Snigger Like we couldn’t have guessed that ourselves! 
You’re funny Anniz.
Poysyn, I checked you out on the SD people Pages. You’re not ugly at all. Glad you ignored all those myopic morons.
Yes. A popular guy asked me to dance, and I later discovered that they were having a contest to see who could dance with the ugliest girl. Gee thanks!
Thing is, I’m not pretty, I’m not ugly, and I knew it then like I know it now. They just thought I was ugly because I was awkward and – the worst crime of all in junior high – SMART. I am pretty sure Mr. Popular is pumping gas somewhere now in my hometown. I’m not kidding.
Longer than yes or no. Can you really expect dopers to observe brevity guidelines?
My mother always tells me I’m fat and how I need to lose at leat 20 pounds. I swear, she’s living in a dreamworld. I lose some of the fat I had over the summer, and she’s convinced I gained weight over the summer. The worst part is she’ll bring this up in front of relatives and some of my close friends. I’m happy with my weight, why can’t she just leave me alone?
missbunny, I hope I don’t offend you by saying this, but your mom is an asshole. The next time she says something, ANYTHING to you like this in front of anyone, just say very sweetly “Well, I guess we all know who will die bitter and alone in a nursing home in the years to come, don’t we?”
I think that would shut her up fast, unless she’s stupid as well as a jerk. She’s emotionally abusing you. Don’t let her get away with it.
Drain Bead, if I did the math right, you are 22 years old. That’s not “old” by any definition! You have your whole life ahead of you. I once felt about myself the way you do now about yourself, but I realized as I got older that by hanging on to those feelings I was letting the people who had insulted me (although not by calling me ugly) still have power over me. Listen to Satan. Take him at his word. Whose opinions really matters here, those of the man who willingly spends his time with you, or those of forgotten children and cruel relations?
You have the power to define yourself, not those who were cruel to you. If you must see yourself through someone else’s eyes, why not through the eyes of one that loves you?
re: the OP. Yes.
re: this. Me too. Megan, it’s taken me quite a bit of therapy and self-introspection to realise that the reason those bastards-disguised-as-children hated me was because I was smarter than them, and we all knew it. They knew they couldn’t get to me by calling me stupid (which they did, and it hurt, none-the-less), I didn’t mind being labeled as wierd (after a while). So they had to call me ugly. There was nothing left to make fun of. And while I cried about it, I knew that they were wrong when they called me stupid, and I knew that if being wierd meant being different from THEM, wierd is what I wanted to be. But I didn’t know that I wasn’t ugly. And I believed it, and a large part of me still does. Please don’t give me the “I’ve seen the picture, it’s not true.” It doesn’t matter, none of this is based in FACT, it’s based in self-perception. Which I’m working on, and it sounds like you are, too, Megan.
Want to form a club? KUCU. Kids Used to Call Me Ugly. Pronounced coo-coo.
Poysyn: thanks.
Lizard: believe me, I have tried to get her back by saying horrible mean things to her, but she doesn’t seem to hear them. Too bad I didn’t, and still don’t, have the same tendency towards deafness. I was talking to her tonight and this subject came up (she brought it up, not me). She couldn’t recall any specific time when she had ever said one mean thing to me.
Oh heck yeah! My most common “nickname” all the way through high school was “scarface”
Some gems that I remember from high school:
“you look like you got run over by a lawn mower”
“did you catch your face in a blender this morning?”
Man, I can’t the number of times this thread got me choked up. I just imagine all the Straight Dope folks as kids getting kicked around by people at school. I just want to go back in time and give you all a big hug, which would probably get me arrested (30-year-old, going around grade schools, hugging the kids that get picked on…!)
Anyway, I actually don’t think I’ve ever been called ugly, except as the impersonal target of old-fashioned insult-jokes. You know what I mean? “You are so ugly, your momma gotta put a bag on your head so sleep can slip up on ya!” “Oh yeah, your momma so fat every restaurant in town got a little sign that says, ‘Maximum seating capacity: 230 persons or your momma’.” Not particularly mature, but not the kind of thing I would take seriously either.
I do take comments about my physical appearance very badly - whether the comments are good or bad. Usually it’s about how I need to lose weight or get a better haircut like the one I had last time. Who’d you go to last time? It looked good last time. How come you don’t just keep going to the same barber. Also, I get a five o’clock shadow pretty quickly, and since Miami Vice went off the air any stubble is considered very bad and punishable by pillory.
Anyway, I’ve been pretty lucky about comments about my looks, which is ironic seeing as that I see myself as being vile and repulsive and unlovable. Obviously it’s a psychological thing. Kudos to all of you who can ignore lame put-downs.
Well, I can sum it up pretty easily, by what my mom once told me when I was in high school:
“You had better damn well get good grades, because you sure as hell won’t be winning any beauty contests.”
After therapy, and getting to know my mom, it was her way of saying, “you’ll go farther in life with your head rather than what’s on the outside”… just in her own, colorful way.
Gee. Thanks, Mom.
Not that I’m aware, but I sure don’t have great self esteem. I’m weirdo geekboy, and I always have been. Puberty was soooo cruel to me, and I’m nowhere near to recovering.
If people thought I was ugly, then they haven’t told me so. But nobody has ever found me attractive either, so to me that speaks volumes.
What I have found interesting is the comments here that suggest those bullies and rude folk who call people ugly aren’t seeing the ‘real person’ underneath. But when it comes to seeing a truly attractive person, we all turn into mad sexual beasts ourselves.
Human nature is a pisser.
Yup.
It was absolutely amazing to go to my five eyar reunion and see the reacions of the people I went to school with. I had found my self esteem, and it showed. People were actually doing a double take.
I’ve seen the pics for most of the posters on this thread, and all of y’all look great.
I thought this way too for a long time, but found out differently over the past year. Think about it–unless you’re extremely extroverted, how often do you tell strangers you think they’re attractive? I’m 25, and this past year is the first one when I’ve had women my own age actually tell me they were attracted to me. (Grandma telling you you’re “such a nice looking young man” does NOT help!) In retrospect, I’m pretty sure there were others who were more subtle about it but were trying or would have liked to say the same thing (my previous post has a couple examples, but usually they’re not so obvious).
It’s a sure bet that there are people who have been attracted to you, but they’re probably just as insecure as you are.
Re-reading that and considering the previous posts, I have to admit it’s much better than if she said you’re ugly or fat… It’s very hard to do, but IMHO you just have to train yourself to ignore those spiteful remarks. Life is too short to waste your time on those types of people.
Well, I think almost everyone, boy and girl, goes through that, ah, “awkward” phase around junior high. You’re either too fat or too skinny; you’re clumsy; you start getting acne . . . I think part of the reason the “cool” kids are so mean to the rest of us at that age is that, deep down, nobody feels pretty and secure.
I have struggled with my weight, off and on, since I hit puberty. I don’t think anyone ever called me ugly, but so often my well-meaning family would say “you have such a pretty face,” the inference being that the rest of me could stand some work. The big eyes that people now tell me are pretty and dramatic then got me the nickname “Bug Eyes.” I was also occasionally called “heifer” in junior high, that being the insult du jour for fat girls back then. Oh, and I have worn my hair very short since second grade, and was a huge tom-boy who climbed into a dress only under duress, so in grade school I too was often mistaken for a boy. I just beat the crap out of any kid who made that mistake, though – way to prove my femininity. Everything kind of calmed down for me in high school, though, mostly because I no longer gave a shit what people thought of me.
The last time anything like this happened was my first legal job, which involved representing prisoners in the State Pen. I was given the grand tour my first day there, and while I got a lot of kissy noises and cat-calls (some of those guys hadn’t seen a woman – any woman – in years), I also got mooed at. I thought it was pretty funny, actually; I had lost a bunch of weight, grown up, and started to feel more comfortable with myself by then. And, of course, I was walking out of there at the end of the day, and my “moo-er” was not.
Ah, self-esteem issues! Isn’t it fun to pull the scabs off? Not. Big hugs to all of you.
I have almost posted to this thread a number of times. I had to stop when I started to have bad flashbacks to elementary school. I was a short, geeky, kid who wore glasses and missed a lot of school with ear infections. I had zero co-ordination so sports were out. To top it all in Grade Six I was beat up by the schools star jock who said I was ugly with every blow. I was saved by a girl(!) who beat up the jock. (Note: this was the event I alluded to in the "Three things I could change in my life thread) I don’t think he forgave me for that intervention. Therefore you can guess I’ve had some serious self -esteem problems. The complicating factor is that I have a hearing impairment, and when I’m in a group of people my shyness combined with the impairment tends to make me withdraw. I have more to say, but my eyes are tearing up. I will end by saying "Damn you people who try to build up your self-esteem by tearing down other peoples.
Keith
You know, another thought. (or 6, knowing my longwindedness.)
How many times have you been sitting on a park bench and saw someone walk by and thought “DAMN. He’s not a model, but that there hairless ape is one hot piece of ass,” (substitute pronouns where applicable) and then went back to your magazine or what-have-you? Unless you have an amazing amount of confidence, you don’t walk up to someone randomly and tell them “In the strickest terms, I find you quite attractive. Thank you, and have a nice day.” Unless there’s alcohol present. Somehow that changes everything.
My point is, how the hell then do you know how many times OTHER random strangers have done the same thing with you without you having ANY idea? That’s the first point.
The second one is that I encourage each of you who consider yourselves UNattractive to park yourself on a bench in a heavily pedestrian-traveled area of your town and LOOK at each person passing by. Don’t stare, just observe. Unless you live in LA, which has a freakish number of the Beautiful People, chances are that you’ll be surprised by the percentages of people that you objectively find A.) mildly attractive and b.) that you can honestly say you’re more aestically pleasing looking, and c.) the number of people you personally find UNattractive who are obviously strolling with their signifigant others. You don’t get emotionally involved in a sexual relationship with someone unless you find them mildly attractive. So everyone is attractive to SOMEONE.
And lastly, we’ve all bought into the media images, we’ve all been taught that one must have the perfect Nordic/Grecian features and coloring in order to be “attractive.” That’s bullshit, I’d get bored as all hell of looking at people if they all looked like the Ken and Barbies that are on Soap Operas. Diversity and unquiness is what is attractive, and how much you embrace your own unquiness. Without a lot of plastic, I’m not gonna be Claudia Schiffer. And I wouldn’t want to. She is Claudia Schiffer and I am Swiddles. Do I wish that dent in my chin were gone? Yep. Do I wish my nose were perfectly straight and my hair was a brilliant red and not a frizzy mess? Yep. But those things don’t make me UNattractive, they make me different than the rest of humanity. And that’s OK in my book. [/endrant]
First, I’m compelled to second Satan’s post to DB. She is one of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen, and I do believe I’ve told her as much. So there.
I was called ugly (and all the aforementioned variants) when I was growing up…and probably even behind my back in the time since. Supposedly, it built character. So now, I’m a 24-year-old person with a layer of self-esteem no thicker than a sheet of onionskin paper who makes certain to try and bolster everyone else’s self-esteem whenever I get the chance.
The upside is that my son is absolutely gorgeous, so I know that I had some pretty in me somewhere…if anyone deserves to get it, it’s him.
Thank you so much, Swiddles! I mentioned something like this on another thread. A co-worker friend of mine once told me something simular to what you have just so eloquently said.
Yep, that’s what did it for me. I grew up in LA. It is true - unless you are one of the Beautiful People, you are treated as if you have no feelings. And I sure as hell wasn’t one of the Beautiful People. (To be honest, there are pockets of the LA area where there are not all that many Beautiful People, but that attitude still remains.) But, the pressure and attitude are different in LA than in other areas.
i’ve been called ugly before, but it was more of a racial type slur. in 1st grade, the first day of school in our new neighborhood, all the kids at the busstop called me ugly and made fun of my eyes (kinda chinky and i like em that way). i ain’t no porn star either i s’pose… i’m really skinny, and most girls dig the big and buff guys. oh well… eye of the beholder and all that jazz…
Yeah, I was a chunky kid with a short, horrible haircut, and my older sister’s hand-me-downs. Worse, I was a Navy brat, so I never stayed anywhere long enough to make any friends. I hit puberty, grew out my hair, lost a bunch of weight, and was just starting to feel a little better about myself when some kid in gym class brought in a case of impetigo. About five of us came down with it, but lucky me, I was the only one whoe got it on my face. 13 years old and a face full of oozing, disgusting sores. Carried the scars all through high school, and they only really started to fade in my early 20’s. Heard lots of comments from my peers about that. Being a kid is hell. I sure hope reincarnation is just superstition because I sure wouldn’t want to go through all that again.
Slight hijack: Anyone out there seen a movie called “The Girl Most Likely To” starring Stockard Channing? It was a great little revenge movie about an intelligent but overweight and plain girl who is abused and victimized by a variety of people in college. An accident leaves her in the hospital for several months, during which time she loses weight and has reconstructive surgery. The rest of the film involves her clever, complicated, eye-for-an-eye revenge on the people who made her life hell. I loved it when I saw it (it must have been 20 years ago).