Okay, I know this one is going to sound weird. You have to understand that I’m a rather ugly guy, and have been all my life. Due to this, I’m very self-conscious about my appearance, and due to the self-consciousness, I find it -very- difficult to deal with people I find particularly attractive. It doesn’t matter age, race, sex… If they’re handsome / beautiful / sexy, I automatically feel uncomfortable around them; more self-conscious than usual. I suppose it would be like being an illiterate in a book discussion… Or maybe that’s a bad analogy, too. Not sure. Anyway, I’m looking for advice as to what can be done (if anything) to help me deal more comfortably with those who have a more pleasing look.
Here’s what Cindy Crawford said about being one of the most beautiful people to grace the Earth:
“People should realize that I’m a freak of a nature - just a happy coincidence of good genes, taking care of myself, and really good lighting.” Remember that when you’re awestruck.
Don’t be intimidated by attractive people - they’re just people.
If I thought that most of them believed that, I’d be a hell of a lot happier.
Doesn’t make your quote any less accurate, plnnr. Just that I react the way I do around ‘beautiful people’ because of training.
I try to picture them naked. 
Not normally a problem for me. Beautiful people tend to avoid me like the plague.
Another self-proclaimed non-beautiful person here…
I do not travel in the same circles as celebrities or the stereotypical ‘beautiful people’, but I have met my share of gorgeous human beings.
For me, getting past the appearance and just treating people as people came late, and was surprisingly difficult. Actually, I’m still learning it. The key seems to be to forget what you are feeling and just concentrate on the fact that you are talking (or whatever) to another human being.
Feeling badly about myself hindered this, as I felt desperate and/or unworthy, and was even more caught up in my owh ‘stuff’. Over time (and through effort) I felt better about myself, and was able to relax and concentrate on the social interaction.
I am a beautiful person.
The thing about that though, is that people who are beautiful are insecure about their looks as well. I won’t claim that it’s to the same level, because I am not deibilitated when dealing with beautiful people. However, there comes a certain point where it’s like “Ok I’m beautiful, now what?” it only carries you so far, it’s so subjective, and you can easily be made to look ugly by being vain.
There is plenty of insecurity brought about by people who are potentially MORE beautiful than you. What about the people who are beautiful AND rich? How do you compare to that?
In the end comparing yourself to other people contributes to your ugliness. It’s a commodification of the self. If you’re going to commodify yourself using physical attractiveness as your bellwether, then you have to realize that by not valuing your own product, you are diminishing it’s value in the eyes of others. Beauty is largely on the inside. I’m not going to say that some people aren’t given a leg up by outward appearance, but if you hide the beauty you have inside, all people are going to see is the ugly. If you let the beauty inside shine they might not see the ugly.
Also, if you are ugly, you can use that to your advantage. It will help you weed out the assholes very quickly. If someone judges you badly for being ugly, do you really want them in your life anyway? What are they offering that is so special besides a pretty frame for an ugly portrait?
Beauty is a lot more than the shape of one’s body and face. It is the way one carries themselves, it is in their taste and attention to detail in their clothes, whether they are comfortable in their own skin, whether or not they are threatening for other reasons. Many ugly people are so bitter about being ugly, that you sometimes wonder if they might harbor some resentment that could cause them to actually try to hurt you. That’s intimidating.
Remember, beautiful people are intimidated by other beautiful people as well, and there are so many other social factors that go into what makes people fear each other besides just physical beauty. You just need to come out of your shell and value your strengths, and gain the confidence that those strengths are enough to help you thrive in this world. In the end, that’s really all you can do.
I had a girlfriend who I was super-attracted to. I thought she was the sexiest woman in the world while I was dating her. She told me that my body disgusted her. I’ve had other people tell me that I had a beautiful body. The point being that there are so many different criteria of how people judge people that everyone has something they are majorly insecure about, and beautiful people get told they are ugly too. It took me a long time to think I was good looking because I was short and fat with a bad haircut when I was 16.
Erek
Anybody else want ArrMatey!'s problem? I’ll trade ya, hon. Or maybe you can just tell me where you hang out that there are so many Beautiful People, and I’ll come and join you.
Also, pretend I just said everything mswas said (damn you’re a good writer Erek).
I put more stock in the way a person carries themself, and how much effort they put into making themselves look presentable. A person doesn’t have to be ‘beautiful’ to fit this. One problem I think is that people that might have gotten the short end of the stick genetics-wise feel that they are ‘stuck’ being unattractive, and probably don’t put a whole lot of effort into looking decent. But in general, I think that if most people simply take care of themselves (bathe, groom themselves, take care of their skin, wear clothing that suits their body type, maintain good posture, etc) can get really far in spite of all their physical shortcomings.
Sometimes I fantasize about being physically repulsive, because as other people have said, it helps you identify the assholes really easy.
:: nods ::
Being comfortable with who you are is the key… then it doesn’t matter so much who everyone else is.
ArrMatey!, I think that you bring up an interesting (and not uncommon) subject, but that you are asking the wrong question.
The question you need to be asking is not, “since I feel bad about myself, how can I deal with others differently”, but “since I deal with others differently because I feel bad about myself, how can I change how I feel about myself”. Otherwise, you are treating the symptom, but not the problem.
An interesting thing I’ve discovered so far in my life is that we are far more alike than we ever could be different. In the phrase, “beautiful people”, “beautiful” is just the adjective; “people” is the noun that describes what you’re talking about.
I’m not beautiful. By and large, I consider myself reasonably average…though most definitely short. I have known some beautiful people, though. Upon getting to know these people, I have found that they are, decidedly, people who happen to be beautiful, rather than beautiful things that happen to be people. Because they are people first and foremost, they are subject to the very same negative self-talk that non-beautiful people are. I have found it both curious and noteable that they sometimes seem to have esteem and appearance issues that meet or even exceed regular folk.
But enough about “them”. This issue has absolutely nothing to do with “them”. If it wasn’t beauty, it would be some other characteristic. They make more money. They are taller. They have a nicer car. Frankly, I’d be surprised to hear that beauty is the only issue you face, and I suspect there are many more than that one alone. To reiterate, this has absolutely nothing to do with beautiful people; they are simply a frame of reference.
The question you will want to explore is, “why do I place my judgement of my own value outside of myself?” This is what this comes down to. You feel less valuable than the beautiful people with whom you are dealing, and therefore you find them intimidating. But to make sure that I’ve made my point, the problem is NOT that you are intimidated by beautiful people! The problem is that you feel that what is happening outside of yourself (thoroughly beyond your control) is more important in determining your own self-worth than what is happening inside of yourself (completely within your control).
I don’t have answers for you. You have your own beliefs based upon your own experiences that are leading you to this issue, and I have no way of knowing what they may be. I do hope that what I offer you here, as my own very humble opinion, may help you to ask what I think is a more relevant question.
There is always someone prettier, and always someone uglier. That’s the the reality of it, and the best you can do is play up your good features (physical and otherwise) and play down your bad features.
The most beautiful person will make others recoil if they don’t have a beautiful personality to go with the looks.
Uh, Susan, you just copied mswas’s post word for word. 
Daniel
Am I the only only baffled by this at all? I mean, I know there are “beautiful people” like models and actors and such, but we don’t run into those folks every day, right? And when you see them in real life, a lot of them are just like every one else without the sets and makeup and lighting.
I hear those that say these are humans who happen to be beautiful and I myself have exclaimed, oh, so-and-so is beautiful or exceptionally gorgeous. But that doesn’t make me put them in a different category than me or make them feel inaccessible. Most people I look at are just people and no one is “ugly”.
I guess I could echo what others have said and that’s if you find yourself comparing you to them, instead of figuring out how to relate to beautiful people, you might be better off trying to figure out why you have a need to put them in a different category than yourself and why you feel that they need to be treated differently.
I think this is an apporopriate time to bring up something Bill Maher once said:
“Show me a beautiful woman and I’ll show you a guy sick and tired of putting up with her shit.”
I suppose reversing the genders would still make this true.
ArrMatey!, how about the Queer Eye treatment? If you’re fat or look like a coat rack, start going consistently to the gym and try to eat a balanced diet. Get a tan - a real one, not that Lindsay Lohan Orange-Glo™ crap. These are things within your control. They are simple things that show and develop self-respect and discipline.
Splurge on some clothes if you can (have a lady friend help you with this. You’d be surprised how much of an asset they can be at the mall), and a good haircut. If you have screwy teeth, get them fixed. If you have Larry King glasses, switch to contacts. This is symptomatic treatment, yes, but once you have the external obstacles out of the way you can start working on the internal ones.
And once you’ve done that, find a random beautiful person you’re intimidated by of your preferred sex, and talk him/her up, make friends, and make friends with his/her friends. When you realize that up close, everyone is ugly, you would have made a good start.
When my friend’s husband would salivate over Angelina Jolie or some other beautiful female on television, she would remind him that they too get diahrrea. I always thought that was funny in a mean sort of way because it’s true.
Attractive folks still poop, we still get itchy in gross places, we puke sometimes, have oily scalps, get zits, etc. Gross, but true as with every human.
Being attractive is rarely out of no effort. Even the most beautiful women on earth have strict regimens they follow to stay looking that way. We may wake up with it a little easier, but most beauties still work at it.
Really? That’s an odd thing to say. I know plenty of attractive people who look good up-close and who have internal beauty as well.
Yeahl, but have you looked at them with an electron microscope??? Ugh!
Without beautiful people, masturbation would be no fun.