Iceman1978
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I wrote this a while back. It's rather long, but it describes in detail how I sometimes feel.
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I disapprove of the word envy. Envy is a word and a feeling that I associate so much with being a victim. It is a word that I associate with not liking yourself, and of not being comfortable in your own skin. Envy is a word that I only link to my face and how it compares to the faces of handsome men that women seem to go for and that the camera loves. There are many things in this world that make one envious, but there is only one thing that I truly envy. Granted, there are times every now and then when I wish I had vast wealth....but it's a fleeting emotion. It is a passing feeling that lasts only a moment. I'm not talking about that normal kind of envy that so many of us experience at some time or another. After all, money can be earned and fortunes can be built. It is within our realm of possibilities to go out there and earn money. One can take it upon themselves to improve their financial standing, just as one can decide they want to lose weight, stop smoking, or get into better physical shape. No, what I am talking about my face. I am talking about that prison of flesh and bone that I am stuck with. That immovable block planted on my neck for all to see.
I can learn to accept all my other physical imperfections....but my imperfect face is more than I can bear. For it is the faces of good looking guys that women go crazy for. It's the faces of good looking people that grace the covers of magazines, billboards, movies and television. It's the faces that women react to when they swoon and croon "He is so HOT". Yeah, the guys in question may have good bodies (but so do many guys). What women react to on a visual level is the face. I see guys with such handsome faces and how easy it is for them, and how they don't even have to try. Women flirt with them like crazy. These guys walk around with a level of confidence that I can only dream of. No matter what other qualities I may possess, they all seem to get eclipsed by my ugly face. I will never walk in their shoes or live in the same world as they do. I will never know what it feels like to be wanted, to be worthy of desire, or to have someone to share my life with. I do not posses the qualities or characteristics that women go for. I'm not tall, I'm not athletic and I'm not handsome. Sometimes I'm not even nice. If I could be like others maybe things would be different. I will always wonder where things went wrong and wonder why I turned out the way I did. Maybe I have an incessant need to assign blame. Maybe I just believe that there has to be a reason for things like this. The sense of justice in me has a very difficult time accepting something the way it is. Buddha once said that life is a struggle. I agree. It's a beautiful struggle. I would love the struggle if I were handsome. Women would notice that I exist and perhaps even smile at me.
Take away all our science and technology. Strip away our comfort zones and beneath it all, we are all animals. Scientists have done studies that the human brain reacts to beautiful faces the same way it reacts to food. It has been demonstrated that even in babies they will react better to an attractive face than to an ugly one. Consider the significance of this for a moment. Babies are too young to read, too young to communicate the way children and adults do, and are not yet aware of the societal expectations of beauty, yet even a baby has a different reaction to an attractive face than to an ugly one. You could say that it is a base animalistic instinct. There is an evolutionary imperative why some people will attract a mate and why some do not. Call it survival of the fittest or the process of natural selection, survival of the species, call it whatever you like, but it is a decision that people make, even if done so subconsciously. Charles Darwin studied this when writing “The Origin of Species” and one can see this today in the mating habits of just about every living species known to man. In the strict Darwinian sense of the term one could say that human genes which are deemed to be inferior are left to wither on the vine, not deserving to be passed along to the next generation. Ugly is weeded out, little by little, from one generation to the next. On a long enough time scale, we will all be as beautiful as supermodels.
Beauty is a powerful thing. I often imagine how my life could have been different had I been born with that power. People react to you just by looking at you. Our face is the first thing that others notice. Another person can't look at you and see that you have a good sense of morals or character, nor can they look at you and know your personality or sense of humor. The fact of the matter is that if someone is repulsed by the sight of your face then none of who you are on the inside matters anyway. Being handsome or beautiful gives you an immediate advantage. Imagine the confidence, happiness and peace of mind that it would bring. Now imagine the opposite. Imagine that you have an ugly and misshapen face like mine, a face which has you trapped in your own personal hell. Imagine looking out at the world of beauty through your mask wondering why....and then catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and realizing why. Being ugly is the worst kind of punishment and discrimination. An ugly face is a prison. Weight can be lost, money can be earned, and our brain power can be developed, but our face doesn't leave us with very much room. Lookism is the ultimate form of bias. Good looking people of every race, color, creed and nationality are lusted after universally. Beautiful people are more likely to be respected by others, more likely to get hired (and for a better rate of pay), and less likely to ever take anti-depressants or develop problems with depression. Indeed, good looks cross all societal barriers. Unfortunately, so does ugliness. It is a cruel fact of like that the ugly are one of the last groups in which discrimination is acceptable.
I find it amazing that there are men and women in this world that can attract practically anyone without even trying. People will go weak at the knees and bend over backwards to please them. Those whom our society considers beautiful have this power. They have power and opportunity that others can only hope for, power and opportunity that I could only hope for. As much as I may resent it, and as much as I may wish it weren't so; I am rejected with one look. I look around and I see other people who are in relationships. I see couples together at the mall or at a restaurant, I see people I grew up with getting married and having families of their own, and I wonder what it was that I could have done to deserve being denied these things. I see photos on magazines, the internet and people on television and wonder why they look the way they do while I have to go through life in this prison of a face and body.
It's so unfair. It is an injustice that God would give such power to only some and deny it to others. I could deal with any struggle in life....but to be trapped in this face is the worst. I feel like a sexless worker drone in an ant colony. For all intents and purposes, I might as well be. Why would I be born with such a love and desire for life and women and yet be given this face? What incomprehensible sin could I have committed to deserve this kind of punishment? I'd like to think I'm someone of moral character. I'd like to think I'm the kind of person who believes in helping others and treating others the way I'd want them to treat me.
The Tibetans believe that if a problem can be solved there is no point in worrying over it, and if a problem can't be solved then worrying would do no good. As much as I try to maintain my faith in God, I just keep finding it hard to believe that God loves me. From a purely logical viewpoint, I don't know what I did to deserve this, and I may never understand it. I may never understand why God saw fit to make me the way he did. Maybe one day I'll know why, or maybe I won't. I can't change it though, so why do I continue to even care? This life, difficult as it may be, will eventually be over. Compared to eternity, we are born and we die in the blink of an eye. Perhaps in Heaven it won't matter what we look like. I like to think that in Heaven we are all beautiful.
----
[/size]
I disapprove of the word envy. Envy is a word and a feeling that I associate so much with being a victim. It is a word that I associate with not liking yourself, and of not being comfortable in your own skin. Envy is a word that I only link to my face and how it compares to the faces of handsome men that women seem to go for and that the camera loves. There are many things in this world that make one envious, but there is only one thing that I truly envy. Granted, there are times every now and then when I wish I had vast wealth....but it's a fleeting emotion. It is a passing feeling that lasts only a moment. I'm not talking about that normal kind of envy that so many of us experience at some time or another. After all, money can be earned and fortunes can be built. It is within our realm of possibilities to go out there and earn money. One can take it upon themselves to improve their financial standing, just as one can decide they want to lose weight, stop smoking, or get into better physical shape. No, what I am talking about my face. I am talking about that prison of flesh and bone that I am stuck with. That immovable block planted on my neck for all to see.
I can learn to accept all my other physical imperfections....but my imperfect face is more than I can bear. For it is the faces of good looking guys that women go crazy for. It's the faces of good looking people that grace the covers of magazines, billboards, movies and television. It's the faces that women react to when they swoon and croon "He is so HOT". Yeah, the guys in question may have good bodies (but so do many guys). What women react to on a visual level is the face. I see guys with such handsome faces and how easy it is for them, and how they don't even have to try. Women flirt with them like crazy. These guys walk around with a level of confidence that I can only dream of. No matter what other qualities I may possess, they all seem to get eclipsed by my ugly face. I will never walk in their shoes or live in the same world as they do. I will never know what it feels like to be wanted, to be worthy of desire, or to have someone to share my life with. I do not posses the qualities or characteristics that women go for. I'm not tall, I'm not athletic and I'm not handsome. Sometimes I'm not even nice. If I could be like others maybe things would be different. I will always wonder where things went wrong and wonder why I turned out the way I did. Maybe I have an incessant need to assign blame. Maybe I just believe that there has to be a reason for things like this. The sense of justice in me has a very difficult time accepting something the way it is. Buddha once said that life is a struggle. I agree. It's a beautiful struggle. I would love the struggle if I were handsome. Women would notice that I exist and perhaps even smile at me.
Take away all our science and technology. Strip away our comfort zones and beneath it all, we are all animals. Scientists have done studies that the human brain reacts to beautiful faces the same way it reacts to food. It has been demonstrated that even in babies they will react better to an attractive face than to an ugly one. Consider the significance of this for a moment. Babies are too young to read, too young to communicate the way children and adults do, and are not yet aware of the societal expectations of beauty, yet even a baby has a different reaction to an attractive face than to an ugly one. You could say that it is a base animalistic instinct. There is an evolutionary imperative why some people will attract a mate and why some do not. Call it survival of the fittest or the process of natural selection, survival of the species, call it whatever you like, but it is a decision that people make, even if done so subconsciously. Charles Darwin studied this when writing “The Origin of Species” and one can see this today in the mating habits of just about every living species known to man. In the strict Darwinian sense of the term one could say that human genes which are deemed to be inferior are left to wither on the vine, not deserving to be passed along to the next generation. Ugly is weeded out, little by little, from one generation to the next. On a long enough time scale, we will all be as beautiful as supermodels.
Beauty is a powerful thing. I often imagine how my life could have been different had I been born with that power. People react to you just by looking at you. Our face is the first thing that others notice. Another person can't look at you and see that you have a good sense of morals or character, nor can they look at you and know your personality or sense of humor. The fact of the matter is that if someone is repulsed by the sight of your face then none of who you are on the inside matters anyway. Being handsome or beautiful gives you an immediate advantage. Imagine the confidence, happiness and peace of mind that it would bring. Now imagine the opposite. Imagine that you have an ugly and misshapen face like mine, a face which has you trapped in your own personal hell. Imagine looking out at the world of beauty through your mask wondering why....and then catching a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and realizing why. Being ugly is the worst kind of punishment and discrimination. An ugly face is a prison. Weight can be lost, money can be earned, and our brain power can be developed, but our face doesn't leave us with very much room. Lookism is the ultimate form of bias. Good looking people of every race, color, creed and nationality are lusted after universally. Beautiful people are more likely to be respected by others, more likely to get hired (and for a better rate of pay), and less likely to ever take anti-depressants or develop problems with depression. Indeed, good looks cross all societal barriers. Unfortunately, so does ugliness. It is a cruel fact of like that the ugly are one of the last groups in which discrimination is acceptable.
I find it amazing that there are men and women in this world that can attract practically anyone without even trying. People will go weak at the knees and bend over backwards to please them. Those whom our society considers beautiful have this power. They have power and opportunity that others can only hope for, power and opportunity that I could only hope for. As much as I may resent it, and as much as I may wish it weren't so; I am rejected with one look. I look around and I see other people who are in relationships. I see couples together at the mall or at a restaurant, I see people I grew up with getting married and having families of their own, and I wonder what it was that I could have done to deserve being denied these things. I see photos on magazines, the internet and people on television and wonder why they look the way they do while I have to go through life in this prison of a face and body.
It's so unfair. It is an injustice that God would give such power to only some and deny it to others. I could deal with any struggle in life....but to be trapped in this face is the worst. I feel like a sexless worker drone in an ant colony. For all intents and purposes, I might as well be. Why would I be born with such a love and desire for life and women and yet be given this face? What incomprehensible sin could I have committed to deserve this kind of punishment? I'd like to think I'm someone of moral character. I'd like to think I'm the kind of person who believes in helping others and treating others the way I'd want them to treat me.
The Tibetans believe that if a problem can be solved there is no point in worrying over it, and if a problem can't be solved then worrying would do no good. As much as I try to maintain my faith in God, I just keep finding it hard to believe that God loves me. From a purely logical viewpoint, I don't know what I did to deserve this, and I may never understand it. I may never understand why God saw fit to make me the way he did. Maybe one day I'll know why, or maybe I won't. I can't change it though, so why do I continue to even care? This life, difficult as it may be, will eventually be over. Compared to eternity, we are born and we die in the blink of an eye. Perhaps in Heaven it won't matter what we look like. I like to think that in Heaven we are all beautiful.