I hate pretty people so much

I’m a ugly woman and notice double standards that a lot of people don’t.

As a random example, you can get away with being a total ***, as long as you’re pretty.

theres two girls at my workplace with the same attitude. However, they get different treatment. Everyone hates the ugly girl for being rude, saying she looks like a bulldog. But nobody says anything about the pretty one and everyone just swoons over her and act like they’re best buds with her.

Obviously, being autistic can effect how you behave, hence, others may think you’re odd. But if you’re conventionally attractive, you can get away with it and be seen as quirky or unique. I knew attractive girls who happened to be autistic, yet, people are willing to talk to them because they’re cute. Meanwhile, I’m the opposite.

it genuinely depresses me knowing how different and better my life would be if I was attractive. 

Upside down

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  • I'm sorry to hear how much you're suffering with this sense of unfairness. I also agree it's true that there are (often unconscious) double standards out there that, for those of us (the neurodivergent) more inclined to see through the veil stand out like an affront to basic decency and fairness. 

    However, we can sometimes spiral towards an extreme in how we perceive both ourselves and others, and getting stuck there can be very damaging. I'm a male, but I do understand some of your pain. I went through my teens, twenties, and thirties with complete certainty that I was the world's ugliest person. I think, with hindsight, that I was firmly into the realms of dysphoria as - while I'm certainly no oil painting (I'm sure in any hypothetical anon survey of 100 people shown my photo, 90 of them would put me firmly in the 'ugly' category)- I've come to gradually (and with the help of therapy, etc.) see that my appearance is not making people retch as I pass by as I was convinced for years was the case. I got so bad for a time that even crossing the door was traumatic - I didn't want to 'inflict' myself (my personality, awkwardness, and certainly my looks) on anyone, and it was only the need to get out and earn my living wage that compelled me to do more than scurry to the shops and back. 

    There was, however, one saving grace during that time - the recognition that the handsome/beautiful/normal looking have their own crosses to bear. Tortured with unwanted attention for instance, badgered by confident NTs with pressure to spend time with them, deluged by smothering romantic overtures and so on. There is great freedom in not being in that situation. I also realised that they had no reliable way to trust who, in their multitudes of 'friends' genuinely liked them and who was just a moth to a beautiful/handsome flame, with an agenda that they fitted into. 

    Whereas I knew (again, it was a little oversimplifying given my extreme 'I'm the worst' thinking I'd conditioned my self to) that if someone was kind to me, or gave me the time of day, even momentarily, then I'd encountered a truly good soul - as look at what they'd had to see past to give me that kindness. So I began to think of my 'extreme ugliness' as a blessing, something that meant that I had the perfect foolproof way, built in, to know kind and authentic people from manipulators and charlatans. How wrong I ultimately was (at least in one devastating case) - but that's another story! 

    But that's all too simple isn't it? At the end of the day 'world's ugliest' thinking feeds the ego just as much as its opposite, it's a way to feel special when in fact I'm just a random plot point on a very imprecise graph that has some generalities if truth to it but only of the most reductive kind. 

    In my forties,  I began to just accept that my body/face is 'just something I go about in' (to quote the Doctor, who's had a few faces of variable subjective handsomeness/prettiness so no wonder they reached a point of utter indifference about it as long as they were doing their best to be kind) - but it took a lot of work to get there, and I can feel myself slipping back sometimes. Astonishingly, in my early 40s, and for the first time in my life, someone told me - seemingly without joking - that they thought I was 'handsome'. That's a curiously hard thing to hear when it goes against a rock-solid certainty that had always kept me grounded in a sense of who I am. At first, I assumed they must be mad or in need of new glasses, or just trying to make me feel better cos they could see how floor-level my self-esteem was. And I now have (again, astonishingly) a wonderful and beautiful partner who geniunely thinks I look nice, and this time, I believe that (for them, at least) that's true. 

    I suppose what I'm saying is that there's no entirely fixed reality. You have no idea how any given person perceives you. You might look plain to person A, invisible to person B, kind of cute to person C, inexplicably annoying to person D, and wonderful to person E, who saw/sees you through the eyes of love, or jealousy  or admiration, without you even knowing. Life is set up so that we have no idea what's going on in another's head (even though we *think* we can read their microexpressions, and fear inclines us to do so negatively). 

    I'll stop waflling now, but maybe you might find the following video helpful. I chanced upon it yesterday, as I dip into this guy's stuff from time to time anyway. Even if it only helps a little with 'tilting the mirror' and assisting you in finding peace, it's worth a few moments of your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqWNA_hqXSI

    I wish you well. P.S. tiny noses (your user-name suggests some concern here) are overrated anyway :-) - vive le difference! Hope life starts feeling a little kinder in time, and hang in there...

Reply
  • I'm sorry to hear how much you're suffering with this sense of unfairness. I also agree it's true that there are (often unconscious) double standards out there that, for those of us (the neurodivergent) more inclined to see through the veil stand out like an affront to basic decency and fairness. 

    However, we can sometimes spiral towards an extreme in how we perceive both ourselves and others, and getting stuck there can be very damaging. I'm a male, but I do understand some of your pain. I went through my teens, twenties, and thirties with complete certainty that I was the world's ugliest person. I think, with hindsight, that I was firmly into the realms of dysphoria as - while I'm certainly no oil painting (I'm sure in any hypothetical anon survey of 100 people shown my photo, 90 of them would put me firmly in the 'ugly' category)- I've come to gradually (and with the help of therapy, etc.) see that my appearance is not making people retch as I pass by as I was convinced for years was the case. I got so bad for a time that even crossing the door was traumatic - I didn't want to 'inflict' myself (my personality, awkwardness, and certainly my looks) on anyone, and it was only the need to get out and earn my living wage that compelled me to do more than scurry to the shops and back. 

    There was, however, one saving grace during that time - the recognition that the handsome/beautiful/normal looking have their own crosses to bear. Tortured with unwanted attention for instance, badgered by confident NTs with pressure to spend time with them, deluged by smothering romantic overtures and so on. There is great freedom in not being in that situation. I also realised that they had no reliable way to trust who, in their multitudes of 'friends' genuinely liked them and who was just a moth to a beautiful/handsome flame, with an agenda that they fitted into. 

    Whereas I knew (again, it was a little oversimplifying given my extreme 'I'm the worst' thinking I'd conditioned my self to) that if someone was kind to me, or gave me the time of day, even momentarily, then I'd encountered a truly good soul - as look at what they'd had to see past to give me that kindness. So I began to think of my 'extreme ugliness' as a blessing, something that meant that I had the perfect foolproof way, built in, to know kind and authentic people from manipulators and charlatans. How wrong I ultimately was (at least in one devastating case) - but that's another story! 

    But that's all too simple isn't it? At the end of the day 'world's ugliest' thinking feeds the ego just as much as its opposite, it's a way to feel special when in fact I'm just a random plot point on a very imprecise graph that has some generalities if truth to it but only of the most reductive kind. 

    In my forties,  I began to just accept that my body/face is 'just something I go about in' (to quote the Doctor, who's had a few faces of variable subjective handsomeness/prettiness so no wonder they reached a point of utter indifference about it as long as they were doing their best to be kind) - but it took a lot of work to get there, and I can feel myself slipping back sometimes. Astonishingly, in my early 40s, and for the first time in my life, someone told me - seemingly without joking - that they thought I was 'handsome'. That's a curiously hard thing to hear when it goes against a rock-solid certainty that had always kept me grounded in a sense of who I am. At first, I assumed they must be mad or in need of new glasses, or just trying to make me feel better cos they could see how floor-level my self-esteem was. And I now have (again, astonishingly) a wonderful and beautiful partner who geniunely thinks I look nice, and this time, I believe that (for them, at least) that's true. 

    I suppose what I'm saying is that there's no entirely fixed reality. You have no idea how any given person perceives you. You might look plain to person A, invisible to person B, kind of cute to person C, inexplicably annoying to person D, and wonderful to person E, who saw/sees you through the eyes of love, or jealousy  or admiration, without you even knowing. Life is set up so that we have no idea what's going on in another's head (even though we *think* we can read their microexpressions, and fear inclines us to do so negatively). 

    I'll stop waflling now, but maybe you might find the following video helpful. I chanced upon it yesterday, as I dip into this guy's stuff from time to time anyway. Even if it only helps a little with 'tilting the mirror' and assisting you in finding peace, it's worth a few moments of your time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqWNA_hqXSI

    I wish you well. P.S. tiny noses (your user-name suggests some concern here) are overrated anyway :-) - vive le difference! Hope life starts feeling a little kinder in time, and hang in there...

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