You know when you walk into a mall and people look at you like a dog out of the shower?
That’s how I feel when I go to a place people do not know me. Just one look and they immediately assume I’m a bimbo.
When you are a young and attractive woman, people assume you must have an easy life because men are throwing themselves at your feet, willing to do anything you say. They think you have a million men on speed dial that will go out on a limb for you.
Sometimes I get mad at these assumptions. Because the life portrayed of a beautiful woman is not a fairytale. We don’t have men lined up on our doorsteps because the ones interested in us think we already have someone in our lives.
In reality, the beautiful woman actually date fewer men than the Plain-Janes. And those she ends up choosing are a bunch of shallow pretentious men who fake being in a relationship with her because of her body.
Being physically attractive tends to attract a lot of shallow and abusive people who want you for superficial reasons. This is why many attractive women end up with abusive, toxic, or crazy partners.
Psychology of attraction and beauty
When we meet someone for the first time; our first impression of them is about their looks before we start assessing their personality, intelligence, and character.
In business, management hires attractive people more because the public patronizes companies with beautiful workers more than their competition with less attractive people.
In addition to being popular, beautiful people receive special attention from teachers, public officers, and employers. Attractive people tend to make more money than their Plain-Jane counterparts.
Most men value physical attraction in a romantic relationship, while women value things like emotional intelligence and a sense of humor in a partner. That’s why some women are heavily invested in their appearance, while many men are boastful.
And this can be problematic as women are tempted to choose men who are more financially endowed. But that will be a story for another day.
When it comes to body image, the media doesn’t make life easy for beautiful women. Fashion and beauty magazines choose the most beautiful models for their cover pages and go as far as retouching the model’s looks with photoshop which puts even more pressure on beautiful women.
The beautiful woman can become obsessed with her looks. She may opt for plastic surgery, or a fitness program to keep her from aging. Any sign of wrinkles, crow’s feet, or blemishes can lower her self-esteem.
She starts to see herself as someone without qualifying values — as someone with no talent, no intellect, no values — because her beauty is gone.
What is it like to be a beautiful woman?
“Let me tell you something — being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble.” — Halle Berry
Beauty can be a blessing, but it’s also a curse.
Beautiful women are more likely to get more smiles, better job positions, get away with almost anything and have more male crushes than unattractive women.
When it comes to self-worth, a beautiful will show confidence and high self-esteem which comes from the feeling that she is special and deserves the best.
I have been a model for fashion shows, I have appeared on billboards and I’ve dated top FBA stars, celebrities, and politicians. I have been on both the negative and positive sides of beauty.
I won’t lie that my beauty didn’t come with advantages in my modeling career. It got me more jobs than most models under my agency. I have successfully scaled my business to twelve states because my beauty attracts people of influence.
Modeling is certainly a glamorous career that offers great opportunities to travel and meet different types of people, but it has also been the career that has given me the most heartbreaks, and more spiteful and fake friends.
Despite the pros of being beautiful, the cons outweigh the pros. Men look at me as if I’m a sex symbol. I’m pretty and I know I am fortunate, but being treated like a sexual object is a horrible feeling. It makes you feel like you are worthless and it honestly sucks.
I get more backlash from women than from men.
Some of my married friends blocked me after their marriage because they think I have it all to snatch their husbands.
I’ve dealt with some mean secretaries who are simply jealous that my fine face got their boss to date me.
I was in a sports competition one time, and the ladies I was paired with refused to pass the ball to me. One particular lady was the worst of them. She was on the other team. Whenever I came close to dribbling the ball from her, she will push me or kick hard on my feet so I get hurt.
I thought it was all part of the game. I was fast at running and attacking my opponents but that lady made it impossible for me to score. My coach noticed it and pulled me out of the game.
I was so upset. The lady wasn’t beautiful but she wasn’t ugly either. She had a manly body and was a bit intimidating if I’m being honest. It was just a women’s club game but she was very rough and played as if she was in a national tournament.
From the bench, watching my team play, I noticed the lady was more aggressive towards pretty girls. It was as if she was competing for the spotlight.
Although my team won, I felt unappreciated by the way my coach removed me from the game. I think about it and I’m like why didn’t he remove the other Plain-Jane women the aggressive lady attacked?
Having a “good looking” body doesn’t mean life is good
Highly attractive women can be perceived as dangerous. They think we cannot be trusted. People listen to you but they don’t believe what you say because they think you are making fun of them.
Countless times I have walked out of interviews because of sexual harassment. I remember a time my then boyfriend escorted me to a modeling interview. The HRM was speaking to two women who came for the same position.
Immediately, we walked past them, the HRM stopped us. His eyes fixated on me as we walked up to them. He asked for my name and requested to see my portfolio. He completely ignored my boyfriend and the women and focused his gaze on my boobs. My boyfriend was embarrassed, but he kept making small talk to distract the man.
I have heard guys say they never date beautiful women. They feel humiliated when the woman gets a lot of attention from other men.
One of my pretty friends, 32, has quit four jobs because the women at her workplace were mean and jealous of her. They exclude her from social gatherings. They gossip about her even when she’s done no wrong to them. She was attacked physically and verbally for showing kindness but her action was misinterpreted as showing off.
I have watched my friends become addicts because they feel pressured to remain relevant in the eyes of society. Beyoncé’s song, Pretty Hurts, talks about the unrealistic beauty standards set by society and the destructive things women do to meet them.
Society attaches great importance to appearance, especially to women. We learn a lot about ourselves and how we feel about how others treat us because of our appearance.
If someone thinks of themselves as pretty, we conclude they are hardworking, friendly, funny, polite, or whatever. It’s strange to think that we make these sorts of stereotypical judgments about people we know so little about.
The truth is that we cannot avoid judging people based on their appearance. And beauty is what we look for in a partner, even if we don’t want to. Because we have an internalized need to be liked and accepted.
Our modern society did not invent a respect for attractiveness, it is merely a continuation of age-old traditions. However, this can be especially problematic for those who struggle with their self-esteem.
Despite the modern era of beauty privilege, we can learn to put our appearance in perspective and understand where our true worth lies.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Valerie Elash on Unsplash
