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OP, I understand your frustration. As a woman who's had cystic acne, frizzy hair, and a tomboyish body, I've never been able to attract a partner. I look at all of the beautiful women out there with long straight hair, beautiful skin and teeth, curvy bodies, and just overall sex appeal and I want to crawl under a rock. There was so much competition out there that I never stood a chance.
Yes, I tried to fix my defects, but there's only so much one can do. And why do women have to do that, in order to find someone to love them? I want to be loved for who I am. I'm not ashamed of my tomboyish body, in fact, I like it. I like being strong and slim. But I'm not big breasted and don't have a curvy butt, so I get overlooked. I have a friend who's about the same height and weight as me and she has huge breasts and gets constant attention from men.
I don't "buy" the bunk about low self esteem and loving yourself and that you can find someone regardless of having cystic acne, frizzy hair and a tomboyish body. That's total bull crap. Men are not going to pursue someone with cystic acne, frizzy hair, and a tomboyish body. They just don't. There's a LOT of women out there and the competition is fierce. I used to go to singles events and there would be 20 women, 3 men.
I feel I have fairly good self esteem anyway so the theory about low self esteem is a lot of crap. I don't depend on my looks for self-esteem. I have a great personality and I've had professional successes in life and those things bolster my self esteem. A woman's looks only take her so far in life. You cannot look like a 22 year old when you're 70. However, most 70 year old women whose looks are fading are married and their spouses don't expect them to look like 22 anymore. It's much harder for an older single woman.
I'm sorry to hear about your troubles with dating. However, I don't think that having a "boyish" body would be a deterrent for most men. There's nothing wrong with being slim and straight... your body will look younger longer too. Look at all the female celebs with those body types... Kiera Knightley, Cameron Diaz, Charlize Theron... I'm sure they've never had trouble getting dates..
What I'm reading here is exactly what the post is about--dismissing the struggles of unattractive women. Posters are still coming back with, "oh, men are flexible with looks; men don't mind straight bodies, love yourself first," Talk about dismissing someone's struggles...!!!
The poster asked, "Why do so many people dismiss the struggles of unattractive women?" And I have to say, in my opinion, most people don't relate to these women's struggles, they don't have a clue, they are generally in the "over 5" category of looks and have had decent success finding someone. The majority of women I know are married. They don't have a clue what an unattractive woman goes through, how we feel, the humiliation of never being "chosen" and proposed to and have a wedding day of our own. You have NO CLUE!!!
I am so sorry to hear that you feel ugly in a superficial world.
I'm disgusted that adults think they must make negative comments on your appearance, and are mean and dismissive of you.
I know you just really want to rant, and don't mean to invalidate anyone else's feelings or experiences.
You have obviously observed how society treats ugly women, and how society treats beautiful women. Even ugly men live in a different world to you. They do not experience the same level of public condemnation for their looks, like you have faced.
Hey, smt1111....The above quote is what I previously posted (see post#92)
I'm just guessing that some people dismiss the troubles of "unattractive" people because they have no idea what it feels like, having never experienced it themselves.
What I'm reading here is exactly what the post is about--dismissing the struggles of unattractive women. Posters are still coming back with, "oh, men are flexible with looks; men don't mind straight bodies, love yourself first," Talk about dismissing someone's struggles...!!!
The poster asked, "Why do so many people dismiss the struggles of unattractive women?" And I have to say, in my opinion, most people don't relate to these women's struggles, they don't have a clue, they are generally in the "over 5" category of looks and have had decent success finding someone. The majority of women I know are married. They don't have a clue what an unattractive woman goes through, how we feel, the humiliation of never being "chosen" and proposed to and have a wedding day of our own. You have NO CLUE!!!
You will find the same phenomenon on City-Data when it comes to loneliness or at least "being alone" (Exhibit A: the annual "Alone for the Holidays" thread). I can't tell you how many posters, year after year, respond with a "we" response, as if two people are alone.
A lot of people out there think a woman has an easier time finding a romantic partner regardless of looks and the answer is no. There is a lot of gas lighting of women who find ourselves unattractive too, we are told we don't look as bad as we think. The reality is that life is not fair and some women get a ridiculously bad hand when it comes to appearance.
(venting here)
I've long accepted my looks (even though it was hard) but by the age of 14 I knew I was going to never find a romantic partner. By that age I was 210 pounds and covered in cystic acne, my facial features were awful with a large nose, long face, no chin and an enormous forehead. I had a very difficult hair type too- very coarse and could not really be tamed. At that age people were already starting to couple up in eighth grade so the pain of romantic rejection had just started for me.
The older I got the worse my looks became, my acne got worse, I couldn't lose weight, I grew facial hair and some how manged to get even uglier facially. My acne persisted until age 30 and I was left with bad scars on the my face and body. I developed a parotid gland tumor in my face and the removal of it left me with minor facial paralysis at 24. Even in my adult years people still tried to mock me for my appearance - especially strangers.
I've lost weight but will never be thin. My body has never been '''nice'' - it's just bad all around, weight loss or no weight loss and of course I'm still ugly. Bad teeth too despite years of dental intervention. Hair is still horrible - I've always had that hair type that can break brushes in half. At 33 I've never been on a date, never been kissed never any romantic opportunities. But as I said, I have reached a point of acceptance of that. I do wish society had more acceptance, belief and empathy for unattractive women. We do exist and sometimes no amount of ''glow ups'' will help us our genetics are such a way that improvement is hopeless. We're not all victims of self hatred and low self esteem either. Some of just want to have our story heard. Is it so hard to believe?
Quote:
Originally Posted by sheena12
I want to validate, not minimize, the OPs situation. What she is describing are mostly the physical devastation of a hormonal disorder, that most of us have never seen, much less had to contend with. These are not cultural standards of beauty, or insecurities caused by fashion magazines, comparing one's self to an actress, or current standards of beauty.
I, too, am here to validate, rather than to victim-blame/relativize/discount/prescribe.
I will only describe my reality as a very ugly girl, and the set of expectations with which I viewed my future.
I know what it's like, to be profoundly-ugly. I was born to a cigarette-smoking alcoholic prostitute. So, I was prenatally disadvantaged. Then, I was bottle-fed - reinforcing the epigenetic/environmental trajectory of my prenatal months.
As a child, I was chronically malnourished. We lived in a two-room shack, across the ditch from cotton fields. The herbicides and insecticides sprayed on the cotton, surely did me no good. Inside the shack, were my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother - all of whom smoked. Their cig smoke was probably every bit as destructive to a growing child, as were the poisons sprayed on the cotton fields across the ditch.
"That Gloria girl is the ringleader of those coloreds", is what I overheard, spoken by someone no whiter than myself, in "The Office", when I was in Second Grade. This was a bizarre statement, considering that there were only two white households in our school district, and, had there been any white children in those elderly households (which there weren't), they would have been driven to one of the private schools in a neighboring county. But somehow, my ugliness affected the perception of my racial status. Somehow, my ugliness allowed that "administrator" to fancy himself as being something he wasn't . Via some predatory mechanism, my ugliness fed the guy's delusions about his own place in the world. Nonetheless, that statement cements my status, at that moment, as a leader.
Our shack was on a farm owned by members of our state's large Black Aristocracy. I played with the farm Owners' daughters, until, at the beginning of Third Grade, it became apparent that I was ugly, smelly, and badly-dressed, while they were going to be like their beautiful, immaculate, fashion plate parents.
I smelled like someone living with three smokers, in a house heated by a wood stove - like someone whose laundry was boiled in an outdoor pot over a wood fire, and dried on a line (where the smell from the fire got onto the clothes - making them stink when I was sitting in class). My being a smart, funny, natural ringleader, was suddenly obviated by my being poor, ugly, and smelly.
Half my genes came via Tunisia, where my sperm donor's Sicilian family once had their olive groves. An eighth of my genes came via Isaac Babel's fabled 'Moldavanka' district of Kiev, whence my peddler great-grandfather immigrated to these shores. Three-eights of my genes come from native tribes - mostly Choctaw - and from French Jewish explorers/traders/adventurers, whose genes my Choctaw ancestors wisely and very deliberately imported. I suppose that this all could have combined to form some sort of sultry, raving beauty. It didn't. I seem to be a combination of all the parts that didn't fit-together. My granddaughters are obsessed with Epigenetics, and so I am led by their discoveries, to conclude that epigenetic triggers may have effected the disastrous phenotypic expression of the final product. https://www.google.com/search?client...d&q=phenotypic
Our school district was a little rural hell. It was all-minority, almost-all-poor, and in a county where there wasn't even "uh Wendy's". In Mississippi, whether or not your community had "uh Wendy's", was the measure of its depth of pitifulness. Having a Wendy's, and an intersection with a real three-color traffic light, meant it was a big city. Sometimes, when my mom was able to temporarily convince my latest "New Daddy", that she'd "found Jesus", and was off drugs, he'd drive us waaaaaaay into a neighboring county, and take us to a Wendy's. For me, that meant a rare feast of quality protein. That probably saved my life, although it sure didn't help my looks.
My school day would begin with my walking to school (the bus was too violent, if you were ugly and smelly), past dogs which would have bitten me, except for the big sticks I carried. I'd get to school - having carefully hidden my stick (hoping other kids didn't see where, since they often stole my sticks, hoping to see ugly, smelly Gloria, being mauled by a dog).
The school day was a matter of adrenalin. In 'Maus', Vladek explains to his son, who asks what it felt like to be in Auschwitz. Vladek startles his son, with a loud and unexpected, "Boo!" and says, "There! That's what it feels like - all the time." That's how my school day felt.I get PTSD adrenaline rushes - even today - when I encounter a building which looks like - or even smells like - that school. Because of my ugliness/unseemliness, the consensus - shared by teachers, "administrators", and students, was that I was less-than-Human. I was fair game for whatever they could get away with doing to me. Thank heavens there were pressures from the predominant Evangelical sects, to be kind. But these were people who lacked the capacities for introspection and critical thinking. They'd sneak their meanness past whatever religious convictions they held or pretended to hold.
I pulled weeds for an old lady, for enough change to buy cornmeal (Carbs from a grain! What better to make me uglier!). Her husband noticed my pluck, and soon I was working for him. They'd go to a REAL big city, with 50,000 people and THREE Wendy's. They'd take me along, because I could run into stores, or run between desks, carrying paperwork, where they were doing business (they could barely walk).
Because of my profound ugliness, it was assumed that I would be only marginally employable. It was assumed that I would be unloved and unwanted and a single-person/single-income household. It was assumed that I would exist at the Poverty Line, for my entire life. Those were the rational things to assume. I certainly didn't challenge those assumptions: nor should I have. So, my employer showed me the wonders of Greenville, Mississippi's alleys. He showed me the sunken garbage cans, operated via foot pedals - a boon to nattily-dressed maids working in the prim Cape Cod houses lining the front streets. And he showed me a garage apartment. https://www.google.com/maps/@33.3987...7i16384!8i8192 I've linked to it before. Next year, it may be gone. That little apartment, over a 1920s garage, on an alley, represented the height of my aspirations: to move to a big city, get a job in a back office where people didn't have to look at me, be able to ride to work in a decent and air-conditioned bus, and to live in a real garage apartment.
I repeat: this was the height of my adolescent aspirations. That was the best that people could hope for me. This was the best possible outcome, for someone like me. THAT is what it's like, to be profoundly-ugly.
(...and DATES? ...ROMANCE? ...being kissed? ...marriage? Those things never even crossed my mind, as possibilities. )
Location: As of 2022….back to SoCal. OC this time!
9,297 posts, read 4,571,902 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by smt1111
As a woman who's had cystic acne, frizzy hair, and a tomboyish body, I've never been able to attract a partner. I look at all of the beautiful women out there with long straight hair, beautiful skin and teeth, curvy bodies, and just overall sex appeal and I want to crawl under a rock. There was so much competition out there that I never stood a chance.
I never understood this because you just have to adjust your expectations on appearance. I am not trying to deny you your feelings or dismiss your struggles…but, I’m trying to encourage you. There isn’t a lot of competition for the same men, just like some men would never have a chance with us. IMO….a 5 isn’t going to compete with a 9 for a 9. BUT, a 5 can “compete” with other 5s & find things in common with another 5 or 6. Like attracts like. Ofc that’s breaking it down in an ultra simplistic way, but it’s not super often you see an attractive man with an unattractive woman or the other way around.
What I'm reading here is exactly what the post is about--dismissing the struggles of unattractive women. Posters are still coming back with, "oh, men are flexible with looks; men don't mind straight bodies, love yourself first," Talk about dismissing someone's struggles...!!!
The poster asked, "Why do so many people dismiss the struggles of unattractive women?" And I have to say, in my opinion, most people don't relate to these women's struggles, they don't have a clue, they are generally in the "over 5" category of looks and have had decent success finding someone. The majority of women I know are married. They don't have a clue what an unattractive woman goes through, how we feel, the humiliation of never being "chosen" and proposed to and have a wedding day of our own. You have NO CLUE!!!
What you are reading here is people having different viewpoints. You automatically assume that people who have posted things like that are average looking or more, when in reality you don't know how the posters look. People can have different opinions regardless of if them being ugly or beautiful, short or tall. That people take the time to answer and offer their opinion and viewpoint is ironically proof that they don't dismiss the struggle of the person, but instead they try to find out more or offer sympathy or maybe another way of thinking that maybe the person hasn't really thought about.
Or would you prefer to see a bunch of posts only saying "I'm sorry that you're ugly"?
Many people struggle with their appearance and to say that you have to be a 1 in order to understand what feeling ugly is, would be dismissing the struggles of these people. In my opinion.
I don’t see women being dismissed at all.. If anything the prevailing wisdom around here is that Men are more shallow so if you’re an unattractive women you’re screwed.
Where if a Man complains here that he’s ugly he’s told it had to be his lack of confidence or personality as to why he’s rejected it couldn’t possibly be that women are rejecting him because of his looks which is BS.
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