What's it like to be beautiful?

[mclover]

Just that really. Idly looking through some online gossip pages (I know) and seen a pic of David Beckham for example, and Helena Christensen. What's it like to go through life being very attractive? Any beauties out there want to share?

I wasn't even remotely pretty when I was at school. I was bullied for being "ugly"! However something clicked when I was 17/18. My figure, which had been described as boyish, was suddenly quite enviable with my small waist and curved hips. I have no boobs but hey ho! I am only 5ft which was a source of ridicule at school but was then deemed an attractive trait. Lots of little things like that.

I now have a fair amount of tattoos, a couple of piercings including some discrete facial ones, always an interesting streak of colour in my hair and I lean towards alternative style. I don't dress how I do for anyone else except myself which obviously gets lost in translation. This means I get a lot of male (and female) attention and 99% of it is unwelcome. It's often quite embarassing too!

My dd is stunning and finds it hard to make female friends. She hates bitchiness, really can't bear it. She has a lot of boy friends but has never had a serious boyfriend. Girls can sometimes be really mean. I was average looking and had lots of female friends!

I notice people in public watch me or double take. Some women randomly compliment you or ask about your makeup/outfit. Definitely agree that you always get other girls/women being instantly rude, or being fake-friendly or fickle towards you. (The sort of ‘pals’ that will mock you photos in group chats with their mates or are just interested in your dating life and sharing your business etc.)

It’s annoying being cat called by random men, especially when they randomly honk horns at your or god forbid stop their car and shout things at you. Attractive people get accosted by everyone, including weird creeps. I have been followed and even stalked before, not all attention is nice and I’d rather they just left me alone.

If I’m being honest, it’s sort of easy to get random men to help you. Eg the guy in front letting you go first in a queue, or people helping you with doors/luggage etc. It’s also easy to ask a man out, you literally just have to maintain eye contact lol.

Other than that, attractive people can still have insecurities and hate taking photographs etc. It’s not like they have perfect self esteem all of the time, especially if they have been told they are worthless aside for their looks or they feel they have pressure to maintain a certain image

I was relatively beautiful in my twenties. I didn't know it though. But in hindsight, men were always very friendly. I always thought they were friends, until they all eventually asked me out then got arsey when I said no. The other girls never liked me past superficial friendliness because it was assumed I was after all the boys. I was quite lonely I guess.

Am quite invisible now I'm nearly 40 and a bit fat though. 😁

I was not attractive at all as a child but in my late teens I blossomed, lost my baby fat, learned how to style my crazy wavy hair and discovered makeup and my personal style. Since I wasn't anything special as a child I grew up rather shy and introverted so even when I became attractive I couldn't adjust to it properly and lacked confidence.
But it's been fine though, I don't find women anymore bitchier, everyone is generally nice to me but I'm also nice to them.

I'm now almost 35 and still look really young for my age, often get told I look early 20s so hoping I can hold on to it for a bit longer!

I wasn’t considered beautiful when I was 18 (too fat, hair too frizzy, and interests too weird) but my looks didn’t change then from 18-40. I didn’t age in the same way that my beautiful friends did and I didn’t gain weight (I was a size 12-14 hour glass) and I didn’t change my interests (rock climbing etc) and guess what? The same guys who thought I wasn’t beautiful when I was 18, thought I was as I got older. And by my mid to late twenties (to now) it seemed most guys preferred a woman like me. But by then I had become wary of men.

I was the ok-looking friend of the most exquisitely attractive, sexy girl in pretty much any room. She was, and is, the most lovely human being. I think I had it easier, tbh.

Gosh, I always imagined being good looking/pretty/beautiful must be a great advantage. In fact, is it not supposed to be the greatest 'natural' advantage to have - better than intelligence, wit etc??

I never experienced any real bitchiness from women but i was very shy when younger so they thought I was standoffish. Nice men never directly asked me out, some guys would be very "friendly" but later decide they wanted more.
It's has been a bit of a shock now I'm old and fat just how much men were nice and helpful and smily because of my pretty face and not because they were genuinely kind.
It's also shocking how dismissive and openly hostile me men my own age are towards me now.
It's a good filter actually. Now I know who is genuinely a nice guy.
I can be quite objective about it.

I wouldn't say I was ever beautiful but when I was teens and early twenties I always had lots of attention, I late 30s now, 3 kids have wrecked my stomach, I'm greying and wrinkles have appeared out of nowhere, can't imagine anyone ever finding me attractive again. Im married but if I wasn't there's no way I'd want to get naked in front of a man again!
Does anyone remember that song called sunscreen from late 90s? I always think about when it says something like enjoy your youth and beauty while you have it because in 20 years you'll look back and realise how beautiful you really were. And don't read beauty magazines, they'll only make you feel ugly!
www.metrolyrics.com/sunscreen-lyrics-baz-luhrmann.html

In my 20’s I started to realise I scrubbed up well and it gave me confidence. Ultimately I think it was that confidence that made life easier at times and has helped me achieve what I want rather than “looks”.

There can be a fine line between confidence and arrogance, I had my insecurities too and that helped keep things in check. Even though I was regularly propositioned and paid a lot of compliments I was still well aware of my “flaws”. My early teen daughter is gorgeous and attracts a lot of glances when we’re out. She has an innate confidence I didn’t have at her age, she’s always been that way and has an engaging personality with natural social confidence. She looks like she could be late teens and I worry about the potential attention she’ll attract whilst she’s still quite young. In many ways I think blossoming in your 20’s when you have the maturity to handle it (and have dealt with rejection!) could be better than it happening too early. Maybe it shapes you differently and girls/women who are naturally attractive from the get go have different outlooks than late bloomers.

Being considered very good looking can be a double edged sword. It has caused me problems in my life. As a teenager I would get unwanted attention from boys and would get asked out sometimes by boys that my friends had crushes on so this would cause a problem. Also hated the wolf whistling from building sites and cars that used to go on etc. In the workplace one of my nicknames was 'Blondie' as they thought I resembled the singer which is a massive compliment as she was very beautiful but I also got major attitude from some senior women in the workplace purely because of my looks. So it's not as wonderful as people think. Sometimes you want to just blend in.

DD is 14 and universally acknowledged to be beautiful, she used to get “nice comments” but as she hit puberty they became not so nice. She dresses quite modestly but still gets men shout things at her in the street. She’s quite quiet and shy so hates the attention
She has a good group of friends at school but the “popular “ girls feel she should join their clique and hate it that she won’t. She’s also had a few issues when other peoples boyfriends ask her out - unfair as the girls blame her rather than their sleazy boyfriends! She has a lot of male friends but doesn’t want a boyfriend and does get a bit upset when a boy she thinks is a good friend asks her out as she says it’s “ disappointing “ . She has also had some rather inappropriate messages from older boys at school and gets frequent requests for nudes.
I do worry how she will be when she’s older and if it will help or hinder her

I briefly knew a very beautiful blonde in Italy. She was Norwegian. I thought her life was awful, I could slip through the streets anonymously, men would do anything to get her attention, it was aggressive and unrelenting.

Name change too...
I hated being considered beautiful/attractive whatever. I always felt that wherever I went, if I looked around there would always be someone staring at me. It made work difficult as other pp have said, women would hate you and men would think you were fair game or an airhead. I actually changed my career to an industry where nearly everyone was either female or a gay man and suddenly felt more relaxed and didn't get the resentment. Bizarre how being in a predominately all female environment with hardly any straight men changed the dynamic! I am now in my 50's, yes I still get the odd comment/look but it is sooo much better, However, I did holiday in China a couple of years back and the attention was mad. I was filmed/photographed almost constantly and it drove me almost to tears. Chinese people do not seem to have a clue on personal space, it was so confrontational. I was sat in a quiet place in the Forbidden City, when a lovely swedish lady sat next to me for a break. We chatted and I asked her if she was getting a lot of attention (she was blonde too). She said not much - but remarked that I had because I was considered beautiful. I am in my 50's FFS!! So no, being considered attractive has been a burden to me.

Both my sister and I grow into our looks in a late teens/ early twenties. Unfortunately our mother was very insecure and under confident plus our father drank to much and was emotionally distant. This left us both with a strong desire to be loved by men and very insecure, so it's only retrospectively I realise how attractive we were, if we had loved ourselves more though we would have been more beautiful and happy.
So whilst we enjoyed the male attention I don't think it did us much good emotionally and it most certainly did not make us happy. As we both push 40 we are still attractive (but gained a bit of weight) and much more comfortable in our own skins but we get less negative attention.
Not so much my sister but with me I didn't learn to build friendships because I was so insecure and wanted to be desired, spent all my time thinking on that trying to fill the hole in me which is bottomless so would never be filled without working on me it's only now I'm less concerned about this that I am building friendships.

I have no interest in attracting anybody but bizarrely I seem to be attractive to guys in their late 20s and 30s. My own age not so much

This has not happened to me. The last time a man stopped me on the street to ask if I'd go on a date with him, I was 48. But my mum (who was extremely beautiful - more so than I was) suddenly started to get a lot of attention from very much younger men when she reached her 50s, and my cousin (my mum's sister's daughter) was constantly approached by much younger men throughout her fifties. I'd love to know what all that's about.

I was/ am considered beautiful - a model for over 20 yrs.
I’ve worked really hard on my personality so as not to annoy anyone. I’m 48 - constantly hit on by much, much younger men! [confused

I am very average looking but have had all the same as the beauties men asking me out stopping me to ask me out best friends boyfriends dumping them to ask me out strange men doing me favours etc so not really linked to being good looking not sure why? I also had a really beautiful friend who was a nightmare her entire life revolved around attracting men didn't matter if they were married she lived for male attention very sad.

banana l think men just like women!

I think you may be right I suppose I was just pointing out that the annoyance of being beautiful isn't confined to the beautiful iyswim

I can remember meeting a model on a heath retreat and she was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Absolutely flawless. I remember saying to someone at the time that it hurt my eyes to look at her as it was as though they were constantly flicking around her face for some place to rest but there was nowhere, just utter perfection.

She generally kept herself to herself but the conversation we did have was perfectly normal. She was one of a twin, was raised in a single parent household in Europe (can’t remember exactly where) flew around the world constantly but as a model they have to pay for all their costs then give the agency quite a big cut of their fee. It didn’t sound like a wonderful lifestyle!!! She also said she mainly worked in Asia and she was never thin enough. People always moanng at her to get thinner - she was tiny!

banana got you!

The thing is though even someone who is considered beautiful by others will not nessecarily think so themselves. What I find beautiful is not what I ever possessed. I think that's why I can be objective.

Also, It's a fact, for all those saying it was a hindrance, that good looking people are given WAY more opportunities than plain people . I think back to how I got through life (and I didn't take advantage as much as I could have)ands it's most definitely a massive advantage in lots of ways, especially when you are young.

It helps to be cynical about looks. They are only on loan after all.

I was the type of beautiful in my younger days that stopped traffic, although I didn't understand it at the time and felt, quite right,y, harassed. I always had stalkers, unpleasant experiences of entitled men. Neighbours would shout at me as I got home, and one broke into my house one night and told me he loved me. It was frightening and. Hated it. I dressed down at all times and tried to look plain. It wasn't always possible, but I never felt safe. I couldn't walk anywhere and took cabs, public transport was a nightmare. I thought other women were braver and tougher than me to be able to handle public life, I felt useless and embarrassed.
I did have a handful of good friends but those bonds took years to form and I still cherish them. Generally I've always thought I must be socially lacking to find it so difficult to make friends. So I developed wit, humour based on making fun of myself and some interesting hobbies in my efforts to meet people.
I look back now at old pics and realise how beautiful I was, I'm glad I didn't realise at the time though