Men = “How can I get more attention from the opposite gender?”
Women = “How can I get less attention from the opposite gender?”
(Not the OP personally, but general observation/summary)
The following is just a gut feeling–not something that anyone would be particularly conscious of, but I think anything that sets a person apart from a group, whether something good like being attractive or something bad like falling off their bike on the street, can make the person feel threatened, just because NOW people have noticed them. They’re not part of the background anymore, but clearly in the foreground. Sometimes we feel safest when we blend into the crowd and go unnoticed. Being exceptionally attractive, smart, well-dressed, dressed in rags, tall, short, loud-- anything that draws attention can make you a target for someone. It certainly makes you a target for people’s judgment.
They say that one of the greatest fears people have is the fear of public speaking, which requires you to stand up in front of a group as yourself. People who never noticed you before are looking at you, noticing your clothes, your hair, how you talk, what you’re doing with your hands, and let’s face it, they’re judging you, giving you a grade. You’re at a disadvantage; they’re looking at you from the safe anonymity of a group, but you’re Out There. (Of course, some people thrive on that global, generic attention.) But feeling like now you’re attractive when in the past you blended in with the average crowd-- I can see how that might make a man or woman feel uncomfortable.
Next time please use the report button. Thank you.
Is it that you resent the expressions of appreciation of attractiveness that may have been lacking in the past?
If you are “more attractive” than you were before then people will paying more focused attention to you and that is ego boosting but also … and this gets a little meta… I think there is a level of energy you feel compelled to maintain to keep that positive regard in place and that can feel somewhat like an obligation of some kind and be mentally tiring.
Prior crude remakes aside if your “improvement” was cosmetic surgery or breast implants to enhance your appearance (for yourself) and you are now curvier than you were before it’s hardly surprising that you might feel somewhat creeped out or psychically oppressed. People are naturally noticing this improvement and even if they are polite as pie both men and women are judging you in ways they did not before. You can’t have just the positive appreciative attention and not have the cruder sexual and judgmental attention as well.
I lost a lot of weight - because I was very sick … apart from the comments that were congratulating me on losing weight (which I interpreted as ‘good on you for being sick and nearly dying’!) … I HATE/D being attractive. For the first time in my life I got honked at, I had people looking at me and people making comments about what I looked like.
I don’t want to be visible, I don’t want people to judge me by my weight and I’m still the same person I was before. Being overweight was much easier because people would only talk to me if they were interested in something I might do/say/be. Their motives were much more aligned with how I treat people. The ones that only talked to me because I now fit in a social ideal of weight/looks are not people I want to deal with.
And yes … it is creepy!!! Our societies put so much emphasis on looks and so little on character.
If I, a man, may ever slightly derail this thread a bit: Just where are you ladies living that you get catcalled, honked at, etc.? I’ve lived long-term or short-term in Buffalo, rural upstate New York, Dallas, Houston, northern Virginia, Austin, Indianapolis, southern California, and other places - among folks of various races and backgrounds - and I still cannot recall seeing women get catcalled and yet for instance there was that YouTube video where an average-looking woman got catcalled multiple times just in one video. How is it that in my nearly 20 years of living in the United States that I have not witnessed this behavior?
You’re a guy. You genuinely aren’t wired to notice it unless you’re the type to do it. It won’t happen to women you’re with, because they’re with a guy. You’d have to hang back at least 5 yards and let her walk alone without looking like she’s with anyone.
We have had these discussion several times before. I am a white male living in a predominately suburban to rural mixed racial demographic environment on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. My experience is essentially like yours that outside of bars, nightclubs or similar drinking or party crowds the incidence of public catcalling of women is so rare I have never noticed it outside of the exceptions mentioned. The response by women is that it does happen even if if I don’t see it and that some men are “sneakier” about how they do it with whispered asides in passing and similar annoying surreptitious actions to deliver the annoying message but not call public attention to themselves.
Here is the original catcalling video.
Catcalling was common a few decades ago. But these days, I think the tide has turned somewhat and guys no longer feel so free to amuse themselves by publicly sexually harassing women and girls. Or else they just quit doing it to me haha.
I think it’s about evenly split between you not noticing and it not happening when you’re with someone (no guy wants to disrespect another guy by hitting on ‘his’ woman, right?) I don’t get straight out catcalled very often, but whistles and the ever-subtle ‘group huddle, then all turn and stare at me, then all leer or laugh’ is just as common now as it ever was.
The only small possibility I can think of off the bat, is that you developed a larger set of thought patterns based on a sort of “me versus them” attitude about attractive people than you realized.
I’ve never myself become MORE attractive, so I don’t know anything from direct experience. But I do know that pretty much everyone gradually creates an internal “narrative” about the world they see themselves as a part of, and if that narrative is upset by something, whether it’s a traumatic event, or even something very positive, it can be very unsettling to them.
I grew up in Northern Virginia, spent a lot of time there and DC - and yes, it happened a lot. Not when I was hanging out with male friends, so no, you wouldn’t have seen it, I imagine.
Does it make you sudden realize how different it is in life for attractive people and that feels weird?
I started life as sort of an outcast, then got into a position of relative status and then subsequently have dropped into an ordinary existence.
The difference between traveling in the cattle class and Motel 8 then in first class and expensive hotels finally back to cattle class and Motel 8 can be jarring.
It’s the same me, but with a title and some cash it was like being a different person.
It’s often said that beauty for women is like power for guys. I don’t know how universally true that is, but attractive people get a lot of perks in society.
I’m back, and I’m seeing that my OP may have inadvertently sent some people off on the wrong track. For those of you suggesting that maybe I’m treated differently than I was when I was unattractive, that’s not the case. I think Miss_Gnomer put it more succinctly than anyone: “And yes … it is creepy!!! Our societies put so much emphasis on looks and so little on character.” And Fruitbat2, I think you hit on the truth as well: That a woman can have something substantive to say, and her message so often gets lost as the people she’s talking to instead analyze how sexy her figure looks or how egregious it is that she forgot to wax her upper lip. You want to become a substantive person, but as you realize that good looks will earn you more admiration than anything you can say (not universally true, but true more often than we’d like to admit), you start to wonder if devoting more time to your looks really would be a better use of your time than working on your intellect and character. And you don’t want to think that way, but that thought process is just reinforced by the conversations you hear all around you.
To give a little further context to my OP: I really didn’t actually “become more attractive” in the eyes of most people last year; in fact, to some I specifically became less attractive because they thought I was getting too thin. What happened is that I, as an avid weigh-lifter, have been trying for years to get my body fat lower, and last year I was finally able to do that. I went from 135 lbs. to 125 lbs., and became very slightly more muscular. Trust me, the difference was not big enough to make any sort of appreciable difference in terms of how much I got checked out, or how much other people perceived me as attractive. But I was able to reach the goal by placing a tremendous emphasis on physical appearances in my life, and while it felt rather uncomfortable, when so many of the signals sent by society indicated that I was on the right track, that I was RIGHT to place tremendous emphasis on my physical appearance because it truly is one of the most valued traits in a woman, it was very hard to keep from spiraling further and further down that trap.
How is it that you, a white person, has never seen or experienced any of the discrimination that people of color claim to experience all the time?
It’s said, but it really isn’t anything like a parallel. Being lusted is not very similar to having power. You know what the big difference is? Violence.
Unless you are attempting to make some meta point I think his observation was specifically discussing the real world incidence of men catcalling women publicly, not catcalling black people or black women.
Sure, but the parallel between the two is that - if people behave legally and nonviolently - then the person who is lusted after, can dictate the terms - i.e., who gets to be with me and who cannot. The attractive person pulls all the strings, decides who gets access, can accept or reject on a whim.
Being lusted after is like being rich; it has pros and cons, and can lead to violence, and the attractive and wealthy are both in the same plight of having legitimate, valid complaints, but those complaints are not taken seriously by society because people who are less attractive, or not as wealthy, think that the advantaged person is either being ungrateful, or trolling for sympathy.
I think her point is that if Person A has not walked in Person B’s shoes then Person A may be more blind to what Person B endures.
But FWIW I’m of a minority race, not white.