How I accept that I'm not pretty

[Sophieros23]

How can I accept and love myself when I'm ugly??

Therapy/counselling to stop judging your own self worth by what others say

But it IS subjective. It’s based on someone’s opinion isn’t it so you can’t compare it to wealth, which is measurable. Someone might like X whilst others don’t but you cant deny that £100 is £100.

Look at models , most of them are what would be described as quirky . Also what is beautiful ? Beauty is kindness , being open , making others feel good , living a good life.
When you got to bed tonight , wake up tomorrow beautiful , tell yourself you are and do that everyday .

At the heart of your OP is an underlying belief that "ugly" people aren't worthy of self respect. If this is a belief you hold then you may continue to struggle. If it isn't a belief you hold then you can start to unpick it and learn to be more appreciative of yourself.

What about people who aren't pretty or rich? Are they allowed to 'whine'?

What pretty to me will seem ugly to some people.. So if u have the mindset u are ugly then only u can change that thought... Love yourself first

Emily Ratajkowski is one of the most beautiful women on the planet by many accounts. Google her. Look at her face, really look at it. Beauty is a construct, it’s a combination of perspective and angles and opinion and confidence. You’re as beautiful as you think you are. Beauty is what you make of it.

I went through a very awkward phase in my teens and was bullied for being ugly. I focused on taking care of myself through fitness, eating well, keeping my hair and makeup nice, and just trying to feel good about MYSELF rather than trying to be someone else.

It isn't easy sometimes but try and be the best version of you instead of worrying about how you measure up.

I mean if you have nothing going for you it’s understandable if you whine. But honestly you’re winning at life if you have your health and can go through every day eating normally and living normally without pain or illness. Everything else is just gravy.

I know which one I’d rather spend time with, and it’s not the professional clothes horse.

Who needs to be pretty? Sure, it’s nice when you’re young to be told you are, and the rare actively beautiful people do get treated better by society. Beautiful and pretty aren’t the same. When I love people I think them beautiful; pretty is surface appeal.

But pretty is transient and culturally set. Very few adults are “pretty” and to be quite frank it seems a poisoned chalice because it’s those told they were pretty who fret about aging.

I’d rather have a fine mind than a fine figure because the mind lasts while gravity and years take their toll on the body.

OP, you need some help with your mental wellbeing and resilience. Your value has nothing to do with who does or doesn’t find you attractive. Your personality, your interests, how you behave, your actions and relationships… these make you the person to be valued.

Not what your uncle and grandmother thought of your appearance as a child.

@Bamboux Rather a silly comparison you made though to make your point by comparing a supermodel to one of the most successful and powerful women there's been in the whole world. Then you start rambling on about pretty privilege giving advantages. I'm sure it does, however, if you wanted to find someone to demonstrate this, Merkel is the most ridiculous example you could possibly use. One of the most successful women ever. Yes, sure, she's been done down by a lack of pretty privilege. Hmm. Unless you think the only thing that denotes success is being successful in industries about fashion? Rather than becoming a major world leader.

OP @Sophieros23 you asked a question about how to live with feeling not pretty. Which has sent this thread cascading into all sorts of sideshows. I'd say it sounds like you've internalised the bullying you suffered when you were younger. It's not easy to get out of this sort of thing. But perhaps start by thinking if this was my friend, rather than me, what would I say to them? Would I think it was right for them to think of themselves in this bullying negative way? If I heard someone else saying the kind of negative thoughts I have about myself to my friend, what would I say to those bullies?

This is the starting point. Building self-esteem through things that don't depend on other people's comments is then something to think about, what you do rather than how you are imagining you are appearing to others. Building a relationship with your body about what it can do for you and starting to build a relationship with it that appreciates it because it enables you to do things, it's quite a miraculous creation, and because it can experience stuff and you can feel great. Developing a relationship that makes you love your body and care for it and appreciate all it does for you. This is a perspective that can be sprung on us all suddenly when we get a sudden illness or injury and suddenly appreciate the ability of our bodies to take us places, to help us experience stuff. It can make you see things in a new light. Enjoying your body for what it can do can also really lead to feeling at one and raising self-esteem and can make you feel much more attractive for that matter too. Maybe think of some small physical challenges or something physical that will make you enjoy your body in a different way. But it's a kind of virtuous circle and starts with not bullying yourself.

Of course being pretty has its advantages...to say otherwise is disingenuous.

However, ugly is a very very strong word. Most people are average looking...some less and some more. We don't know what the op looks like but chances are she's a perfectly average non supermodel like most of us.

But it's clearly not subjective. Which is why supermodels look like supermodels.

Someone might think that Naomi Campbell is more attractive than Cara Delevigne, or vice versa, but they are both, obviously, objectively attractive. Which is why they are paid money for it.

@GandhiDeclaredWarOnYou I too would rather spend time with Merkel, or Margaret Atwood, or Alison Moyet, or Hadley Freeman, or a thousand other far more interesting and intelligent women. That wasn't my point. My point was that it's bollocks when people pretend that being good looking is not objective. It is.

@Hadtocomment my point wasn't that only attractive people are successful. My point was that beauty is not subjective.

The conversation is not about who is the most attractive.

yes clearly current societal convention says Naomi is more physically attractive but that doesn’t mean Angela is in any way ugly, the insinuation is heinous. She’s actually an averagely attractive woman.

just because Naomi is classed as physically attractive doesn’t mean everyone else is ugly

Ever spent time at a casting for a fashion shoot? Models are STUNNING in the flesh. Incredible. Just like some people are astonishingly clever, or astonishingly good at running or jumping, some other people are astonishingly beautiful.

The answer is not to deny that basic reality.

The answer is to challenge the idea that beauty is all that matters.

Don't say "you're not ugly" or "everyone can be beautiful". It's not true.

Say "it doesn't matter if other people are more beautiful than you. It's not what defines your value".

Telling people that they're wrong about being ugly and that it's all subjective is really damaging and cruel.It denies their lived reality.It denies all of the material advantages that attractiveness brings.

no it doesn’t. Far from it, we can all accept someone finds their own appearance ugly. We can all accept some others might too. But you cannot dictate that everyone has to agree with this perspective or they are cruel.

your lived reality is you believe yourself to be ugly. Some others agree with this. Your lived reality is not every single person thinks this and finds others routinely ugly. You need to accept our lived reality which is we do not see people or thr world like this.

and of course no one is denying the advantages of attractiveness. But not being physically attractive as per the societal norm doesn’t make someone ugly. It just makes them average

I haven't once said or implied that Angela Merkel is ugly. Not once.

She is an ordinary looking woman, as most of us are. And the point is it's not what matters about her. It's OK to be average looking, or ugly. We don't have to pretend that everyone is equally beautiful. All that does is to perpetuate the idea that looks matter more than anything else.

Angela Merkel is not ugly. But so what if she was? Why would that be 'heinous'? Why would it be such a terrible thing to say? Why do you think that ugliness is such an awful attribute for a woman?

Why do I find it bad, because ugly means repulsive and unpleasant. You cannot keep trying to force people to find woman’s appearance repulsive and unpleasant if they don’t feel this way.

you do, it’s how you see yourself and others. Many of us don’t. You cannot force us to bend to your will and see the world your way.

I didn't say I believe myself to be ugly, or not ugly. I've been quite careful not to state either way.

My point is that why do we, as women, think that looks are so all-important that the worst thing anyone could be is ugly? Why do we have to pretend that everyone is equally beautiful? Why can't we accept that it's one characteristic that some people have to a greater extent than others, just like height or athletic ability or academic skills, without it defining our entire existence?

Its not awful for women to be ugly. No one has said that. What people are saying is that the OP is unlikely to be ugly as defined by our current culture, especially given that her family deliberately targeted her appearance to damage and manipulate her whilst she was growing up. Hence having low self esteem and focussing on external appearance as a solution/cause.

(Nearly) Everyone posting here agrees that actually being ugly has or should not have any impact on your worth as a human being.

No. Ugly doesn't mean repulsive or unpleasant. This is exactly my point.

Just like beautiful doesn't mean good, or kind, or worthy.

We should be trying to challenge the idea that physical attractiveness defines our worth as women.

You'll come to accept it in time. It gets easier as you get older because age is, to some extent, a leveller in the eyes of popular taste, which equates youth with beauty. You feel much better watching people around you worry about losing their looks, from a position of having none to lose.

That's not true though. I didn't say Angela Merkel was ugly. I used her as a random example of an average looking woman who has been extraordinarily successful in her chosen career, vs an extraordinarily physically beautiful woman who has been successful for that reason.

And yet loads of posters have felt it hugely important to argue that AM is not ugly. Someone has just said that to be ugly is to be 'repulsive and unpleasant'. This is what we should be trying to challenge. Not trying to convince someone (when none of us know what she looks like) that really her looks ARE the most important thing about her.

Maybe op is ugly. Maybe she's absolutely gorgeous. Probably she's average, like most of us. Arguing that 'beauty is subjective' doesn't address the real problem at all. It just reinforces the idea that beauty is all that matters.

Still subjective

When a woman is young, good looks are an early signal of health and fertility. So people, particularly men, are attracted to good looking women.

Once people get to know the woman they can spot other signs of her worth - eg intelligence, wit, work ethic, whatever - and the looks aspect becomes less important. We rarely prefer one friend over another because of how they look and men love and marry average looking women all the time.

But that first impression is a big deal when you’re meeting new people. So it’s not surprising that younger women meeting lots of new people can feel insecure.

The truly beautiful are rare enough that we gasp when we see them and pay them lots of money just to appear on a runway or screen…but then you see them on that screen all the time, so again, you feel insecure.