Dude, I escorted her. I didn’t schtup her. It was as frustrating for me as it was for all the other guys.
She did, after we’d eaten, tell me to rub her tummy to see how full she was, and placed my hand a trifle higher than I’d expected but a) I was married at the time and b) I suspect that was just her naivety, not realising that this seemed like a come-on. Also, asking to be the meat in her and her twin’s sandwich got me slapped.
I’m curious as to people’s location and whether or not they think it makes a difference. For example, is it one thing to be a stunningly beautiful woman in Cincinatti, OH vs just one more attractive, aspiring actress/model type in LA or New York.
Well, I am in NYC and I don’t think of myself as beautiful. I think I am pretty and I think I am sexy, but I realize that as an overweight woman I am not going to fit the standard of beauty in America.
That being said, I get hit on all the time. I get asked out by different men at least once or twice a week. It is a pretty regular thing for me and it kind of freaked me out when I first moved here. This didn’t happen nearly as much when I lived in Dallas. Even there though I would have men pull up next to me at stop lights and ask me out through their passenger windows. From talking to other women it seems like this kind of thing is pretty normal for most women my age.
I think the biggest difference would not be my romantic life (though I am sure I would see a difference there) but in my everyday life. I might get paid a bit more or have people give up their seat on the subway for me or things like that. I think being stunningly beautiful would be an incredible social lubricant but once you get past the point of first impressions I don’t know that it would make too huge a difference.
First, it’s Cincinnati. Second, there are certainly some beautiful women in Cincinnati, but nothing like the concentration one might find in Manhattan or Miami or Washington, D.C. Certain places are magnets for hot women. I live in one of them (Florida). They’re not all from here, they just seem to gravitate here.
Sadly, just as many good looking, wealthy guys seem to come here, so it’s not any help, statistically.
What’s it like to be good looking?
It’s great. It feels great. 
I have no idea. I suppose I could be called good looking(?). If someone has been good looking since essentially birth, they’re not going to “know” what it’s like to be treated as good looking–they’re just treated they way they’re treated, if you follow me.
You need someone who has had some --ahem–work done, and ask how they’re treated before vs after. Just a thought.
My significant other is very handsome. I catch women staring or attempting to throw flirty glances in his direction. Poor thing, he has no idea just how good looking he is. I wouldn’t say he gets special favors from people, but everyone’s very friendly with him. When we’re together, I notice that women interact more directly with him than with me. Good thing he’s not the type who wants a cougar, 'cause older women go apeshit over him especially.
Me? While I did luck out in the handsome boyfriend lot, I did not luck out in the physical attractiveness department. I can clean up and look presentable, but I’m more of the plain jane type. If I get stares, it’s usually to read whatever is printed on my t-shirt.
My long blond hair, my glittery blue eyes, my figure like Kate Moss…
Problem is, I’m a guy. Couldn’t say exactly how far looks have gotten me (not very) but I suspect I’ve gotten away with an awful lot that someone else wouldn’t have.
Well, we’ve had a few ‘I used to stop traffic’ replies, and that’s more frank than I expected. Thanks.
The general theme seems to be that good-looks can make life easier, but don’t lean on them, because they don’t last forever.
I wonder if good-looks can create a self-perpetuating cycle of pleasant interactions; people treat you nicely because you’re good-looking, so you like people and treat them nicely, so people treat you nicely because you’re nice, so you glow and are good-looking…
and then you fly Southwest, and everything goes to hell.
Well, not really. IMHO, beauty can be both a trap and a burden. When you are female, young, tall, slim and blonde and blue-eyed (I should just beautiful, but I don’t know if brunettes or redheads had the same issues), people expect a certain way of behaving from you. If you don’t match up to their preconceived notions–it can backfire on you. If you do not have the Beauty Queen personality (the ultra nice, sweet, friendly to everyone kind of thing), the admiration can dry up fairly fast. True, the extent of this is mostly to be called a Bitch or accused of lesbianism, frigidity or bitchery, but that’s still not pleasant.
That said, it most likely opens more doors than it closes. It can be hard to be taken seriously and oddly enough, it can get you NOT asked out due to the assumptions that 1. said beauty would never deign to date YOU or 2. Beautiful person must already be dating someone else. It is supposed to help in terms of job interviews, customer service and the like or so they say.
I make no claims of Beauty, but I will agree with whoever it was upthread who said that she is happier now that she no longer gets so much attention. Although I do miss SOME of the attention, I do not miss the comments, the sizing up, the whistles, the catcalls etc. Of course, those guys never had a chance, anyway…
I get told I’m good looking occassionally, I guess you can judge for yourself. I forgot to move my photos from Yahoo photo when it closed down, so the only pictures I have of myself are me working out. I’m the guy with the facial hair who isn’t bald and doesn’t have a mohawk. 
Growing up I was a buck-toothed, gawky, skinny kid with braces, coke-bottle glasses, and a bad haircut. Time, contact lenses and a gradual gaining of control over my gross and fine motor skills have made me, if not quite Brad Pitt, at least reasonably easy on the eyes. The awkward stage is nature’s way of saying if you ever grow out of this and become okay looking, try not to be a dick about it. In a way it’s having a like a small inheritance windfall: you didn’t earn it, so don’t be a jerk about it and lord it over people, and it’s not going to last forever, so enjoy it while you can and try to improve yourself as a person for when it runs out. It’s mostly good for first impressions and getting laid on short notice in college; after that, you need some substance behind it.
My anthropology department head in undergrad once said something in passing that stuck with me, that everyone has something attractive about them, even if it’s only in how they carry themselves. Your personality has at least a little to do with how your physical looks are perceived. There was a discussion here once about whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was good looking or not, some said ick no, some said they thought he was rather handsome. Me, I think the wacky, bellicose, belligerent, Holocaust-denying petty Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is squirrelly looking at best, but take that same guy and make him my old college roomate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, professor of Persian astronomy studies and former citywide ultimate frisbee champ who’s genuinely nice to everyone he’s ever met, and I can see that guy being very good looking. Like Jules Winnfield said, personality goes a long way.
So if people tell you that you’re good looking, be gracious and take a compliment. Don’t let it go to your head and base your whole personality around it because that’s just ridiculous, but don’t be falsely modest about it either, because then you’re just trying to get people to reassure you. Don’t forget that someday you’re going to be a shriveled senior citizen with a pretty picture of your younger self on your nightstand right next to your teeth, so enjoy while you can and try not to get too wrapped up in your looks.
Meanwhile if you’re a great-looking man, things open up for you all the time. Sure when you’re young and stupid good looks are useful in getting laid, but if you really know how to swing it you will open up doors to beauty, opportunity and luxury, and importantly escape hatches worthy of the great Houdini. (Believe me, good looks have saved my ass more times than I can count.) Plus when you want something from the produce chick and all you have to do is look her in the eye and say her name, you’re never going home with a shitty handful of hothouse tomatoes.
I dated a really handsome man once …
I OTOH, have an average face and am fat, but that’s what he liked. After you get through the child/teenage years of torment, the world pretty much ignores the large, and I was used to being ‘invisible’. I hadn’t realized how just ignored I was used to until I was out with him.
EVERYONE stared at us when we went out to eat. Was it him that got noticed first, and were puzzled by me? (probably) Did they notice ‘fat woman’ first and then picked up the looks discrepancy with him? I wonder. We’d try to ignore it but when it was bad he’d get pissed off and stare back to get people to back off. Unsettling, I can see why some celebs go off their nut from all the attention.
How much of beauty is looks and how much is action?
I have received severely-conflicting information about whether I am good-looking. (Hey, it’s better than unanimity on my ugliness…) I think that I’m not that bad looking in a still picture, but actions and movement are a different thing entirely. I don’t act attractive. So I don’t have the fawning hordes after me like some have described. And women are largely indifferent to me.
That’s actually a relief, I think. I was at the gym on Tuesday and I saw a woman who quite literally caused me to lose my train of thought and forget what I was saying to my trainer. I wouldn’t want to deal with that all the time.
Well, if you’re going to be all reasonable about it and stuff…
I’m not super-handsome, but I’m not ugly by any means (or if I am, the entire world has thus far been polite enough not to mention it).
My 22-year-old sister, though, is a stunning beauty, of the type under discussion in this thread. And when we go out together, I’ve had the same experience as jjimm: Everyone is nice to her, and to me by association. We get great service in bars; people hold doors for us; everyone smiles at us.
This is not the world I usually live in, in which I have to go out of my way to get anyone’s attention for anything. (Granted, it probably doesn’t help that my face’s natural expression when I’m thinking about something looks as though I’m incredibly pissed off.) Around her, though, the world becomes a helpful, accommodating, cheery place, in which everyone’s greatest desire is to make us smile. The difference is truly amazing.
I’m also amazed that it doesn’t seem to have given her an attitude at all. She’s about to start grad school, funny, articulate, pleasant to be around.
No, I’m not hooking any of you guys up with her.
Well, I never considered myself “good looking” in an Abercrombie & Fitch professional model kind of way. In fact, I always thought my head was a bit too large for my body and my nose was kind of big. But on occassion (when I was younger), I would get random comments from girls about “how nice my eyes were” or about my smile or whatnot. So, yeah, that’s kind of nice.
Sunspace, to answer your question, for a guy, it’s mostly action, not physical appearance. Look, I’m 35 years old (although I look 26). Last week I’m out in NYC with a couple of 20-something guys I work with who I have to say are more attractive than me on a purely physical level. Problem is they truly have no “game” so the only girls we meet are the ones I strike up a conversation with.
My own observation is that while guys do congregate around hot girls, they aren’t that special in places like NYC. I mean do you know how many hot girls I see at work every day? And I work for a freakin accounting/consulting firm full of nerds.
(Man it felt weird writing this.)
When I was growing up, I was the only Asian kid in about 90 miles of my hometown. The fact that I was quite different from my peers became apparent quickly, and it was often in the realm of dating where this fact ended up stinging me the most. To be honest, from the time I grew out of the “adorable Asian toddler phase” until I was 20, I simply had the complete conviction that I wasn’t an attractive guy.
Even when I entered university, there were barely any Asian students. For all the girls I’d dated up to that point, I’d never gotten the real feeling that they were especially physically attracted to me. Instead, I felt it was just my personality.
Then came my first trip to Asia. Seoul, Korea opened my eyes on an aspect of myself that I’d long ago resigned to. Meeting so many native Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, and their ex-pat American/European counterparts completely revised my own personal opinion of my physical attractiveness. Suddenly, I found clothes that actually fit me. Hairstylists who actually knew what to do with my coarse, unresponsive hair.
Suddenly, I was 10 times more attractive than I had been in Arkansas.
I don’t think I’m stunningly attractive even here in Korea, but ever since I started hanging out with other Asian people (native or American/European) it’s been a complete roundabout from the literally zero propositions I’d entertained before. The way that women in general who have been raised with an appreciation for the aesthetic appeal of thin Asian guys act around me is appreciably different from most of my acquaintances from other backgrounds.
So what’s it like to be good-looking? Coming from a place where I wasn’t considered attractive in the first place, it was a VERY big change. Women asking you out, going out of their way to find you or call you or get your number, etc. Even the conversations seem better, which makes sense in some ways, too. Your “league” is immediately more expansive. Ah, it’s almost too much to explain.
The downside for me was that it was all too new. I didn’t know how to react to being attractive, so it ended up confusing me and lowering my self-control. Formerly used to rock-solid, long term relationships, I was suddenly finding myself in all too many situations that were completely out of style for me.
At that point, I realized why so many people cheat. Especially people who can cheat with members of the opposite sex who are – to say the least – damn sexy. Before it wasn’t ever, ever a problem. The temptation could be easily wrestled because, well, it wasn’t going to happen anyway. But when you’re attractive, it is possible.
I wasn’t prepared. And I almost made an incredible mistake.
It’s much harder now to have female friends, too. Platonic relationships can all too easily dissolve when your friends are attracted to you, and because attractive people tend to socialize in packs, it’s harder for you as well. Temptation and easy flirtation is all around.
Honestly, I have to admit I get a little sick of it sometimes. Maybe people who’ve been attractive their entire lives are used to it. Maybe they’ve got a system or an instinct. But me, I don’t have any of that. All I have is an increasingly scary ego to show for it =/
Also, how much of beauty is looks and how much is presentation? I’ve found that for women it seems that men are (I hate to say this, I wish I could think of a different way) “easily fooled” by presentation. The right hair, the right makeup, the right clothing. How much grooming time you put in can make a definite difference both in how you feel about yourself an how you are perceived. If you feel good about how you’re looking that day, you will give off a more attractive attitude.
There are many celebrities (and everyday ladies) who owe a lot of their looks to good grooming.
It’s hard to measure beauty because we all have such different tastes. Just look at the threads when people are asked about celebrities they find attractive or unattractive. There are sometimes “shocking” answers on both sides. I’m some people’s cup of tea and some people probably find me pretty average.
As has been mentioned, women have a bit different attitude towards men’s looks than men do towards women’s looks.
Women tend to look at how a guy carries himself and interacts with others, and his stature in general.
I get this demonstrated to me every time I play a gig. I’m not bad looking, but not good looking, either. When I’m hanging out at the club before the gig, women don’t pay any attention to me. Then, after I play (I’m the singer and guitarist in my band), even though I’m tired, sweaty and disheveled, women then come up to me and flirt, etc. It’s kind of cliched, and I’m happily married, so it merely amuses me. At least it’s not as superficial as the way men treat women; the women are using more data points than men.
This has come upon me in later life (well, mid-late 30s) and I find it a bit of a shock.
I felt I was rather ungainly as a teenager with rather quirky looks, and I was rarelt chatted up (my ex says that’s because I had ‘get lost, you don’t stand a chance’ generally written on my face) although looking back if I fancied a guy, I could pretty much get him. I just never associated it with being ‘good-looking’. I knew I wasn’t a dog, but figured my brand of looks appealed to a narrow market.
Now, as I got older I sort of grew into my looks (for the record, I’ve never been girly-pretty, more 'refined, high-cheek-boned and even slightly tomboyish attractive, if you get the picture). I’ve never done an awful lot to make myself ‘artificially’ attractive - make-up, high heels, long blond hair - all acquirable goods. But towards my late twenties I notcied I was starting to get an awful lot of attention, from straight men, straight women, lesbians and even gay men. I’ve lost count of the amount of gay men that have said they’d make an exception for me or would like to be the father of my children.
Age about 30, I, how should I say, took a sexual turn, and now identify as a lesbian. And this is where my attractiveness-awakening truly took hold. I get an AWFUL lot of attention and feel confident that I could pull most lesbians I meet. I’ve heard from various first and secondhand hand accounts that I’m considered ‘stunning’, ‘fit as f*ck’, ‘have natural sex appeal that only a chosen few have’.
And I must say, considering I have the start of a greying head and plenty of ‘laughter lines’ around the eyes, that I find it all a bit of a shock.
I’ve been told that I look like Kristen Scott Thomas, Princess Di, an older Keira Knightley. Gobsmacking.
I don’t really know how to handle it, but it has given me enormous personal confidence as an adult when I was always painfully shy as a teenager, and it certainly helps my job in giving me the confidence to speak to a room full of business people without feeling insignificant.
But all very surprising.
