How do you accept that you aren't beautiful?

[000oooh]

I know it really isn't the most important thing in life. But still, it would be great to look in the mirror and not scrutinise myself.
Today my partner and I talked to one of his friend's new girlfriends, she was exceptionally beautiful, far more attractive than me and I'm sure 99% of people would say so. I know my partner loves the way I look and is with me, but I'd be a fool if I said he wouldn't have also found her very beautiful.

Sometimes I'm just tempted to get cosmetic enhancements. I've already had nose filler, but only surgery would truly solve it.

I don't think I am unattractive, but I'm just not beautiful. I get told I look 'cute' a lot, and I saw my partner's male friend smiling sweetly at me as if I were a puppy.

I make the best of myself and try to focus on other achievements/things I like about myself.

I sometimes just wish I could be beautiful.

I say this as a ridiculously beautiful person myself of course!

Your nose is fine, it's a perfectly normal nose, your hair will grow (we've all had hair cut disasters at one point)

Even if you had plastic surgery on your nose, you would just switch your attention to something else because you're of that mindset.

Do you know what's also really helped me with this, watching Ru Paul's Drag race. Bear with.... there's some pretty average looking blokes on there that transform themselves into stunningly beautiful women. I love it! It's changed my feelings about beauty. Would my partner think they are attractive in drag, I bet he would you know! Sometimes he'll watch a bit with me and he'll make the odd comment like "the feminine one" "he's never that old" "that's never a man" some of them look incredible! Also I find myself finding the ones who have sweet personalities, or are funny or fun more attractive than the "bitchy" ones.

It's definitely changed the way I view "beauty" some celebs that are deemed the most beautiful women in the world, wouldn't get a second look in their trackies with no make up on.

Oh oh I completely forgot, you MUST watch Stephanie Lang on YouTube, her videos are AMAZING and have also really helped me with feeling the way you do.

I can turn a head but I do wonder if I was more beautiful I’d get treated better within relationships. Sometimes I see a beautiful woman on Instagram and I think, gosh nobody would ever dream of hurting her, just look at her. Then I think of Reeba Steenkamp, beautiful inside and out— saw past her husband’s disability, and he murdered her for her troubles, hated her ‘because’ she was so beautiful and perfect.
So ... it wouldn’t necessarily mean a better life.
I think it counts if you are well turned out and show you care about yourself.
But yes I’m tempted to do cosmetic enhancements, I do truly believe it can make or break a job application and all the rest of it.

You are being unreasonable, I know it is not uncommon to feel like this, but really, if you are healthy, not in pain and have somewhere to live and enough to eat, then just be thankful, and try to be a better person, because that is something you CAN change.

Don't just watch this one video, watch them all, it takes a little while for the message to kick in, I've got my friends are their teen daughters watching them!

@ByHook0rByCrook

Your worth is not measured by your looks.

Your worth is not measured by your attractiveness, an arbitrary and meaningless concept.

Your worth isn't measured by how many men want to fuck you.

Your worth exists, unchanging, constant, and real, because you are a unique, sovereign human being in your own right.

You do not exist to be looked at.

👏🏻 well said

It's so sad how it's so ingrained in women to compete with other women over something as unimportant as external beauty .

I bet a million pounds that the woman that you admired also looks in the mirror and sees something that she doesn’t like.

As an artist I find people’s features fascinating.

I’ve decided that I am not unattractive, just quirky. Quirky is good!

I really struggled with this when I was younger - but at 50 I LOVE my craggy face, my big, crooked nose, wonky teeth and “thin, mean lips”. my face is filled with character, warmth and expression and I wouldn’t change it.

I’m so much more than “nicely arranged facial features”.

Fucks sake, some people have empty lives. Have you tried doing ANYTHING else of value with your existence rather than worrying if thick men like your face?

I wouldn't give it another thought.

In my experience, those who are classically beautiful in their younger years are the ones who struggle with aging later on.

Growing up, the girls at school, and in our early 20s, who were the "pretty girls", and now the ones who look old, tired and out of date. They are still trying to pull of the style that worked for them when they were 19. Which just looks crap when they're pushing 40.

The "pretty ones" now, are the ones who were just average looking at school.

My nose is similar to yours in its profile.

When I was younger I had a beautiful aunty with a petite retrousse nose. I decided when I was older to have mine made the same. I never got round to it and now I can honestly say I am so glad I didn't do it.
I feel my nose gives my face character and actually suits my personality. I am in my mid fifties. I also used to think my chin and forehead were too small and looked into surgery options for those as well - I stayed as I was. They are my own nose, chin and forehead and I love them.

I understand you are much younger and there is more emphasis than ever on beauty these days plus more options to change things. Your opinions and ideals about beauty will change as you grow older as will societies in general.

It wouldn't be wrong to change your nose but, after the initial high had worn off, would you really then believe yourself to be the standard of beauty of you desire?

@000oooh

Thanks for the replies. It's not that I want other people to notice me for my looks as such, but I just want to look in the mirror and think that I am beautiful rather than disliking certain features.

I don't believe in the idea that women really lose their looks, people can be older and beautiful.
I just want to be totally happy with how I look, maybe therapy would help me

I used to work for a magazine that did a lot of beauty and style features. On a model call day there would be dozens of immensely tall, thin, other-worldly-looking teenagers coming through the building as they auditioned for photo shoots. We'd take the chosen extraordinary young women to a studio and the hair and make-up people would work on them for hours and then a photographer would take the best photos possible, using the best lighting, the best angle, getting the make-up people to work on a tiny shadow here, a bit of contouring there... And then the images would turn up on my computer, and I'd be instructed to use software to trim a jaw line slightly, or blend out the tiniest laughter line, or whiten teeth, or shave a fraction off a nose or lengthen an already long neck and crazily long legs.

The media create these unicorns in a bid to make you feel inadequate and encourage you to spend ridiculous amounts of money chasing rainbows. I left the industry because I was so disgusted at the role I was playing in making ordinary women miserable. Many of the mothers who worked for that company used to ban their daughters from reading magazines because it was so toxic.

Learn to love yourself for who you are and not just what you look like.

society's!

Honestly I just don’t see how it would enhance my life to be beautiful? I wouldn’t want to date or have a different partner, I wouldn’t go into modelling, what would be the benefit? When I was younger and thin i was quite pretty and all it got me was a few freebies and lots of sexual harassment

Just try not to think about it and focus on your good points.

At least you have a partner. Imagine feeling this and having to go through the vicious world of swiping apps and online dating.

I'm not classed as beautiful by this country's standards but I have lived in other countries where I'm seen as beautiful by those people.
İn one place İ was sitting at a bus stop in front of a road with three lanes next to traffic lights. İn the middle lane a group of guys drove up and we're all looking out of the window to have a look at me. Then another car pulled up next to them blocking the view. They all suddenly started hysterically screaming at the other driver in their language, 'move move move, we want to see the girl'. İt was quite funny from an objective point of view but also humiliating. Better to be liked for who you are than objectified.

@Thirkettle

Fucks sake, some people have empty lives. Have you tried doing ANYTHING else of value with your existence rather than worrying if thick men like your face?

Sorry but this unnecessary. I have body dysmorphia and it has nothing to do with whether "men like my face", I don't give a shit about that, but I do spend hours looking at myself in the mirror thinking I'm hideous and it genuinely effects my day to day life. These thoughts don't mean my life is empty but it does mean I am suffering with a mental illness. I also have OCD, the two go hand in hand and it's exhausting.

@Peppapigforlife so true except it can be the opposite. Japan- they don’t really prize what is considered attractive in the UK. Long blonde hair, blue eyes and slim? nope. The men are uninterested and there it’s all about short bobs and cuteness- a totally different sense of beauty. So I spent my twenties almost invisible over there, which I like to think enabled me to develop other characteristics.

My look is much more appreciated in the UK.
Maybe we could all move to whichever culture our particular look is valued 😂

Looking back on past relationship, overall, it seems the men who made a big thing about my beauty are the ones who ended up being absolute shites. I think this has affected my feelings on beauty per se and why being beautiful wouldn't even make it into the top 100 of goals and desires. It feels so liberating.

Do you know what's also really helped me with this, watching Ru Paul's Drag race. Bear with.... there's some pretty average looking blokes on there that transform themselves into stunningly beautiful women.

I think that's a terrible message tbh. Who wants to watch men turn themselves into grotesque parodies of women? The takeaway from that is that anyone can look 'beautiful' if they trowel on a shit-ton of make-up, tick all the stereotype boxes and try and make themselves into something they're not and can never be.

Please get counselling. You sound unhinged and lacking in self esteem. I'm no beauty, but I scrub up well. I accepted I wasn't beautiful 35 years ago when I was 15. It's never been a problem to me. You need help.

@Fairislefandango

Do you know what's also really helped me with this, watching Ru Paul's Drag race. Bear with.... there's some pretty average looking blokes on there that transform themselves into stunningly beautiful women.

I think that's a terrible message tbh. Who wants to watch men turn themselves into grotesque parodies of women? The takeaway from that is that anyone can look 'beautiful' if they trowel on a shit-ton of make-up, tick all the stereotype boxes and try and make themselves into something they're not and can never be.

I want to watch it and I enjoy it and have many friends who also watch abs enjoy it.

I don't feel that they turn themselves into "grotesque parodies of women"

You're completely entitled to your opinion and if that's what you have taken away from what I wrote that's fair enough, but it wasn't the message I was intending. I was telling the OP what helped me to "view beauty differently" as I have felt similar to her in the past and it is something that has helped me.

Beauty is objective, our messages prove this what you view as grotesque parodies of women I view as people expressing themselves and looking stunning. Neither of us are wrong, we just view it differently.

I'm not 'unhinged' but I think you may be the one who needs help if you see it as ok to be so rude and nasty?

How would your life be better if you knew you were beautiful, OP? If every waking moment you had not the slightest doubt about this fact.

JLo and Liz Hurley are incredibly naturally beautiful. As is cindy Crawford. And Kelly brook. Stunning when young, still looking good now. But all have had tonnes of work done.

Your ideas of what is normal are way off the Richter scale.