You mean, try not to… 
So, you will never be one of the Beautiful People.
Join The Club. (The Basically Average People Club is over 22 Bajillion Strong! C’mon, join us…everyone’s doin’ it!)
I use to be vain and shallow and insecure about what I wore, how I looked and that entire cassarole of negativity.
As cheesy as it sounds, the best things that kicked those thoughts out of my head are moving out of the burbs and having kids. The move broke the me-me-me-keep-up-with-the-Joneses mindset and having kids gave me a depth ( and an ass) that I could have never gotten otherwise. ( Oh and dealing with the maladies of my family and inlaws genetic/accident frailities has given me a backbone of steel.)
Learn to think for yourself and not like the herd.
What you need, besides The Doper Brethen & Sistahood, is to watch **Shrek. Gah, I loves me Shrek.
As Patty O’Furniture put it, **Without beautiful people, masturbation would be no fun. ** That is some funny stuff!
Love to join your club, Shirley, but I’m not even ‘basically average’. Should I get there, I’ll let you know.
While I fundamentally agree with Standup Karmic and thought they had a great post, I am hearing that you have some practical issues that make it hard for you to just wake up one morning and say “you know, I am going to think of myself differently from now on - okay, check that off my list.”
The short answer is: you don’t do it that way. You approach it like you approach any behavioral change - like stopping drinking, starting to exercise or stopping some habit you want to stop - do it one step at a time.
I am not beautiful. I am, however, outgoing. I also happened to love associating with beautiful people - when I was a teenager; who didn’t? So I just talked to them. Over time, I learned more about how to strike up conversations - and, more importantly, I learned more about myself. I ended up hooking up with a lot of beautiful women, which was just flabbergasting to me, but really helpful, too.
I could go into a lot more detail, but the bottom line is: set little goals for yourself:
“I will say hi to a person I think is beautiful today.”
“I will ask 3 people I think are beautiful about <current event topic> today.”
And take it from there.
PS: There is a writer - Neil Strauss I think his name is - who wrote the book on Motley Crue (The Dirt) and the one with Jenna Jameson (How to Make Love Like a Porn Star). I read in the NY Times about 4 - 6 months ago that he was writing a book about his experiences hanging out with guys who make it their life’s work to learn how to get girl’s phone numbers. Apparently there is both art and science to it…while you aren’t exactly going that far, I bet some of the principles apply to learning how to interact with the Beautiful People…
Man, I should have thought of that earlier. It’s called speed seduction, and it’s not quite what it sounds like. Shoot me an email if you’re interested, ArrMatey!.
The trick is that there isn’t a trick. There’s no one thing you can do that will suddenly make you stop being insecure. Like I said, the only reason I’m starting to get a decent self-image is because I’ve been seeing a therapist for the better part of a year and I’m on anti-depressants. It’s a process. Matter of fact, it’s an ordeal. But it’s what worked for me.
Let’s face it, I don’t know you. I’m not in a position to say what you should or should not do. But if you really feel like these “They’re pretty/I’m ugly” issues are starting to interfere with your life, maybe you should talk to someone who can actually work with you and try to help you. There’s no magic wand that we can wave, no miraculous advice that is guaranteed to work in 48 hours or you get your money back. There’s no silver bullet for low self-esteem. Change takes a hell of a lot of effort, and it’s a slow process. But if things are bad enough for you, it might be worth it.
SlowMindThinking - While I realize that there’s been some interesting research done in the reactions that we have to each other’s appearances, it didn’t seem to me that ArrMatey’s problems were necessarily related to that. I got the impression that he was more interested in changing his own reactions to attractive people, not trying to alter attractive people’s reactions to him. And that really comes down to his self-image, not whether or not humans are innately shallow. IMHO, anyway.
FWIW, ArrMatey, I don’t think you’re ugly.
You’ve met me, and you know that I am sure as heck not about to win any beauty contests anytime soon. I used to have the same problem dealing with people who were really, really attractive (well, moreso than I did with just plain normal people; I am a shy one). Sometime in high school, though, I figured out this little trick, and it seems to work.
When looking at people, I am internally hypercritical of their looks. Doesn’t matter if they’re movie-star looking; I can find something to bitch about inside. The way their hair looks. The color of their eyes. Their breasts. Their height. Moles. Anything. I’ll focus on it, and think, “God, they must hate their ______; just look at it!” At that point, I feel a sense of kinship. They would understand exactly how I’m feeling right now; they’re nothing to be intimidated by. *
In addition to this, I’ve learned to appreciate certain nice features of my own body (few and far between they might be), and to use those features to gain self-confidence. This is REALLY hard to do at first, especially if, like me, you spent your childhood having everyone–including your parents–denigrating your looks, or if you have naturally low self-esteem. The more you do it, though, the better it works, even if you’re gorram forcing the bloody thoughts.
Again, though, the first one helps with the coping, the second one helps with the self-esteem. Even if you can just get one of 'em to start with, it’ll help.
*Note that I am not advocating being hypercritical in order to denigrate others; I’m simply saying to use it as means of creating common ground in one’s mind