females being jealous and bitchy starting rumours, males being very aggressive with them for no reason, being turned down for many job opportunities, many people hoping that they have bad luck in other aspects of their lives.
It’s so sad that we judge people based on their looks so much.

The amazing thing I've found though is the amount of very good looking women that end up with blokes that look like Steve Tyler or Meatloaf! Nothing against either of these two men personally, but you rarely see a couple where both are equally stunning.

Apparently I'm quite beautiful, but its not all plain sailing. I sometimes get given things for free, occasionally quite big things, but I'm quite shy and reserved so I could probably get more if I pushed myself forwards. But I don't want to. I get embarrassed easily. My mother was very beautiful and my father was also very good looking, so I was rather play-do like as a child and my parents wow did they like to remind me of my shortcomings. I left home at 18...

What you can guarantee though is that certain men will fancy you, some will be quite rude to you and ignore you because of that while others will be quite sweet. Women can be very jealous and a few can be really very nasty. You have to remember not to push your looks at all and be quite self dismissive. I've learned to be very careful and guarded about who I trust because of past experiences which I don't think would have happened to everyone.

Many men are intimidated and prefer a less striking girlfriend. Some people think its ok to be rude about your appearance because you won't be hurt. Some people assume you've been handed everything on a plate because you have a rich husband or boyfriend. I tend to dress down so as not to attract attention and don't often wear make up. Some men can be really annoying as you can predict you are going to act in a certain way and you try to fend it off by not making eye contact, pretending not to hear them, etc..

One weird but slightly amusing thing - if I wander about somewhere there are a lot of yachts - Puerto Banus, St Tropez (I don't do this often but have been on holiday there), you inevitably get invitations to go on said yachts. No way am I going on one to be drugged, raped and murdered!

I'm actually quite an anxious person due to some horrible experiences and although I like the way I look, because thats me, I don't think about it a lot but I am very very wary and I'm aware that I'm probably going to be attacked for even posting this.

Women who are drawn to you because of your looks are similar to those who would be drawn to you because of money or celebrity. It's not true friendship - it feels like a weird 'what can i get out of this' sort of thing. Fair weather friends.

Often other women assume you're going to be stuck up, not in need of their friendship, bitchy and judgemental. They wont let you in at all.

Men - older men tend to either treat you like a vapid creature with 2 brain cells, or are sort of amused and fascinated and you have to work to have a meaningful convo. Younger men either avoid you like the plague or flirt and flirt. Some suddenly then get all defensive and peculiar

Having said all that - there are some situations when dialing up the smile to 100% is actually really helpful and i will do it

I was a plain child but by teenage years I was often told I could be a model. Big eyes, high cheekbones, slim but hourglass figure. It definitely opened doors for me, at one stage I was always being offered jobs on the spot (when interviewed by a man). As I got older I learned to dress/appear plainer when I wanted/needed to be taken seriously.

I think on the odd occasion certain people have been predisposed to dislike me based on appearance but I’m naturally quite humble/self deprecating so most people like me when they get to know me. Also some people have definitely judged me without knowing me but I think this has been the exception rather than the rule.

Then 10 years ago I developed a disfiguring condition which changed my appearance to the point of looking ugly/scary. That was very difficult, but I think it would have been for anyone. To look in the mirror and not recognise your own reflection is an awful thing.

Nowadays i think I don’t look too bad, definitely not gorgeous but could be a lot worse. I try to make the best of it with clothes/make up and hope that people don’t look too closely and see me for what is on the inside.

I've met a lot of very attractive women but only 4 truely and unusually beautiful ones. Two had terrible mental health issues, one was a narcisist and liar. The 3rd was a smart and bolshy model and quite formidable.

As Dita Von Teese said, beauty is a luxury passport to the world (although she constructed hers rather than it being natural).

That said, my friend had an aunt who was unsually beautiful. Men rushed to give her everything, very rich men. She would just walk into a hotel and people would fall over themselves to give her things. When she aged she no longer got that attention/identity and had a mental breakdown.

So clearly it doesnt make life easy necessarily. It must be great though, to wake up or walk along knowing you look amazing.

However, my friend had a

This will probably sound arrogant (it's a shame though how we're conditioned to downplay ourselves)
But yes I think I'm beautiful, and I am told so.
A downside is that it's attracted a lot of men who only want one thing, and that I've had a couple of jealous friends and colleagues over the years who tried to put me down.

I’m one of those people others find attractive but definitely not beautiful or even pretty. I have one very beautiful friend who has struggled to be taken seriously in her career, horrible “sleeping your way to the top” gossip when she has gotten a well deserved promotion. Men have seen her as a prize to be won not a person and been incredibly insecure that she is going to cheat on them.
I will take attractive over beautiful, real beauty is not a bed of roses.