My experience suddenly being very pretty
I've had a strange experience recently in that I got a very cute haircut and suddenly I am the belle of the ball wherever I go. One major downside is that it is exhausting. People treat me like I'm a fairy, which I use to dole out generous compliments. But mostly people just notice me, a lot, and it's weird to feel so many eyes watching my every movement.
It reminds me a bit of living in Shanghai. I was practically a celebrity, people would ask for selfies with me to show their friends they met a blonde white guy.
Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed pretty privilege most of my adult life, but embracing my femininity in it's fullness has really amplifier things.
For example, I went to a dance performance tonight and ended up basically on a date with a girl, which was lovely but also what? I walked away to give her an out and she followed me.
At work it can be a problem as well. I have some coworkers that get really giggly when they're with me. Luckily, once it steers to work talk they're a whilsmart professional I'm Uber glad to work with.
Anyways, just had to vomit this curious anyone thoughts
i know that doesn't help at all but I am jealous of you that you are able to recognize that you see yourself as cute or as pretty.
Am happy for you.
I could never imagine having ever this amount of self confidence. But yay you go conquer the world !!!
I'm 32, been ogled enough to know what I got going on (also one relationship with someone that couldn't keep their hands off me, that was flattering). Been wearing skirts and catching looks going on 6 years now, it's been a strange life, but wonderful in so many ways. Favorite thing lately is I got a set of like 40 pairs of weird random plastic earrings. So much variety, I love my rubber duck especially.
If you're ever in Chicago I know someone that'll make you beautiful :D
I've had the opposite experience-- after being thin enough and attractive enough to get a certain amount of priveledge, I was put on high-dose steriods (for a misdiagnosed illness, but that's another story). Suddenly I lost social status, respect. People who knew me and knew exactly what was going on (including the doctors treating me!) suddenly responded to me as less intelligent, less worth consideration, and like somehow I was to blame for my situation.
After I was taken off high-dose steroids, I could tell the exact moment in the weight loss where I became deemed acceptable and intelligent again.
Let me tell you, that was eye-opening.
That's pretty much exactly like my recent experience, and why it's so infuriating to be treated like a respected colleague again instead of ignored and invisible. As for the medical profession, the bias against overweight is well known to contribute to patient misdiagnosis, morbidity, and mortality in ways comparable to racism.
There was a passing reference to this in the show The Pitt. One of the doctors almost fatally missed a diagnosis on an obese patient because they couldn't be bothered to provide standard care, and it was gratifying to see that addressed.
That is a very cute haircut and I love how the gentle waviness pairs with your face. It looks like your hair is also very soft and finely textured isn't it? How'd you pick this cut and good job stylist! How easy or hard is it to style in the morning?
Thank you!! When she was curling it at the end I said I looked like Taylor and she said, "you do have her coloring" and all I thought was "porcelain ghost" 😂
I knew the length and just let her work with it. The straight chop came up organically and I love it. I think this style works well for my texture.
Yup very thin and fine,blessing and a curse. I usually don't do anything to style it, every other day ish shampoo and condition so it's pretty consistently alright! On the weekends, like today, I'll give it 5 minutes of curls just to give it some texture and depth. It's also fun I've been really digging hair makeup and nails lately 🩷
Similarly fine, flyaway hair, and the style you think works well for your texture is exactly the style I have. Go for it!
I have some experience of that weirdness... As an adult, my body shape has been anywhere from anorexic androgyne to tomboy to Twiggy to Betty Boop to zaftig to Venus of Willendorf. I'm back at the Betty Boop version, and it's both uplifting and horrifying.
It's nice to hear "You look great!", not so nice to get the "eyes up here" moments at work and in public. I'm aged enough now that my appearance isn't inviting the excessive friendliness and covert sexual pressure it used to, for which I'm grateful. I've lost invisibility at work and am getting vocal recognition for doing my f'ing job all of a sudden, which deeply pisses me off on a feminist level.
Anyway, I don't know if it's just the human condition that people who conform to norms of attractiveness get all the cookies, if it's a Western cultural phenomenon, or if it's something societies really need to work on deprogramming from birth onwards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness_stereotype sadly, this appears to be one of our deeper psychological biases. It make sense from a "nasty, brutish, and short" version of human history where attractiveness implies health and wellness. Not so meaningful nowadays, I spose.
Also my Grandma loves Betty Boop, put a smile on my face to think of her :)
Yep, I've currently got that idealized 0.7 waist to hip ratio and a set of headlamps that apparently freezes the buck deer in their tracks. Shame about the middle-aged resting bitch face, but I'm now mean and cranky enough to find the confusion amusing.
...i've kept a similar bob cut for the past twenty-five years and, while i generally make a point to ignore other people's business out in the wild, my wife routinely notes similar oggles when we're out together...
...part of that invokes attention which makes me uncomfortable - often spontaneous compliments or people mistaking me for ambiguous celebrity - but after about a decade of doing my best to ignore it and become invisible, i eventually made my peace with acknowledging compliments gracefully before changing the subject...
So silky, so straight..... So jealous O..O
...hairstyles, like fashion, cycle; fourty years ago all i wanted was body and wavy hair!..even tried a chemical permanent wave around '81, which worked out terribly: instead of the cool look i intended, i came away looking like little orphan annie...
...i think it was about seven years later that i finally accepted my natural hair and started working with it rather than fighting against it...
Holy hell, is that a recent picture? You're looking damn good for someone that remembers their hair from 81
...nah, that picture's about ten years old; i seldom take pictures but i've looked my age since hitting my fifties...still cut my hair the same way, though, so it still elicits similar attention...
(dislocated vertebrae in my early fifties, prescribed a course of steroids to facilitate physical therapy, and aged all-at-once, but correlation might not equate causation)
I really feel like pretty privilege is a good indicator for the messiness of all privileges. Clearly being considered attractive provides benefits with the most obviously being romantic opportunities, but also just general social life. But its not only benefits, its also an impossible standard to maintain forever, preferably "effortlessly", and it changes how people perceive you in often inscrutable ways. Oh, you happen to seen as unapproachable, so I hope you have a lot of social confidence; oh your seen as approachable, I hope you are comfortable rejecting people. Do the benefits outweigh the negatives? Sometimes, sure, but a lot of the time its just different. Is it better to be hit on when you don't want to be or to never be hit on? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Your last point is very salient for my experiences dancing around gender boundaries.
I've found that the best and worst part of being a man is you aren't special, you're cannon fodder for the front lines, the underwater welding, the oil rigging, mining etc. The best and worst part of being a woman is you are special, a prize to be claimed, dehumanized, disrespected, etc etc.
Like you said, it's not necessarily better or worse. Both sides could benefit from seeing the other. Nothing opened my eyes more than getting unwanted attention from endless middle aged women because I paint my nails. God, the number of cashiers that unprompted start telling me how fragile their husband's masculinity is and how they wouldn't even let their daughter paint their nails. Just, sad...
...very apropos to my own experiences likewise...