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no
being smart and attractive does not make your friends dislike you. that comes from flaunting it.
Not necessarily. Jealousy is a very powerful emotion, one that can override an otherwise responsible person's good judgment. Consider all the homicides commited by jealous husbands/wives
I agree with this and many of the previous posts. If this is a pattern rather than a string of isolated incidents through the years, then something other than one's good lucks and intelligence is at the base of it.
But these things such as Shankapotomus describes certainly can and do happen in life, and he did ask for the experiences of others. I'll offer up my own case:
I'm a woman in my late 40s. I can't judge my own appearance, but others call me pretty. I'm an academic and writer, very much an introvert but friendly. I try to be welcoming and interested when meeting someone new. Here are some of the things that have happened to me, going back to childhood.
1) Family feeling jealousy: My father spent his life trying to destroy my life and my sibling's, at least until my sibling became taller than my father. Then dear old dad tried to destroy only me. Why? My father is a diagnosed narcissist and psychopath. He hates "intellectuals." That included (even in childhood!) me.
2) Colleague fearing "eclipse": This case was a fellow young academic, a few years my senior. Others have told me that she feared that any success of mine could threaten her own budding career, so she alienated my professors from me with lies. This set my career back literally decades. (Our field is very small, though not so small as it was back then.)
3) Stranger(s) not knowing what to make of you:
A) Something like this did happen as a "group" phenomenon, but it was grammar and junior high school. My family had moved to a small town in a new state. The local children did not take kindly to strangers in their midst, and my sibling and I paid for that dearly until we moved to another town.
B) During adulthood, now and then I have come across people who didn't know how to "process" me. When this has happened, everyone else who witnessed and recognized the incident has thought it curious. We have variously speculated, after particular meetings, that the individual (usually but not always a man) didn't expect a woman to have the interests that I do, or perhaps he (or she) didn't like that I am single/academic/polite/writer/atheist/long-haired(!)/well spoken/liberal/birdwatcher/etc., or even because I wear sensible shoes...(!!). All of this indicates problems with them, not me.
4) Opposite sex denying attention: This is one of the defining themes in my life! It is also one of the more important reasons that I've never thought myself to be attractive. But on separate occasions, friends and family have speculated (or, fairly recently, one colleague told me definitively) that men have assumed that I am already "taken" and/or "out of their league." This has not, however, prevented them from being helpful or otherwise treating me like a fellow human being. (Most of the time, anyway.)
Excellent post! You hit on almost every conceivable incident where it would make sense that an attractive and/or above intelligent person would be marginalized.
I relate to every one of these points. Except in my case it was my mother and her brothers for #1. She has borderline personality disorder and they bow down to her as most males do. In #2, it was not a colleague but my own boss who was against me. She was probably just as attractive but I was probably more knowledgeable.
In general, however, I don't think folks like us are otherwise marginalized.
The topic of this post actually reminds me of what my grandmother used to say to sooth me about my peers when I had no friends in elementary school: "they're just jealous. "
They weren't jealous. They were threatened because was an odd duck. I didn't conform or fit in. Similar to what someone posted above about being ostracized for not using Ghetto culture slang.
I think some people are jealous of me because I seem to do well with authority. I usually present myself decently dressed and fairly intelligent, but I can't believe someone would be jealous of me for those things. Or maybe they're jealous because I don't seem to be the most attractive or smartest person and yet I'm still liked by authority and things usually go pretty well for me.
Does anyone ever get the sense people, whether strangers or siblings, are denying you help and/or attention and support because they think you don't need or deserve it based on your looks or intelligence, even though you've never seen yourself that way?
Have any of your siblings (or even parents) tried to sabotage your life or just been an unhelpful family member because they were struggling with jealousy toward you and fears of being "eclipsed" by you?
Do strangers seem to have a perceptibly difficult and unexplainable hard time processing your presence when first meeting you and you could never figure out why until someone suggested to you it's because you're attractive or because you sound intelligent?
Can attractive people ever be victims of a social double whammy where they are too attractive to be approached when liked by someone and too attractive to be liked or befriended by other people who struggle with being overshadowed in any way by someone else?
I have 2 final points to contribute that might be a bit off topic.
When i used to hitch-hike, i got picked up more often if i was alone. Add a minority male or female to the equation (which many people do not consider the standard of beauty) and I'd ALWAYS be waiting at least twice as long.
Before cell phones, i would be less likely to help a motorist broken down in a BMW vs a Toyota. It didn't matter what s/he looked like. This is shamefully "classist". The reason probably being that I was (am?) jealous of upper-upper class and took some delight in seeing them fail. Now as an adult and more actualized being I would probably pull over and help but this is no longer needed due to mobile phones.
Right. People who have low self-esteem could be uncomfortable around someone more accomplished or attractive than they, even if that person does nothing to flaunt it. People are weird. Weird stuff like that happens, even to modest and thoughtful people. People's reactions can be unpredictable, and rooted in deep psychological issues. We see all the time in the Relationships forum how people project things onto others, then resent them for these imaginary faults. There's a fair amount of that out in the world.
This is very true. You can also be as nice and as kind as you can to someone for years, than you get new job with a salary increase, or you inherit some money or a house, and they can barely hide their jealousy.
You have treated them well, never bragged about it, and yet they can't be happy for your success, and I'm not just talking about people who are in need, these can be people who have all they need and than some, still they resent a so called "friend" for having more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jukesgrrl
No. Study after study shows the situations you describe above would be very unlikely.
"Handsome men earn, on average, 5 percent more than their less-attractive counterparts (good-looking women earn 4 percent more); pretty people get more attention from teachers, bosses, and mentors; even babies stare longer at good-looking faces (and we stare longer at good-looking babies)." http://www.newsweek.com/beauty-advan...our-life-74313
A PhD in psychology, who is a professor of comparative human development, evolutionary biology, and neurobiology at the University of Chicago, writes, "I fly frequently and at some point I began to notice that the passengers who sit in First/Business class seem better-looking than those sitting in Economy. This applies to individuals of both genders and of any age, including children and people in their 70s." The truth about why beautiful people are more successful | Psychology Today
While some of that it true and there are people who go out of their way more for attractive people, there are people who just resent the hell out of anyone who is better looking, has a nicer car, or has more money than them.
And the reality is, there are always going to be people who have more than you do. Eleanor Roosevelt said "it is useless to resent anything in life".
Quote:
Originally Posted by lkb0714
Excellent post!
OP, people don't dislike you because your attractive and smart, or at least think you are. When group after group of people dislike you, it's you.
Not always true, nobody likes a braggart or conceited people, but there are people who will resent or be hateful to others who have more.
I remember seeing a female comic talking about a women, a group of women are standing around and a very attractive woman walks by, they all say in unison "b**ch", it was funny because it can be very true.
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