Looks, YET AGAIN, but with a twist! I swear!

Field Reports & Anecdotal Experience Women's Pheromone Advice & Field Reports
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Right here:

Enjoy!

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I just saw these posts for the first time tonight and I can’t get my words together to say anything but WOW. Everyone’s story is my story, and my story is everyone’s. I felt such a connection to every story, like they were each telling a little piece of my own history.

I didn’t start the original thread, but thanks to everyone who posted. It was so great to read this.

I was an awkward looking child–I was overweight (still am, a little) with frizzy hair, buck teeth, and coke bottle glasses. I remember asking my mother when I was in 4th grade if she thought I was pretty. She said, “yep, pretty ugly and pretty apt to stay that way for a pretty long time.” I have never forgotten that moment, even 26 years later. The funny thing was, a few years ago, my mother told me a similar story about my grandmother and how much it hurt her. My mother had forgotten what she said to me, but she had never forgotten HER mother’s words.

I have 4 daughters (2 mine, 2 step) and I have been asked by each and every one of them if they were pretty. All of them were crying or near it when they asked–a couple were going through and awkward phase at the time, others had been called ugly at school. Some of them asked when they were 7, some not until they were 12 or 13.

And here’s are my two answers, dependent on the situation and the child and the amount of time we have to discuss:

Answer A:

  1. Yes you are pretty on the outside.
  2. You are pretty on the inside, too. You are funny/smart/kind/artistic/helpful. Please keep it that way with kind thoughts and words.

Answer B:

  1. Yes you are pretty.
  2. But’s it’s more important to be smart than to be pretty.
  3. And it’s more important to be nice than to be smart.
  4. People who are ugly on the inside, it eventually shows on their outsides.

Our self-comparisons to others start at such an early age, helped along by the media.

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EVERY woman I’ve been close to has the same identity issue to a greater or lesser degree. At it’s best, it is like an ambition to be the most attractive person we can be. Like Coco Chanel once said, “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.”

I’ll second that. The women I’ve most cherished in my life have seldom been the most naturally “pretty” on the outside but they had the self-confidence to make the effort.

The trap is that one’s SELF evaluation can be paralyzingly negative. I think it is not an objective self-evaluation but a response to one’s sensed place in the social hierarchy or “pecking order.” Do you think yourself ugly because you feel you’re a low status individual. Or is it the other way around? If even your mama tells you you’re ugly, you’ve got a hole to dig yourself out of.

Take it from a formerly REALLY geeky teenage, raised in poverty, now a middle aged alpha male and patriarch of many (note signature!), the first step is self-appreciation. It sounds silly, but tell yourself “I DESERVE to be considered attractive!” You’ll then look around and discover ways to make it easier for the world to appreciate you.

Sounds kinda cornball, I know, but it is truly the way social mammals operate.