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?

The on,y advantages were free entry, free food, jumping queues, being invited to vip events and receiving free clothes. Professionally I was an academic, and looks definitely didn't help in that area.

I remember a time when I shaved my hair off. Another time I dyed my hair blue. I've never been one for high heels etc, and my friends now are amused by my ideas of being dressed up

But again I say it I am average looking I have had random men telling me they love me, married friends down in one knee declaring love ex boyfriend leaning out of cars shouting I love you strangers asking me out and not stopping even when I say no I I have had strangers stop in the street to stare strange men being kind doing me favours really don't think it's about being beautiful it's about men and women

I've got a very beautiful friend, crowds used to part to let her through! She's also a really lovely person and seems quite unaware of her beauty. I think the adjustment as you age must be interesting for really stunning people- could be disappointing or could be a relief! I like being average looking FWIW.

@angell84 That's so awful! 😢 I don't know why people feel like that. It's so unfair as it's totally beyond your control.

It's funny how we still use expressions like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and "attractiveness completely is subjective" and of course, this is true, but there does seem to be a whole other category of attractive/beautiful, where it is just fact....which is quite odd when you think about it.

Some people say I'm beautiful, some would think I'm.. meh. Hopefully my dp is in the former camp I did used to get a lot of attention in my teens and 20s, but have noticed I'm becoming more invisible since reaching my mid 30's. I think men are still programmed to be drawn to women in their most fertile years, which is depressingly young. I get more attention from women these days, which is fine by me!

I was extremely attractive in my teenage years and twenties. Fell short of beautiful but had nice eyes and smile, long hair and a bangin curvier body. I was the kind of person who would wait for a second at the threshold of every room I was entering, until the men did their double-take and the women looked at me with scorn. Then I'd enter.

It wasn't great. I couldn't go anywhere without being harrassed by males. My identity was wrapped up in how I looked - I couldn't leave the house without make up on and hair done. I checked it religiously to make sure it still looked ok. My self worth was determined by how attractive people thought I was. No one cared that I had brains or strong opinions. Hell, I obviously didn't care enough either.

I had no personality. There was no humour, no light heartedness, just me taking myself and my looks way too seriously. Everything about me was superficial. All my energy went into thinking about how I looked, stood, sat, walked, ate. I was hyper aware of constantly being watched. I couldn't eat out without being stared at.

It felt like I was under a microscope. Maybe I made it that way, too. When I met DH what struck me about him was the fact that he was actually interested in me as a person - my opinions, ambitions, morals, goals, dreams. We fell inlove and got married, but honestly he married someone who didn't even know who they were.

After I had my two children I piled on weight and I can say in all honesty that it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I no longer had to care about clothes and make up. I was gloriously invisible. I made female friends. I spent a lot of time taking stock of who I wanted to be and developing as a human being. DH has been completely supportive through it all. Despite now not being conventionally attractive I have been told I have an amazing presence and a shit tonne of charisma. I'm now the funny smart one! It's awesome.

I'm having to lose the weight now due to health related issues and have noticed that even though I'm still 40kg away from my goal weight I'm starting to get looks again. But I'm boxing a lot, so if someone tries to harrass me this time I can just punch them in the throat.

Sorry for the novel. If anyone had the patience to read through it all here's some for you.

My observations as a now 45 yr old woman: when I was younger, I was aware of what appeared to be ‘conditions of acceptability’ for females in our society regarding levels of attractiveness and the male gaze, so to speak.
My culture had made me aware, quite early on, that as a girl, I was supposed to care about being the best looking person in ‘the room’.

This involved the inner voice or critic assessing -
1/ am I the youngest in the room?
2/ am I the prettiest?
3/ am I the slimmest?
4/ am I the most natural (blonde, blue eyes, attitude, etc?
5/ do I look laid back and unfussy and a good laugh?

My culture taught me that these conditions were to be met to be rewarded with approval. The opinions of other women did not matter. I was merely there to look nice and make men comfortable.

Of course, I did not actually believe any of this and it disturbed me constantly, but I was AWARE of it.
Several men told me that other women hated me due to my appearance and that this was their undoing - not only were conventionally unattractive women undesirable, but their opinions were also invalid.
I was also told, (by men mostly, and a few women) that not needing to dye my hair blonder or struggle to lose weight made me somehow superior. In so many words.

It is good to grow older and out of this sphere. It isn’t enviable. It is depressing. I have no idea if I was ‘beautiful’, objectively, but I am aware that I was awarded many privileges for having had nature roll the dice the way it did - slim, blonde, etc..

Have a friend who I totally love.
Nice looking but not amazing.
Where ever we go men come to chat to her.
She's just a lovely person

As I also looked very young for my age, this attracted some of the most vile and pathetic comments from men, also. Not all men, obviously, but there’s a ‘type’.
In my late teens and early 20’s I recall being told by more than a few guys that looking so much younger and ‘innocent’ made me preferable to men in general - as opposed to a mature woman with children. A lot of these men were over 40.

I believed it at the time, even if it disgusted me.
Then Again, I never used this so-called advantage to my favour or embraced this element of culture, and thankfully grew to cultivate friendships/relationships with men who were not like this.

Younger girls need to be made aware of their own power and be prepared to look down on such values - setting their own rules about what is acceptable.

It must be amazing. When I am at a lower weight (chronic yo-yo dieter) my entire face changes and I am not beautiful but definitely pretty - and people are much MUCH nicer to me. It’s not perceived, it really happens. Even friends act differently, all the men you’ve known for years start being more helpful, and one female friend said she hated going out with me now because she wasn’t the slim one.

You don’t have to try very hard for people to gravitate towards you at all. I don’t miss it though, and it’s taught me quite a lot about shallow people.

I am trying to think how Inreally thought about it. I remember in my early twenties being told I was really beautiful, and I saw it myself . You know when you look well.

But I wasn't happy. I remember being miserable and one male friend saying to me " you don't know how good looking you are". And I said "being pretty doesn't make you happy". I had all the same family problems as anyone else. Women were really cruel to me. I remember working in one place , and all of the women my age would go out to lunch without me. They were so cruel. And I didn't know what I did. And an older woman told me - they are jealous of you.
And men were really sleazy with me. I didn't appreciate the harrasment.

Now that I am older and it is gone - I wish I had enjoyed it more, I wish I had stood proud in my beauty. But I was constantly made to feel bad about myself , by other women.

If you look up "Lauren Paul" on google. She is incredibly unusually good looking. And she was bullied so badly in school by other girls that she attempted suicide.

I was when I was younger, with a cracking figure.
Its more difficult ageing I think. I’m invisible to the opposite sex now, has some bonuses.
The only time I’ve problems is when men came onto me in full view of their partners or mine, so embarrassing.
I never queued for clubs etc , was always asked to come straight in, treated generally well wherever I went.

What an interesting thread! I was very pretty when I was younger, which meant lots of free drinks but also unwanted harassment on a night out. I tended to ace interviews and could make a positive impression. However I have found it very difficult to be taken seriously in a professional capacity and this continues to be a problem. Men love having me work for them in an assistant role, but they ultimately don’t want me to be their equal or their superior. I have had a few instances in life where men and women have taken a strong dislike to me and behaved very aggressively towards me. These occasions were really distressing as I felt it was caused my something I couldn’t control and didn’t understand. Being treated like a pretty object has its perks, but it doesn’t bring out the best in me. I now see pretty younger women from a different perspective- they may feel they are being taken seriously but really many men just want to look at a pretty woman.

My flatmate at uni was beautiful. She got lots of free stuff - drinks, club entries etc. She also used to get stopped walking down the street and asked if she was a model or wanted to be a model. Men used to quite literally follow her and ask for her number. I was quite fascinated by her to be honest. She was really nice though and when she graduated she moved to Marbella to live with her millionaire boyfriend.

My daughter is very beautiful - from about the age of 12 she would turn men's heads in the street. It used to enrage me, I'd want to scream "she's a child!" at them.
She found it hard from the bitchy girls at school - a lot of jealousy and nasty comments, and a lot of attention from boys. She didn't actually have her first boyfriend until she was nearly 17, and she's said she's wary of men.
She's now in her 20s and has settled into her looks - I honestly don't think she realises just how attractive she is.

Yes women could be the worst. My bosses wife called me a little bitch because on the work do he was all over me and I was trying to get him off. I was only 19.

i have and have had many attractive friends but one was very VERY beautiful, model beautiful, and tall and slim to boot.. we went on holiday together and men would honestly just stop and stare at her! it was so strange to me! she was a lovely person and just lived her life thinking it was normal.

I am startlingly unattractive and always have been, but my observation from my own life is that slimness is treated as if it equates to beauty in and of itself. I have a history of eating disorders, and the contrast between how I get treated when I'm thin versus when I'm fat is depressingly noticeable. It makes the difference between someone stepping off the pavement to make room for you, and barging you into the road because they simply failed to see you. I don't have a pretty or even average face, but when I've been slim or underweight, I've been treated, and referred to, as an attractive woman. To be honest, it has made me very distrustful of men because I feel like they're literally only looking at your body and they're not even interested in your face, let alone your personality.

As for other women, I think they do notice overall looks, so I've never been subjected to the hostility that genuinely beautiful women seem to encounter; however, I did notice when I was slim that there was a sort of weird assumption of camaraderie in other slim women. Sales staff in clothes shops would pay me a lot more attention and compliment me on how things looked, and on more than one occasion I got random comments from other women about how "nice and slim" we both were. I really hated it, tbh, and it was really damaging to my mental health considering how I had got that slim in the first place.

I used to be very good looking but two sons and zero sleep for seven years put paid to that.

I wish I could go back and own it because in all honesty I used to hate it. The girls at school were jealous and I never had any good friends. It made me so uncomfortable and I used to wish I wasn't the best looking girl all the time.

If I could go back now with my current mind set I'd waltz into that school and not give two fucks. If only eh.

FatherFintanFay I 100% agree with everything you have written there

You don't have to be beautiful to find love.

Almost didn't post as I feel like a dick. Anyway, I find I treat really nice treatment from both men and women. Like people bending over backwards when there's really no need! There have been a few times where men I've never met before have confronted me very angrily to the point where I thought they'd hit me saying things like 'you might look like that but what else do you have to offer?!'
I get treated very well generally, don't really encounter female jealousy but the one person I have struggled with is my own mother who is completely obsessed with how I look and everything in life comes down to my looks in her eyes. It started when I went through puberty and apart from liking showing me off to her friends and receiving looks based comments/compliments which she can revel in, she is quite nasty the rest of the time and fixated on my weight also.

I think there’s s confidence that comes with intended weight loss though. When I’m bigger I dress to be invisible, when I lose weight all my nice clothes come out the wardrobe and suddenly people notice you exist again.

Find I get*