Evolution wise, this is because people like in others, what they wish they had for themselves. Likewise, people hate in others what they dislike about themselves. We celebrate the beautiful because we wish we too could be beautiful. We mock the ugly/short/gay/fat/skinny/weak because those are qualities that we ourselves do not wish to have. If all of society punishes those with these traits, people with these traits will be less likely to reproduce and pass these traits on to future generations. Nature is as always, brutal.
But because we humans have emotions we try to hide these discriminations and pretend we don't have them.
I always thought it was interesting how women with self-image issues are comforted on talk shows and told "honey you are beautiful just the way you are!" in one episode then "oh my God you look so much better!" after they get a makeover in the next episode. Not to mention the irony of women in the crowd (who will spend hundreds of hours each year putting on makeup, doing hair, bleaching, & plucking) clapping to the tune of "you're beautiful just the way you are".
My angry bitterness comes from the fact that my whole life I've been lied to. I was a cute kid but after puberty it all went downhill. I was the first to realize it. I was hoping the world around me would keep it's promise of treating me nicely because after all, "it's what's on the inside that counts". Yet, it was all a lie. I've had friends tell me I was ugly, I've had friends tell me they initially didn't want to be associated with me because I was ugly. I've had people in public say to me (as I'm walking by) "Damn dude, you're ugly". And if I choose to get cosmetic surgery some day, I'll have a whole new group of people calling me "shallow". Why? Because I want to look nice? God I'm just so sick of this bullshit. I don't hate myself, I hate the world that lied to me. People who say one thing, then do another.
The same people who call plastic surgery recipients as "shallow" are the same ones who lie to themselves and refuse to acknowledge how important it can be to look nice and feel good about yourself. How happy the millions of people who get surgery every year feel when they have a nose straightened out or a wrinkle removed or hollow cheeks filled.
People tend to believe lies that make them feel good rather than accepting truths that make them feel bad. I'm glad I live in 2013 when I can change the way I look so I can have a better life instead of lapping up all that "it's what's on the inside" bullshit so many people keep spreading so they can look empathetic and modest in front of others.
My Point: I'd like 3 things to change in our society:
1) No more lying. No more "We're all beautiful" rhetoric. No everyone is not beautiful. That's bullshit. Let's be honest. A few people are beautiful, most are average, many can be unattractive, and some are apparently repulsive enough to instill feelings of negativity in others. Beauty can also be subjective so there's a bit of give here and there.
2) To be more understanding towards people who are unattractive by removing the stigma that comes with being unattractive. Aka don't treat us differently. Example: All my friends are outcasts, people rejected by others because they were unattractive, too fat, too skinny, too black (Nigerian descent). Despite me admitting that many of my friends are unattractive themselves, I was still their friend. I was never embarrassed to be their friend or be seen with them.
3) To not look down on people who want to better themselves through cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery is still looked down upon by many people. If you take a leave of absence for 2 weeks and come back with a different face your co-workers will respond negatively. To redefine oneself is what makes humans human. Stop judging cosmetic surgery by looking at extreme examples like Dolly Parton, Joan Rivers, and Michael Jackson. Those are extreme edge cases. Walk into any plastic surgeons offices and ask for their before/after books. Most surgery is meant to leave the patient looking natural not unrecognizable.
Okay, having just followed the link in your profile and looking at your picture, dude, trust me you're not ugly. I actually honestly think you're a handsome guy, judging purely by appearances.
But anyway. You know, I've noticed that people who fixate on appearances tend to be irrationally harsh. You'd be surprised how big a part confidence and charisma plays in the overall attraction people feel for one another. You don't need to spend any dollar on surgery, just work on your confidence, be cheerful, and learn to carry yourself well.
1st rule of being ugly: Every ugly person has at least 1 really good picture that hides all of their flaws or is easily photoshoppable to hide flaws. Use any combination of lighting, shadows, cropping, facial hair to get this effect.
2nd rule: Find that picture and use it for everything.
3rd rule: People will be confused when they see you in real life and realize you look different from your picture. They will be disappointed. So you have to work really hard to try to match whatever level of attractiveness you have in your picture. If you're a guy and you've never put on makeup, you may need to learn.
If you think this level or worrying is too much and obsessive, I'd like to ask you this. If the way people treat you changes depending on how you look when you leave the house, you too would "worry about it".
Again, I'm not devastated that I'm ugly. I'm devastated that people treat me differently because I'm ugly. Especially after all the "everyone's beautiful in their own way" rhetoric I've heard my whole life. There's lots of people who are super successful, rich, and happy with families and they're ugly. What angers me is being treated differently because of something that I cannot control.
If anyone in the street just straight up tells anyone they're "ugly", something is seriously fucked up about them.
Seriously, go to http://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/ and get some tips. Get a new haircut that suits you, maybe consider using some hair product, if you have acne issues or something see a dermatologist, get proper fitting clothes, etc. etc.
it's up to you but with that many sentences and enumerated rules of response you might consider making your rebuttal by linking to what you would consider a more typical picture of you.
it's very hard to have this discussion when what we see is what you think of as a deceptively handsome picture. why not compare with a more typical one. we don't think what we have seen is deceptive we think it's just you.
I'm a woman who would hardly be considered "traditionally attractive" and it's always worked for me. People's opinions of your looks change based on how they view your personality.
Couldn't agree more. Actual personality and personability go much further than looks. It's just important to have that confidence and ease about you. Which, granted, may be hard if one's grown up thinking they are ugly. But once you get the tricks of smiling, reading others, and conveying a positive personality, the world opens up. Big time.
The article covers this topic of confidence. It says that only 15 to 20% of the wage increase attractive people gain is because of confidence. The rest is due to bias from the person in charge of hiring.
The question to ask is this:
How much does beauty correlate with strength, health, intelligence, conscientiousness, honesty etc.
If the correlation is high, then maybe judging others on beauty is something that can be justified under time and resource constraints everything else being the same...
Here the data were less clear, but several reviews of the literature have concluded that there is indeed a small, positive relationship between beauty and brains... In the U.K., for example, attractive children have an additional 12.4 points of IQ, on average. The relationship held even when he controlled for family background, race, and body size. From this, Kanazawa concluded that the famous halo effect is not a cognitive illusion, as so many academics had assumed, but rather an accurate reading of the world: We assume that beautiful people are smart, he argues, because they are.
The article does cover the fact that children who are more attractive are given more attention, and that teachers pay more attention to those children, which may very well explain the effect.
1. How much of intelligence is inherited? I am not up to date on this, but I remember that researchers don't have a consensus on this. Also, once you are an adult does G get fixed?
2. Teachers also pay more attention to intelligent, hardworking and industrious students.
Also, grown up intelligent people are usually better at taking care of themselves and end up looking better than others. Of course, this is just one factor.
Simply put, babies fixate on more symmetrical faces. It is not difficult to deduce that teachers would give more attention to more attractive students, all else being equal.
All of that may be true in various degress but damn... your biggest problems are/were clearly psychological. Keep practicing the art of not-giving-a-fuck and you'll keep getting better.
(From OP's About Page:)
>The self hatred I had for myself, brought on by body dysmorphia, worsened so much that I refused to interact with anyone other than my roomate, never went anywhere without a hat, and only went grocery shopping at 4 AM (when there was the least amount of people at Walmart) because I was horrified that people would see my face and be disgusted by me.
>Evolution wise, this is because people like in others, what they wish they had for themselves.
That's doubtful. This is actually a far more general effect than the association between attractiveness and other positive attributes, known as the "affect heuristic". This is a shortcut that people automatically use to make judgments about things based on their overall impression of those things. It is responsible for a ton of glitches in people's perception.
For example, if you tell people that a nuclear reactor is particularly safe (in terms of meltdowns), they will tend to assume that it also generates less waste.
Look, so long as you have a full head of hair, the world and in particular women will consider you to be at least decent looking. My hair started to fall out when I was 22 and by 26 I was seriously balding. To make matters worse, I started to go grey and by 28 or so I was fully "distinguished" (aka old) looking.
So yeah, actually looking young goes a long way. Do not take your good fortune for granted. Like you said, you can change the other stuff you don't like.
I was very thin at 20 and completely bald by 22 (29 now and nothing has changed). I'd prefer to have hair, but it has never been an issue in my personal or business life. I was never turned down by a girl I seriously pursued. My wife thinks I look fine bald and she knew me before. She actually was interested in me originally because she said I had "cool" hair when she first saw me.
As my hair got thinner I began cutting it shorter and now buzz it as low as possible a couple times a week. I also grew a curly mustache a couple years ago so I had a little something to work with. I get compliments nearly everyday on it now.
Being bald young might have actually worked in my favor professionally as it made me look older than I was. I was young (early 20's) meeting with manufacturers in Europe to get contracts to import their products to the US. I think they would have been a bit worried if they knew they were dealing with a 21 year old. I looked like I was young 30's and I seemed like I knew what I was talking about so they didn't question it.
Another aspect of the absurdity of how negatively we treat plastic surgery is how common and acceptable cosmetic braces are in America. The vast majority of teens getting braces isn't because they medically needed them, it's just to make their teeth more attractive.
I had - chose to have - braces in adulthood, and I was very, very aware of the fact that it was in essence a cosmetic surgery. It certainly made me less judgemental about other cosmetic procedures.
/r/malefashionadvice might help you out some. I've been lurking there for a while, and for so many people it's not that they're ugly -- they're just used to wearing ill-fitting clothes that do not suit their body and face type.
I also lurk there. I will say they're a little too picky sometimes on what is and is not acceptable fashion, but they're great for teaching what good-fitting clothing looks like, as well as matching up clothes to create a style. Especially for someone who is not overweight, clothes with a proper fit can make a dramatic, huge difference in appearance.
Every time I look at that subreddit, I feel like a slob for what I wear.
Also, get a good hair cut. Pop for an appointment where you consult with a high end stylist. A good stylist really does know what they're doing. After that, once the style has been determined, you can have a less expensive haircutter simply maintain that style.
Speaking of stereotyping, the idea of taking fashion advice from <i>reddit</i> cracks me up. I'm sure it's probably fine and has some good things, but... you know, reddit.
Damn dude, you're handsome. For real. Looking at your picture in the link you provide on your profile, you look absolutely fine. I'm not one of those people who is lying to you.
First of all you're feeding into your confirmation bias just like the article points out - if you think you're ugly, you're going to believe you're ugly and feed into that negative self image.
Second of all, and most importantly, there is much that can be done with regards to improving appearances. If you don't believe me - just search for "models with and without makeup" on Google. The fact is that even the stereotypically "beautiful" people put lots of effort into improving their appearance, and you can too. I mean, just looking at the picture from the article (http://media.tumblr.com/160024ee41f63d0a19636697b1f929fc/tum...), the person looks essentially the same, except 3 major things change throughout the "hot or not" ratings:
- thinning of the face
- hair color / condition
- skin tone / makeup
The 1-3.4 has duller hair, fatter face and almost no evidence of makeup in comparison to the 9-9.5 face. And the 9.5-10 actually looks paler than the 9-9.5 face, but that appears to be from enhanced lighting (model "glow") giving her a more professional look, not to mention obvious evidence of eye makeup from the blue around her eyes (in addition to the blue eye color) which doesn't exist on any of the other faces. So just like you mentioned about putting your best picture on your profile, there are clearly ways to make yourself significantly more attractive:
- Achieve a healthy weight (increased muscle mass, decreased fat)
- Dress in clothes that flatter you (form-fitting, colors that contrast and enhance skin tone)
- Spend a (healthy) amount of time in the sun to create appealing skin tone
- Put time and effort into grooming (healthy hair in a stylish haircut, no unkempt facial hair, clean and trimmed nails, treatment of pimples/blemishes and other assorted skin care)
Yes, it requires effort. Yes, it seems vain and pointless. And yes, deformaties and dramatic asymmetries cannot be masked by effort of appearance. But attraction and appearance are a game of our society and more often than not, attractiveness is something you're more in control of than most people realize; and people are too lazy / stubborn to accept that reality and work on it. Many people can't be bothered to wear quality clothes or hit the gym 3 times a week, and then blame society why they're deemed "ugly." But the fact is most people are pretty "average" in looks but some don't appear that way because they put in effort into their appearance, and it works!
As much as you're trying to convince yourself you're ugly, you're not (seriously), and you are more in control of raising your attractiveness than you claim. You can't tell me that you'd get less/the same amount of attention if you added 20 lbs of muscle to your frame, lost the facial hair and surfer haircut, and wore a well-fitting navy suit and white dress shirt. Effort put in will yield results.
Firstly, the article doesn't talk about confirmation bias. The fact remains that if you think you're pretty, but you're actually ugly, all of the effects that come from being perceived as ugly will still come into play, which the article goes into to great detail about.
Yes, feeling confident about yourself is helpful, but as the article said, "the increased confidence of attractive workers only explained 15% to 20% of the beauty premium."
The fact that women basically have to spend hours dealing with makeup only reinforces the OP's post. I don't see how that's a response to what he said.
If you look at the picture, the overall facial structure plays a great role in the transformation. Thinning of the face is not just about losing weight/fat. There is bone structure at play and there are other bodily tissues at play that you can't just remove with exercise.
Look. Your response seriously comes off as one of those banal "If you think you're ugly you are ugly. It's all about self-confidence. You can improve yourself if only you wore better clothes and better grooming and went to the gym." Etc etc. etc. Completely uninsightful and nothing the parent doesn't already know.
Male beauty is mostly about height which one has little control over. E.g. if op is 5 feet, follows all your advice and looks like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, he will still not be more beautiful than someone who is 6 feet and does not follow it.
Thanks for sharing your story both here and in your website, and I agree with much of what you say, particularly your 3 points.
As the article points out, judging people based on beauty is deeply ingrained in human nature, but I think we can all agree that it's a bad part of our human nature. It's also in our human nature to want to rape, steal, murder, etc. to get what we want, but we create laws and social structures to prevent those things and I'd like to think that we as a species are always trying to transcend these primitive urges and become a more sophisticated Vulcan-like human race that is "above" such things
Accordingly, I'm always perplexed as to why judging people based on their looks is still so widely accepted and tolerated in society. Companies aren't allowed to advertise a product by saying "So good you'd rape/kill/steal from your neighbor to get one" and yet they're allowed to promote the idea that becoming more beautiful makes you a better person. I think it's absurd and I think/hope that people 100 years from now will look back on our society and shake their heads in shame and/or amusement at all the shallow advertisements we allow on TV.
I refuse to accept that "That's just the way human beings are, man. We gotta reproduce." Forgive me for thinking that we could do much better as a society.
That's why I abhor companies like Zynga whose entire business model revolves around tapping into people's most basic, primitive instincts and making money off of it. I love video games with beautiful graphics, an epic story, and great gameplay, but Zynga games have none of those things. They are the equivalent of a crack dealer getting people hooked on low-quality games which add nothing to people's lives, and just because they grow quickly in a new space does not mean they should be lauded for doing so.
Last point - I don't like the argument that because babies and children also recognize similar standards of beauty that we should just accept that there's nothing we can do about it. Children also want to eat candy at every meal, steal stuff they want, and shit anywhere. Children need responsible adults to teach them that all those things are not good for themselves and society. And yet we fail to do the same for both children and adults when it comes to looks, which never fails to sadden me.
</rant>
EDIT to add:
pg recently tweeted "Will ownership turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before they had the infrastructure to manage sharing properly?"
I'd like to pose the same question - Will makeup and cosmetic surgery turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before society got its shit together and collectively realized that we shouldn't be promoting beauty as a virtue?
Hmmm, I think that's an extreme opinion. I don't blame anyone for wanting beauty, it's gorgeous. Nor do I oppose evolution or natural selection. If the unhealthy and unattractive are not preffered, that's just nature. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to enjoy our time on this planet. I just wish people weren't so harsh. Same with gays, people may not accept them or want to be like them but they should still be treated equally.
It's funny how I'm getting emails from other fellow uglers who understand "the way things are". Yet there are others who just refuse to believe that being ugly has such an impact on one's life. It's kind of like being black on a white continent, or a woman in a man's world, or a homosexual in a heterosexual world, you won't understand the issues or struggles unless you yourself can experience them.
Your looks impact your whole life. Starting with middle school onward to collage and into your adult life. Ugly usually becomes your identity.
But because we humans have emotions we try to hide these discriminations and pretend we don't have them.
I always thought it was interesting how women with self-image issues are comforted on talk shows and told "honey you are beautiful just the way you are!" in one episode then "oh my God you look so much better!" after they get a makeover in the next episode. Not to mention the irony of women in the crowd (who will spend hundreds of hours each year putting on makeup, doing hair, bleaching, & plucking) clapping to the tune of "you're beautiful just the way you are".
My angry bitterness comes from the fact that my whole life I've been lied to. I was a cute kid but after puberty it all went downhill. I was the first to realize it. I was hoping the world around me would keep it's promise of treating me nicely because after all, "it's what's on the inside that counts". Yet, it was all a lie. I've had friends tell me I was ugly, I've had friends tell me they initially didn't want to be associated with me because I was ugly. I've had people in public say to me (as I'm walking by) "Damn dude, you're ugly". And if I choose to get cosmetic surgery some day, I'll have a whole new group of people calling me "shallow". Why? Because I want to look nice? God I'm just so sick of this bullshit. I don't hate myself, I hate the world that lied to me. People who say one thing, then do another.
The same people who call plastic surgery recipients as "shallow" are the same ones who lie to themselves and refuse to acknowledge how important it can be to look nice and feel good about yourself. How happy the millions of people who get surgery every year feel when they have a nose straightened out or a wrinkle removed or hollow cheeks filled.
People tend to believe lies that make them feel good rather than accepting truths that make them feel bad. I'm glad I live in 2013 when I can change the way I look so I can have a better life instead of lapping up all that "it's what's on the inside" bullshit so many people keep spreading so they can look empathetic and modest in front of others.
My Point: I'd like 3 things to change in our society:
1) No more lying. No more "We're all beautiful" rhetoric. No everyone is not beautiful. That's bullshit. Let's be honest. A few people are beautiful, most are average, many can be unattractive, and some are apparently repulsive enough to instill feelings of negativity in others. Beauty can also be subjective so there's a bit of give here and there.
2) To be more understanding towards people who are unattractive by removing the stigma that comes with being unattractive. Aka don't treat us differently. Example: All my friends are outcasts, people rejected by others because they were unattractive, too fat, too skinny, too black (Nigerian descent). Despite me admitting that many of my friends are unattractive themselves, I was still their friend. I was never embarrassed to be their friend or be seen with them.
3) To not look down on people who want to better themselves through cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery is still looked down upon by many people. If you take a leave of absence for 2 weeks and come back with a different face your co-workers will respond negatively. To redefine oneself is what makes humans human. Stop judging cosmetic surgery by looking at extreme examples like Dolly Parton, Joan Rivers, and Michael Jackson. Those are extreme edge cases. Walk into any plastic surgeons offices and ask for their before/after books. Most surgery is meant to leave the patient looking natural not unrecognizable.
For instance: http://www.drrichardjoseph.com/photos/jaw-surgery.php Are they shallow for looking better?