Being attractive is a universal desire for most people. However, just like how every cloud has a silver lining, every blessing has a disadvantage. What are the downsides to being hot? These Redditors will reveal the truth to being attractive.
u/automaticsage asked: Good looking people of Reddit, what are some actual disadvantages you face because of your looks?
Social moth.
Arrogance. Everybody thinks you're an arrogant f**k when you don't talk or make contact at a social gathering. It's simply because I want to chill and be reserved. Nothing to do with arrogance.
I'd say I'm a social butterfly but I'm really just a social moth.
Often not related.
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They assume I have a large penis too, they are often disappointed.
The Halo effect describes the phenomenon that when people notice positive attributes in one specific field they also assume them to exist in other fields. It's a cognitive bias.
Not the worst assumption.
People assume I'm gay when I'm with male friends.
People assumed I'm gay because I'm quiet lmao. But it was only a problem when I was in the US
The struggle.
Huge pressure to find a partner. I've been called cute by girls and women for years now, because of my colour and eye combination but I've never had a girlfriend. When people jokingly ask me how many girlfriends I've had, or how many hearts I've broken, I feel an insane amount of pressure because I've never had a girlfriend and I don't currently have one.
And if you're wondering, I've got green-blue eyes with a Mediterranean colouring.
Wooooow.
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People seem to assume I'm (F) stupid or naive and need help. My favorite was when a cable guy drew a map of how he would run a cord from the 1st floor to the 2nd of my townhome. He even mimicked using a drill while making drill sounds with his mouth.
I have a PhD in mechanical engineering.
This got real.
People project a lot of their feelings onto you, they make a lot of assumptions.
If the haze wears off and I don't meet their made up standards for me, they get mad like I betrayed them.
To add to this, for me it becomes more of a problem with close friends. When we're at a bar on a Friday night and I'm sitting with my buddy who really likes this one girl in the bar and she comes to talk and its evident she's more into me than him.
I'm not really trying and I am barely interested in you an my friend here is cool, smart, funny and likes you can you please stop looking at my face and throw him a bone?
Who doesn't love Cheetos though?
As a guy, apparently I look a little too intimidating, if that makes sense. Like I look like the person who has their life figured out and doesn't take crap from people. In reality, I'm a socially awkward guy who loves nerdy facts and Cheetos.
I've been told my husband looks intimidating. And they think I look so sweet because I am usually smiling.
Funny thing is: he's a sweet ol' teddy bear. I'm the b*tch.
Reddit Users Share Their Best 'It's A Small World After All' Experience
Dating is tough enough.
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In dating life, people really expect a lot more from you when you're good lookin'.
They go off on your looks, and create an image in their heads of what you'd be like, before actually meeting you.
I hate it. I hate it. I f**king hate it! I struggle with self doubt so it hurts when I can't live up to some impossible image that they created of me in their heads. What are your options? Act inauthentically or watch them slowly lose interest? How do you even communicate this kind of discomfort?
I avoid dating.
Extrovert problems.
Any friendly conversation I have with a guy or just smiling (I am an extroverted person) is automatically considered flirting. The unrealistic expectations and assumption that I can easily find a relationship.
Guys, good guys especially, are intimidated by my looks too easily and just give up either because of insecurity or because they think I am high maintenance. Ugh!!!!
A surprising difficulty with women.
Until I met my wife I always had difficulty with women. Mainly back in high school, the girls that did want to go out with me were shallow and just wanted the status of having me as their boyfriend. Those were really bad relationships that never lasted long.
And then there were the girls I actually liked who weren't extremely popular and had trouble believing I had genuine interest in them. I admit that it didn't help that I had had a number of short relationships with the 'it' girls in school which gave the appearance to some that I was a player but that wasn't me on the inside.
It took moving cities before I finally managed to meet women who didn't have pre-conceived notions about me and would give me a chance based on merit rather than reputation. Even now, at 36 years of age, we get women who glare at my wife and I as we walk along holding hands or try to flirt with me in front of her. It is fun to shut them down by telling them about the kind of woman I like while simultaneously putting my arm around my wife though.
Babyface.
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That I am a kid. Like I am in high school and I have a huge babyface. I look like I'm 11. It now looks stupid since I am growing a beard.
Ugh, mansplaining.
I'm not amazing looking but I (F) have a certain quality about me. Not bad looking, cute, a bit of a goofy personality and physically quite clumsy, and oh so approachable and non threatening. Think Anne Hathaway playing a character in a film in the noughties.
I get a lot of unsolicited advice from men and find it hard to do anything in public without some arrogant b*stard sliding up and forcing a sh*tty laugh and explaining the correct way to do it. In my old job a guy even tried to show me how to mop a floor and I'm surprised there wasn't smoke coming from my ears.
That's annoying.
I get treated like my self esteem issues don't count because of my appearance. I had terrible self esteem throughout the majority of my teens which I've worked really hard to try and overcome, but I still feel uncomfortable even posting in this thread because of them. Thanks to a mixture of genetics and how I've been exercising regularly since I was like 8 years old (now 22), I'm both curvy and visibly fit (aside from cardio but I'm working on that) and as I've gotten older I've become more aware if the effect I can have on people, but when I try to express my insecurities I basically always get some sort of response along the lines of how I'm so pretty and so many people would kill to look how I do and I have the perfect body. Funnily enough, it never makes me feel better.
ETA: Thought of another one. People I'm friends with will just... tell me they had a crush on me/want to sleep with me fairly regularly, then just leave me with that information to deal with. I'm bi so I also get a double dose of it, and tbh it is kinda affecting how I act around friends, because I'm always a little on edge and hyperaware that they may only be friends with me because they want to hook up with me. I have had people straight up just stop talking to me as soon as they get into relationships, and it's always so hurtful when that happens because it seriously just feels like they were my friend because they wanted to f*ck me, and as soon as that stopped being an option I was dropped.
Jealousy is a disease.
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I'm female. I "blossomed" when I was 19 and it was very difficult for me to deal with. It became impossible to make female friends during college for one. Women HATED me. They wouldn't want me around, wouldn't talk to me, would be extremely mean-spirited, make a point of excluding me socially, and I truly had no idea what was going on because I grew up awkward and never thought of myself as looking like anyone but...me. But overnight, my looks were getting a LOT of attention. It was very confusing and at times, extremely painful and hard for me to navigate. People were constantly commenting on my looks which made me embarrassed.
Sometimes women will want to be friends with me as a way to deal with their own insecurity issues to try to make themselves feel better (by putting me down and cutting me apart once we're "friends"). Or, people will feel better about themselves if they can be convinced you're stupid, so they'll try to make you out to be an idiot. Also, it generally seems to make people feel intimidated no matter how nice you are so they end up being cold / rude / generally weird toward you. Also, people will make your looks a topic of conversation which can be very embarrassing. Or say things like "you're so pretty, it's too bad you wear your hair this way...you don't dress up more..." etc.
I'm older now, and I get less attention than I used to, and for that, I'm grateful. My looks are nothing like they used to be and it's a relief. My husband says he sees people checking me out all the time, but I think either he's sweetly flattering me or I've just learned to ignore the looks. I really don't think I look that special (and I have my own insecurities as well), but people tell me all the time that I'm beautiful. It's nice sometimes, but I honestly wish I just had a pleasant, regularly attractive face that didn't get any sort of extra attention. For the few times I've enjoyed it, it's honestly been more of a distraction and prevented people from getting to really know me. That's the hardest part for me. The distance it causes people to keep from me.
Unless you're in the entertainment industry or modeling and making money from your looks (I tried that route and hated the whole thing), for me personally, it's been pretty much just a hassle.
This is infuriating.
I get sexually harassed every single day I leave my house. It's contributed to me having agoraphobia bouts and causes me a lot of stress and anxiety. I've tried dressing differently, not wearing makeup, not doing my hair but it doesn't matter. I feel wound up and on edge when I just want to be able to walk down the street without being yelled at or followed or even touched by strangers.
I can't definitively say I've come face to face with the spirits. But I have had some unsettling feelings in the dark. Shadows are just shadows sometimes, but who can be sure.
I hear it...
Nbc Wings GIF by HULUGiphy"I was helping my dad clean my grandma's house after she passed and I went in and was trying to find a song in my phone and before I could I heard a cough plain as day come from down the hallway where her room was. She died of lung and throat cancer it was pretty crazy."
Running Past...
"When I was 5 I remember getting home from my grandpa's birthday party. For context my mom was pregnant with my brother at the time, so my parents had already bought his crib. I woke up in the middle of the night to find a women in a white dress and long black hair standing over my brother's crib. I managed to wake up my dad so he could take me to the bathroom. When I got back it was still there. It was only until morning when it disappeared. Every now and then I see a glance of what I assume is that thing running past the backyard."
The Cat
"My best friend and his wife had moved to a new apartment. I came over to visit a few times, and each time I'd see the motion of a cat in my peripheral vision. Not the image of a cat, but a sense of how a cat moves. Anyway, one day I finally cracked some joke about the ghost cat in the place and his wife was instantly saying "See! See! I told you we had a ghost cat!"
"excuse me"
"I worked graveyard shift in a dementia ward for 4 years and it was anything but quiet. I was working with a nurse one night when we both heard a resident say "excuse me." We looked around and no-one was there. I checked on the resident in question and she was fast asleep in her own room. Many of us also experienced someone whistling in the ward late at night and one nurse even managed to catch a video of it happening. It was unnerving to say the least."
Clueless
Skeleton GIFGiphy"I once saw someone short walk by me in my house. They walked into the laundry room which only has one way in. I walked into it behind them and they where gone. I thought it was my little brother but I went to his room and he was asleep. I still have no clue what that was."
- ImBolio
Now was everyone here positive they were sober? Just asking. Those are certainly spooky moments. I'd like some video footage please. Continue...
Reflections
ghost library GIFGiphy"I was up at 3am when I was maybe 7 or 8. I looked out the window and saw a woman in a white dress run across my yard. I could see through her. She was transparent like the reflections on the window."
"you alright?"
"So, my work place is haunted. I was having a really crap day, and as a cleaner, it's normal that me and my co worker will be the only ones left at night. So I was standing on the second floor, leaning on the banister for the stair case, when I heard this male voice say in my ear "you alright?" Clear as day. I turned around so fast and nobody was there and it scared the hell out of me."
- Rex-the-
Watching Me
"I remember as a young kid I usually use to sit in my bed and watch tv with my room door open while the adjacent guest bedroom next to mine would always have the door shut. I always remember seeing that door fully open and close by itself multiple times a day very slowly and gently. Never really bothered me much now that I think about it… but there were other creepier experiences I had in the same house that made me feel uncomfortable like I was being watched."
Betsy
"I went to the Betsy Ross House as a really little kid in the early 90s. Normal house but I was confused why the tour guide never talked about the woman on the chair crying at the edge of the bed in Betsy Ross's bedroom. So I asked about it. No one else saw the woman at the edge of the bed. I figured it was just a wax museum since there was a wax statue of a man in uniform rolling bullets in the basement."
"Years later, I was looking at haunted Philadelphia tours to go on with a friend and the Betsy Ross House was on it. I was like "woah! I was there!" and looked into it some more. Turns out there is a woman at the end of the bed crying and a uniformed man in the basement that people have reported seeing. There is no way that 8 year old me would have known about either of these things."
hello kitty...
hello kitty lol GIF by Animation Domination High-DefGiphy"I had this hello kitty Balloon In my bed room, it had a string and weight on it. So it was late, I had the lights on just Sitting on my bed. The Balloon turns, faces my door, slowly floats into my hallway and turns and floats into my sister's room. To this day I am scared of balloons."
They are among us and they like Hello Kitty. I'm probably rattling the paranormal cages and they'll come for me next, but I'm ready. I feel like this thread has prepared me.
Boo!
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