Hey, yourself. 
Honestly, I have no idea. I’ve been hit on standing in line at Starbucks, at work, at the beach, at parties, in clubs…virtually everywhere there is to be. I *know * there are people who strike up conversations with others just to be sociable, with no ulterior motive in mind…I just rarely experience it. From guys, anyway.
I have a friend who is truly gorgeous and perfect-looking. She’s so nice and smart I can’t even hate her for it. I think things are both easier and harder for her - I think she can easily get her way with everyone, both male and female, and sometimes she doesn’t even notice she expects things from others. On the other hand, I think she has trouble being taken seriously. We’re both graduate students, and in her teaching evaluations she got several commenting on how hot she is and how they wanted to sleep with her, rather than any evaluation of her teaching skills.
I’d bet a moderately beautiful woman has it better than the MOST attractive guy.
Man, that’s nasty for you.
And yet… I sometimes think that every stranger should get the chance to ask once and be refused. Gentlemen, of course, accede to such refusals and fade away. Of course, the refusal may take the form of body language saying ‘go away’, in which case the question does not need to be asked, and the gentleman need not approach.
That’s the ideal, of course. Uncouth jerks like you describe aren’t gentlemen.
This is not something I say a lot, but after reading your post, I’m glad to have unremarkable looks and be lost in the crowd.
Expanding on Quartz’s post, there’s a difference between “gorgeous” and “beautiful”. When I was in school, I met one gorgeous woman who was so selfish, cruel, and unpleasant, that she quickly went from being gorgeous to being ugly.
On the other hand, I have met many apparently-unremarkable women who became radiantly-beautiful as I got to know them.
On the third hand, last weekend, after a year or two, I unexpectedly ran into an acquaintance who is both gorgeous and intelligent, kind, and passionate. The experience was almost intoxicating. She’s the only woman with respect to whom, I have ever considered abandoning my religion and becoming a Christian. Pity she has a partner…
I’m not an attractive woman because I’m, well, a guy, but I had a 6-year relationship with a very, very beautiful woman and I made plenty of observations.
For my ex, while she did enjoy her stunning beauty (and what woman wouldn’t), she didn’t really hang her identity on it. She was far too intellectual and emotionally intelligent for that and she was much more focused on her academic career (she should be finishing her Ph.D right about now). She wasn’t above sitting in front of a computer all day in her PJ’s and coke-bottle glasses. She didn’t have to be “on” all the time.
But I do think that she took the benefits of her stunning beauty for granted. I don’t think she realized that a lot of people can’t simply walk up to strangers and ask them to do random tasks. For example, she could walk into a 7-11, approach the nearest able bodied man and say,“Hey, would you mind putting these heavy boxes in the back of my truck?” and have him jump at the opportunity like a puppy, 20 times out of 20. I don’t think she realized that most people can’t do things like that. She was essentially surrounded by an unwitting, revolving squad of incidental “Yes Men”.
Conversely, the reactions of other women towards her were rather different, of course. Some women would resign themselves to the cruel nature of fate (as it seemed they saw it) and would do their best not to stand beside her should it force a comparison, while others would instantly hate her guts and would project volleys of acidic daggers towards her all night long, having never even met her.
And other men would react very negatively towards me in light of the fact that I was with a very beautiful woman. We’d walk into a club and 15 guys would instantly want to kick my ass.
When people would learn that I was with her, the reaction was always the same: “Wow, she’s so beautiful!!” or “Wow, are you ever lucky!!”. I found that really disheartening and annoying after a while. Our relationship, like any other reasonably healthy relationship, was based on so much more and it sucked when people wouldn’t recognize that. It sucked that despite the fact that we were both intelligent, good, balanced people that my ex’s beauty remained our relationship’s primary identifier for the world at large. Sure, I was attracted to her beauty like anyone else when I first met her, but it was her overall person that compelled me to desire a relationship. Hell, I currently know a couple of beautiful, single women but I’d never go out with them because I know we’re not right for one another.
Overall, I’d say my experience highlighted for me how superficial and beauty-fixated our society is and I found it depressing.
Well, they still have to wait in longer lines for the bathroom at public events!
(Basically, that’s all I got.)
Ha! That’s only because they don’t have the Uni-Toilet / Feeding Trough ™ in the ladies room.
Just curious - what were you wearing?
I mean, if you were wearing a tube top, bikini, short shorts, etc., well, I’d think you might have expected someone to notice. OTOH, if you were wearing a baggy t-shirt and sweats/cargo shorts, I’d wonder if you could just be comfortable that you weren’t revealing anything you didn’t want to, and just crank up the tunes on your Ipod and ignore the passersby as you go about your business.
An addition to my post: gentlemen and gentlewomen. Not only men can be jerks.
My experience with this occurred in the Army when I was 18-21.
Keep in mind, I’m a normal looking woman, I have my good points but I’m not a raving beauty.
But in the Army I was. And the attention and the leers and comments and assumptions and inappropriate touching just about never stopped. When appropriate, I did make formal complaints and did take things up the chain of command, but it was insanity. Plus the whole thing really made me look at men as scumbags–almost every married man I met hit on me. That’s just gross.
The story that best sums this up was shortly before I took a Chapter 8 medical discharge (pregnancy). I was seven and a half months pregnant and was walking with my husband on post to grab some breakfast. I passed three enlisted men who started making comments about how hot I was etc. Totally weird and not how I wanted to live my life.
My late wife, and the love of my life, attracted men like flies. It wasn’t that she was a conventional beauty, although she was very attractive. Neither did she dress provocatively. When she went out she always looked nice and she had a ready smile and a quick wit, but she had this magnetism that drew men to her. She was used to it and she played it, especially w/ the guys who thought they were og’s gift to womankind. I got over my initial twinges of jealousy and would often just observe while she flirted. She would pet their egos and leave them wanting more while she always came home w/ me and we’d often have a good laugh at some lecher’s expense. She was all woman and I miss her dearly. I’ve never found another who measured up.
I had a stunningly good looking coworker, that I once accompanied on a business trip.
She’s clearly totally hot in an office setting, but I’d never been out in the ‘real world’ with her before. It was bizarre. Everywhere we went, guys were walking into stuff, and staring. We went for dinner and every man in the restaurant was gawping at our table. For all they knew we could have been a couple (though I’d have been ‘batting above my average’, considerably), but that didn’t stop them from hitting on her. One guy working in a coffee shop we went into just stopped what he was doing and gasped “you’re beautiful” (to her, not to me). This was all within less than a 24-hour period.
She is kind of naive, and doesn’t fully appear to appreciate her looks - when the guy accidentally blurted out his inside voice, she turned to me and whispered “he must be insane!”; on the flipside, because of her naivety, she appears not to realise that the world isn’t really as full of helpful men as it appears to her.
I’ve drooled about this before, but she is an identical twin, and her twin worked in the same office as me too. Gah. I’d imagine out on the streets together they’re a traffic hazard. On the downside, when they were teenagers they were once set upon by a gang of (presumably jealous) girls, and beaten so bad they were hospitalized.
Weird world, isn’t it - where the shape of your bones and tissue deposits can determine your fate.
(A.R. Cane, your post was very moving. I’m sorry for your loss.)
As have I. There are so many people I know who are more intelligent, more sociable - they have such engaging personalities and draw everyone in that I am envious of them. They have so many fantastic qualities, from the ability to listen to the ability to crack jokes, that I think they have it just as easy as the pretty people do. I mean, a beautiful women may be able to get a guy to do something for her once based on her looks, but he will only continue doing it for someone who brings more to the table than a smile and a wink.
White tank top and baggy shorts. My top was fitted, but not tight…it was just the angle and movement the guys were taking advantage of.
I dress in what flatters me, and what’s appropriate. Some people just focus on what they want to see.
It’s funny; I’ve had a couple people look at photos of me with an old boyfriend and say, “Wow, he got lucky with you, didn’t he?” While we dated I had family members saying I could do better in the looks department. It’s definitely very odd to hear.
Not at all. I just wish I hadn’t let myself regain a significant amount of weight. (No one to blame but me for that, either.) And it would be nice if all men were gentlemen.
I recently bought some Garden Salsa Sun Chips at the local market. The adorable young woman behind the counter just chattered on and on about how those were her favorite chips.
When we left my buddy said: It must be nice to be a hot young woman. She even made chips interesting.
He was right and I think that is as good an answer as any.
Hot stuff comin’ through!
I think I’m a reasonably attractive woman…I have a nice body, especially by our cultural standards and such.
I usually get hit on in bars and clubs and those sorts of places–but I figure that happens to most every female with a pulse. Especially since it’s the creepy Quagmire types who tend to do that kind of thing…but then again, I doubt if I were totally repulsive that they’d be going for me. If I’m wearing something nice, I often get ogled/checked out, but that doesn’t piss me off, but rather flatters me more than anything.
I’ve also been told by people around me that I look super young for my age (I’m 23, but I’ve been told I look younger than eighteen by some). So either everyone who hits on me is a pedophile wannabe or there’s something to that youth-evolutionary theory thing.