I’m kind of afraid of the fact that she could go on and on with countless examples. . .  Maybe said author should stop trying to be friends with condescending, self-centered people?

Nah, better just to complain about how bitchy conventionally attractive women always are.

That video clip is playing automatically and it’s annoying.

Just a few theories:

I’ve heard that extremely beautiful people are actually more insecure than the rest of us.  Assuming that’s true, that could explain why they may make for crappy friendships.  Not because they’re bad people, but because insecure people can act out in unpleasant ways.

I’ve met some really beautiful women who were also incredibly nice and sweet and smart, and oh my God did I hate them (just kidding).  I’ve also met really beautiful women who were not nice people.  It seems like beautiful people are individuals with their own personalities. (I know; can you believe it?)

Many people have a bad habit of associating attractiveness with goodness.  So, if someone’s attractive, they’re expected to be a wonderful person.  I wonder if Wakeman’s perception that beautiful women are so hard to get along with stems from that expectation.  If an average-looking woman acts like an asshole, Wakeman just chalks that up to that individual being an asshole.  If a beautiful woman acts like an asshole, Wakeman sees that as a huge letdown from the expectation that beauty equals good, and, therefore, beautiful women are bitches.  I mean, she only cites two examples.  Anecdotes are not data.

Many people have a bad habit of associating attractiveness with goodness.

There’s also the idea that a woman can’t be beautiful and have any other positive qualities, because the universe wouldn’t be so unfair as to put her that far out of your league. Beautiful women owe it to the insecure to be stupid and/or unpleasant.

Yeah, I lurv me some prince, but autoplay must die.

30 Rock did ‘The Bubble’ episode about this. TFB I can’t link to it. That stupid peacock, with its beautiful tailfeathers, acting like it’s entitled to make the internet do whatever NBC wants.

Perhaps they weren’t entitled so much as hungry.  I know that I’m an absolute bear when my blood sugar is low.  If it was a semi-permanent condition, that would make me a semi-permanent asshole.

Hmm.  Too bad I just get disoriented and absent.  I could use permanent assholish-ness to follow up on my employers’ wish for me to be more punitive with my subordinates.

Don’t ask.

I know what you mean about the blood sugar. My DH and I found more than half our arguments went away or didn’t get started if we checked if the other needed to eat when they turned into an irrational grump.

Well, beautiful people in general are treated favorably by other people. As in if a beautiful women has a broken car and is standing at the side of the road looking forlorn more people will stop and help than they would for a regular looking women. So if you treat someone really good looking like a regular looking person they might perceive you to be acting like an asshole. Naturally that probably only works for people who aren’t aware why they are being treated well or have come to believe this is how everyone should treat them. Of course if you know that you are treated well because you are good looking and you decide to play on that you are kind manipulative but when I think of the most beautiful women I know in real life she is unconditionally kind to everyone. She, in her spare time while studying for a phd, raises funding for and is heavily involved in the organization of a hospital for former child soldiers in Nigeria. I need to do more with my life.

So obviously there are a lot of categories of beautiful people and how they deal with it and stating one thing that is true of all of them other than they exist is kind of pointless. What are the categories is a much more interesting question. Unless we have to post pictures and have ratings of hotness so that there can be no unfounded accusations of sour grapes. Then I hate all of you.

It’d certainly match my experience with sales models at the International Comic-Con.

But no, I don’t think pretty people are any better or worse than non-pretty-people.  But then again, maybe not.  We find out that people who tip more regularly tend to get paid less while those who get paid more tend the opposite.

I sort of agree with Amanda here.  People’s characters are so dependent on so many variables that the privileges of beauty is not really enough to make one spoiled by itself.  Most pretty people got enough going on that it’s usually not about the pretty, unless that’s the job.

I think “beauty” in the sense that Jessica Wakeman is talking about is most likely of the crafted sense that people with money can achieve, and not necessarily the kind of attractiveness or compulsion to see that forms the natural basis of beauty.  I don’t agree that it’s hunger though, because I suspect (given how hard it is to break into modelling) it takes a privileged background a ‘la the parents of Elizabeth Smart to make a living at modelling.

Maybe Jessica just resents rich people she could never be with?

What is “pretty” in a woman? Best as I can tell, most white Americans mean “blond, very thin, and white,”—whether or not the person with these attributes is truly attractive.  “Very pretty” means “I really notice her breasts, too.” I do notice that younger women who match that description do tend to get the benefit of the doubt more often, and are more readily trusted, than other women, so long as they don’t play the bimbo, but also don’t betray too much intelligence. At least I’ve noticed this to be the case among white people.

FWIW, the only time I’ve been near one of “The Beautiful People” that you might’ve heard of was when I walked Margo Kidder to a bus at a political conference I was working at two score and four years ago.

I mentioned a HBO play that I’d seen her in and she naturally was gracious and talked about how she wanted to do Shaw’s Saint Joan, and I left her at the bus cheerful and polite.

What is funny is that my noble spouse is good-looking but shy, which is a temperment her Ilocano culture looks on as a desirable trait in both men and women in public, regardless of looks.

I’m going to say that there’s a pretty big bias against conventionally beautiful people. It can be hard for a very attractive woman to be taken seriously and treated like anyone else. Either people think she’s dumb and shallow, or they’re so ready for her to be a bitch that they seize on any flaw in her personality instead of realizing we all have flaws. A lot of men cannot treat a beautiful woman neutrally - she’s a sex symbol or a rejection symbol. And while it pains me to say this, many women don’t really want a beautiful friend. Validating oneself by looks, bonding with other women over self-deprecation and seeking male attention are very entrenched patterns for many women.

As to whether beautiful people act entitled - I think in an age of plastic surgery and miracle makeovers, that might be putting the cart before the horse. Most of the people I’ve known who really pursued physical perfection via nose jobs, implants, monthly salon visits and so on were entitled little bitches to start with. So it wouldn’t surprise me if that beauty aesthetic did validate the stereotype in many cases.

My friends and I picked up a word from an NYT column several years ago: “hangry.” When you haven’t eaten and your blood sugar crashes and you become a shrieking or weeping unreasonable wretch, you’re hangry (hungry crossed with angry). I myself was incredibly hangry tonight. My poor husband did a stellar job of not reacting to the hangry yelling.

I don’t know about everyone with low blood sugar or eating disorders… but I was *horrible* when I was either bulimic or anorexic. I cried and screamed and was generally just awful.

Most beautiful people I know don’t act entitled, including women who were thin enough to be models (but who weren’t). The only time I had a problem with a beautiful woman that sounds like this woman’s problems was because the woman was insecure and narcissistic, not because she was entitled.

I think things may change somewhat if you live in the right/wrong city culture? Like if you’re wealthy and white in Manhattan or LA?

I’m a woman who has known some conventionally attractive women who were nice and some who were not. However, I’ve found that conventionally attractive men are almost universally entitled assholes.

I think it’s like men and tallness: if you were a teen who attracted a lot of attention, admiration, and unsolicited help due to your looks, then you get the idea that this is the natural social way of things. And there are people who do believe that exterior beauty is reflective of interior quality and value.

That said, I think that when a beautiful person displays a social flaw, the explanation for that flaw will be rooted in the idea that somehow her beauty was responsible for supporting/encouraging that personality flaw. It’s the classic scenario outlined by xkcd, just for beautiful people. Heck, the explanation for those personality quirks may well be true, but we all have personality flaws rooted in other, non-beauty-related issues, as well.

Yeah, I’m guessing it’s the model thing more than the beautiful thing. Tyra Banks might be the biggest narcissist currently carpet-bombing our culture, as she apparently feels that everyone should find her insanely interesting. Can you imagine being her friend? In contrast, look at someone like Gabby Reece, who became a fitness model by being an actual athlete (with actual skills), and she seems perfectly down to earth despite being at least as attractive as Tyra Banks.

“It’s striking to me, though, how not being a kiss-up has ruined my friendships with some very pretty women.”
“But it’s my loss for being so stubborn about arguments that I lose friendships over them. I’m just unwilling to be a butt-kisser. I really, really can’t do it.”

Frankly, what I see in these quotes from the article is a writer who is passive-aggressively congratulating herself for being a better person than all those lesser people with their mere beauty, and hoping that the rest of the world will tune in and tell her how great she is. If that’s how she behaves in her real-life friendships, I can see why they would be a bit contentious.

On second thought, maybe I’m being a little harsh, but I really, really hate these kind of pointless first-person nonsense articles. Who in the world writes a whole article about what a great friend they are, if only those pretty bitches would appreciate them? And why on earth does it get space on CNN.com?

Models’ livelihoods pretty much depend (in addition to the constant body and facial maintenance) on being obsessed with what other people think about them, and on making sure that they somehow on a regular basis get chosen for shoots ahead of other models who are essentially indistinguishable. They also (mostly) have very short careers and relatively few marketable skills when their careers are over, unless they can make themselves personally or professionally indispensable to someone with money or power or both. This is like wanting to be friends with actors or standup comedians and being shocked to find them driven, grasping and self-absorbed. How else should they be, when their every day is marked by near-terminal insecurity?

(Caveat: I’ve been friends with a couple actors and a couple standup comedians who weren’t that way. They also ultimately gave it up. One of them was a top manager at a medium-sized multinational for years, but he freely admitted he didn’t have the drive or the ego to do standup…)

Jessica Wakeman= Nice Girl (TM)

Tyra Banks might be the biggest narcissist currently carpet-bombing our culture, as she apparently feels that everyone should find her insanely interesting.

Actually, I think Banks is a perfect example of someone who was ruined by fame, not beauty.  Before she had a TV show, she was actually very funny and self-deprecating.  She used to joke that she was one of the nerdy models because no one ever offered her drugs while she was modeling.  She was a fairly regular call-in guest to one of the morning radio shows here in Los Angeles and she held her own with those guys.

But then she got a TV show where people were kissing her ass all day long and she turned into an entitled monster.

I think in general that people who are the center of attention in some contexts will often expect that kind of attention everywhere. I’ve known a few decent people who, because they had the spotlight as a lead singer or a professor, etc, had a hard time adjusting to being the same as everyone else in a different context. To them, it felt like their specialness was being ignored. 

Completely by coincidence (can you tell I’m defensive)  I’ve been involved with two models over the last 2 years. A casual boyfriend started runway modeling and then I began dating a woman who does more amateur, local modeling. The backlash was vitriolic; I was shallow for dating them, they were stupid, vain and bad in bed. (Especially my girlfriend. I never realized how dearly some people hold the belief that beautiful women are shitty lays.) Some friends have realized they’re just people who photograph well, but others are still disdainful. The word “model” is just so loaded. In fact it’s lost all meaning for me as a synonym for “beauty” because the models I’ve met through them, pro and amateur, aren’t anything traffic-stopping. I also haven’t found them to have nearly the swollen egos that other industry people do.  Because, yes, some of the people who go into the beauty/fashion/sex industry really do think they’re the shit. I’m including Model Mayhem and its ilk in that, as it seems to cater to people who want to call themselves models just for the status. I know it’s a cliché to say society is getting more narcissistic but I really do think it’s the case.

I think everybody gets the same number of points at character generation, so a high attractiveness score has to come from other stats.

“So Mick said, “Let’s go to Rod’s house”

“Enough about me darling, tell me what you think of my dress”

Vanity Cases;

Best Commercial Ever.

Many people have a bad habit of associating attractiveness with goodness.

There was this psychological experiment I read about in college. The subjects were shown pictures of attractive and conventional-looking women, read a story about how they were convicted of a crime, and asked what sentence they should receive.

The sentencing correlated with the crime in an interesting way. When it was a crime that had nothing to do with looks, like burglary, the attractive women tended to receive lighter sentences. But when the supposed crime was one where good looks would be useful, such as seducing a man and cheating him out of money, they came down harder on the good-looking ones. Not sure what the moral is; maybe something along the lines of, good looks are useful, but don’t get caught trying too hard to use them.

ARrrahfghg

Autoplay is entitled and bitchy.  It does not care for anyone’s feelings; it must play Prince regardless!

Most of the people I’ve known who really pursued physical perfection via nose jobs, implants, monthly salon visits and so on .....
Comment #14: Veronica on 09/29 at 08:43 PM
————————————

There is a market for beautiful people, just as there is for people who can throw a 100 mph fastball or find organic chemistry to be easy.

And where market value is enhanced by the use of a little eyeliner, or some human growth hormone, or some other quick and easy fix, a lot of people will use these “cheats” to improve their market value.  It also creates envy and anxiety in the other competitors in the respective markets, and almost certainly breeds resentment.

I think we have a bias in favor of hard work as opposed to easy fixes (very Puritanical), particularly in the age of meritocracy.  And people who are having silicone implants as a shortcut to success, or steroids as an easier way to 500 home runs, are frowned on, particularly by those of us who might like to think that we earned our critical reasoning faculties by which we dissect these superficial competitors.

Eh, beautiful people are just like everybody else. Some people will take excess advantage of their physical attractiveness, and some people won’t.

I’ve often found beautiful people to be really dull, though. My wife had a friend who was simultaneously perfection itself and possibly the dullest woman I’ve ever met. My theory is that people who were considered beautiful when they were young had never had the need to become interesting in other ways. I’m probably full of it though.

If the bell curve for intelligence applies to beautiful women and men, and if people are geared (to one degree or another) towards using their talents for survival or personal gain, then it’s probably valid to expect that some beautiful people with no other outstanding talent will pour their energies into exploiting their beauty.

I also think that (again assuming the bell curve applies) most beautiful people are of about average intellect.  Some of these people will have been raised to be loving individuals, and some will be selfish and self-centered bastards (especially if the cliche about our being a narcissistic culture is accurate).

I think it’s fair to say that beauty presently is a more marketable commodity for women than men—or at least magazines seem oriented towards that premise.  If so, then what impact will being beautiful be on women who have no better marketable talent, in an employment market that already devalues them on the basis of their gender?  What are the threats to that value, and what are the likely responses?  Think about teen athletic phenoms and their hangers on, and wonder what sorts of similar dynamics affect beautiful women.

Maybe it’s not so much being beautiful as it is being the complete center of attention. The few politicians I’ve met who operated above a local level—state legislators and Congressmen, fer instance—had hugely entitled attitudes and seemed just barely able to tolerate anyone who couldn’t boast some level of power of their own. They were real good at looking interested in “normal people,” but they had the most bored eyes, and they looked for every opportunity to bail on the peons as soon as they could. And they were surrounded by people the entire time, all wanting face-time with the pseudo-celebrity politician…

Re: Autoplay. Get Firefox and add NoScript. No video will ever run unless you tell it to run.

I’m sure I shouldn’t have been, but I was really surprised by the photo that went with this article.  From what you can see of her, thanks to the classy face-crop, I thought that woman was quite pretty, although I was surprised they’d use someone not-bony for the illustration.  I guess the person who selected it didn’t even skim this short, whiny post since the caption is “It’s not the looks, it’s the attitude that can cause trouble, author says.”  Not only is this the opposite of what Wakeman is apparently saying, it’s just so ironic and mean next to the paragraph about how much it hurts to be dismissed for not being conventionally pretty.  Let’s not even get into my perennial shock that that’s as large as you have to be for it to be “obvious” that you’re not attractive.  Wugh.

The last time I was good friends with someone notably beautiful, the fact that she was tiresome actually had very little to do with her looks.  If anything, I was the more entitled person, used to being considered particularly intelligent and interesting, and my friend often deferred to me.  She wasn’t comfortable at all with the attention she got for her looks, even when she put no effort into them, and I’m not sure she even believed she was that attractive anyway.  I think the difference between us wasn’t in looks or talent so much as in our willingness to accept and use our gifts, cynically or not.  And I probably valued my intelligence in ways my friend, who was also intelligent and surely would have liked to be recognized for other things, would have considered it wrong to value her attractiveness.

But she was tiresome.  Whether other people blamed her looks for that, I really couldn’t say.

Agh please make that stop playing automatically. D:

maybe what is perceived as bitchy or ‘not nice” or whatever is actually defensiveness, because it could be beautiful women don’t trust others’ motives. It depends, as said before, how insecure the person is, but having others demand certain things from you based on your looks can be destabilizing. One would wonder if people are only after you for your looks.

People may spontaneously offer favors they wouldn’t offer to someone less attractive, but what do they want in return? Unsolicited help can be threatening as well, esp. if the woman is on her own. Maybe the people AROUND beautiful people are the ones feeling entitled, and pissy when they don’t get what they want. Like someone said above, nice guy (TM) syndrome.

Just a thought.

What? Good lord. That Wakeman piece is crap, start to finish. Pretty people can be as shallow/bossy/crazy/whatever, as anyone else of any particular appearance but NO ONE likes a whiner.

I have a cousin who fits the conventional American idea of beauty, blonde, blue eyes, tan, tall and leggy. By the time I was 21 and she was 19 I had seen dozens of “Nice Guys” pull their bullshit on her. Some over the course of weeks, some months and one even stretched it out over part of their middle school, all of their high school and well into their college years. When I first read about the “Nice Guy” definition, it helped me explain why I found their behavior so obnoxious.

I found her to be a good friend to me and others. Instead of getting the idea that she was more entitled because of her looks, I saw people pull the “You should be nice to him because you’re beautiful and he just can’t help how he feels and acts” guilt trip on her. Unfortunately, she often bought into it. I would tell her to tell them and him to fuck off because she didn’t owe any person that acted like an asshole anything because he thought she was attractive. She would never tell them to fuck off but she has told me that the advice did help her stand up for herself when the Nice Guy would eventually show himself.

She was also involved in one of the creepier relationships I’ve ever directly witnessed. She was often told she looked like a “healthier Cameron Diaz.” I think the word healthier meant she wasn’t as skinny as Diaz. After she dated a guy for a few months I was with her when she had to run into his house for something. His room was plastered with pics of Cameron Diaz. When I brought it up to her I could see she was uncomfortable but he and some of her friends had acted like it was a big compliment. So when she finally decided to talk to him about it, he just couldn’t understand why she wasn’t flattered that he was obsessed with Diaz and thought she was “just like her.” Gross!

So I definitely think her beauty seemed to cause her more trouble than it was worth. Especially her type of beauty that came with so many preconceived notions about her personality and others’ entitlement to that beauty. (Does that make sense? I’m having some trouble expressing this here, need sleep.)I became quite appreciative of my plain looks that could be changed to mildly attractive when I wanted to put the time and effort into them. g’night

smartalek wins the thread on the first post. the Wakeman piece is so stupid that it was hardly worth noticing.

I’m having an interesting experience in the beauty/crappy friends thing right now though. My chubby, talented, beautiful, jewish daughter has been being picked on by the tall, thin, totally ordinary looking wasp rich girl in her class (they are ten). Its been hysterical to watch because its like there’s a universal language of bitchy, waspy, rich girl shit that gets sprayed on my daughter and its so predictable that I could have written the dialogue myself the night before and always gotten it right.  But here’s the thing—the rich girl (who is the daughter of a close friend of mine) isn’t really beautiful and she never will be. But she’s thin. And she’s got money. Her clothes are awful because her mother’s taste is vile and she dresses like a cheap prostitute (leopard skin pants? little bustier? on a ten year old?).  The very category “beautiful” along with related ideas like there is some absolute “privilege” or “benefit” or “virtue” that comes with it is very unreal. Perhaps this girl will be treated with privilege in later years because she is thought to be beautiful? perhaps she will be treated as privileged because she will always be thin, and wealthy, and those things produce privilege? But she will remain the same awful person she is—its not because she is/is not beautiful or because of the ways society does/does not encourage other women to treat her. Shallow awful self centered people are shallow and narcissistic and selfish. The beauty part and the privilige part are ex post rationalizations for what we see and how we let them treat us.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Wakefield thinks that she’s in my daughter’s position—picked on by more important people because they think they are more important than her. That’s not what is happening. She’s in a non friend relationship with some women. Sometimes they want to do what she wants to do and sometimes they don’t. When they don’t, she interprets that as a rejection of an implicit bargain (roomates should be friends) and she reacts angrily. When they do what she wants, she misinterprets that as a sign of true friendship. They are just aquaintances. They aren’t that nice or generous, and they don’t particularly like her. Why should they do what she wants them to do? Why should they put themselves out for her? And, conversely, why should she care? Because she herself is as much under the glamorous illusion that they matter because she thinks they are beautiful as she thinks they are. If these women were ugly frumps and social rejects she would never bother to complain publicly that they hadn’t been good friends to her, or hadn’t wanted to party with her.

aimai

I was very beautiful as a teenager, but I was a kind and generous person long before that.  I would always reach out to anyone in need, even if they just looked like they needed a friend for an hour.  (I made many close friends by talking to someone who was just bored tagging along with their parents for an afternoon.)  Once I started to develop, things became complicated.  A lot of guys would get the wrong idea when I was nice to them, but it was just too difficult for me to tell them that I wasn’t interested in something romantic.  I know what rejection feels like, and I didn’t want to hurt these guys.  So, I became a snob.  Any time I felt like a guy was getting too close, I would gossip and make fun of other people until they just got annoyed by me.  I heard several boys in high school say, “I used to like you but now I just think you’re mean.”  I should have been offended, but I always felt deep relief that I wouldn’t have to hurt their feelings.  Throughout college I learned to just be more straightforward, and it turns out most guys could handle it.  But still, my fake toxic personality was a coping mechanism.

Then there’s the additional problem of just tons of random guys hitting on me constantly, especially throughout college.  I hate to even complain because I’m afraid it will sound like “Oh, poor me; it’s so tough to be beautiful”, but really, some guys are relentless and the only way to deal with them is just to be a complete bitch.  I don’t feel bad about hurting their feelings, but I’m not naturally a mean person.  It’s necessary to be mean in these cases because some guys just don’t respect me when I turn them down politely the first time.  There have been times when I acted completely mean in public just to prevent guys from hitting on me in the first place.  I would wear sweatpants and no make-up to go to the grocery store and even not wash my hair for a few days, and that didn’t stop them, so I tried to adopt an unapproachable attitude.  I can certainly understand it if other beautiful women might act the same way.  It can get old really, really fast to be constantly approached by men twice your age with hygiene issues who insist that if you just gave them a chance, their magical penis would make you love them.  Sorry, I’m sure I sound like a complete jerk for even complaining about this.

Might could be that Ms Wakeman’s saying a bit more about herself than about the models?  Just a thought.

I think smartalek is on point here.  I have had multiple arguments with other women over their idea that “women don’t like to hang out with other women” and “women make horrible bosses”, etc. I have noticed that the women who seem to believe this or have a hard time relating to other women are self-fulfilling their own prophecies, often, because they come into those interactions with a priori biases and bullshit (some socially induced, yes) that other people can sense, so friendships or smooth working relationships never get lift-off.  It’s depressing to watch.

Despite the fact that the beautiful are sometimes treated differently (better or worse, depending on the situation), I’ve known too many very beautiful men and women who are kindhearted, awesome folks to buy any of it (my academic department is riddled with brilliant, kind, very attractive 20- and 30-somethings). Generalizing cracks about personality are low and dehumanizing and, IMO, speak to people’s own baggage more than anything.  Bigotry and Othering will always find a way to insinuate itself into people, even us “liberals”—fascinating how it comes out sometimes.

Some friends have realized they’re just people who photograph well, but others are still disdainful.

Slightly off topic, but it’s always interesting to me that “beautiful” and “photographs well” don’t always go together.  You can have people who look odd in real life who photograph as absolutely gorgeous and people who are beautiful in real life who photograph oddly.  Marg Helgenberger (from China Beach and CSI) is pretty but a little odd-looking on TV.  In person, she’s probably one of the most beautiful women you will ever lay eyes on.

What is “pretty” in a woman? Best as I can tell, most white Americans mean “blond, very thin, and white,”—whether or not the person with these attributes is truly attractive.  “Very pretty” means “I really notice her breasts, too.” I do notice that younger women who match that description do tend to get the benefit of the doubt more often, and are more readily trusted, than other women, so long as they don’t play the bimbo, but also don’t betray too much intelligence. At least I’ve noticed this to be the case among white people.

Comment #12: wapsie on 09/29 at 08:40 PM

I notice this too.

White people tend to say

“Mary is beautiful - you know....Blonde hair & blue eyed….”

There are women in my office who insist they were blonde at birth as if that matters.

It’s like the bucked teeth, flat ass, and crazy walk are rendered invisible because of the blond hair strands. LOL!

There are women in my office who insist they were blonde at birth as if that matters.

I was blonde at birth, but I grew out of it. 

It’s an interesting question.  Paris Hilton is used as the stereotype of the pampered, snooty, spoiled pretty girl; but is that really what she is like?  What do we really know about her?  Lately I find myself wondering if she’s been given a bad rap.  All I really know about her is from TV, and that’s not the same as actually knowing someone.

I think we might expect beautiful young women to be that way, because that’s the stereotype of what a beautiful young woman is.  Since she’s beautiful, she must act like that, because that’s how beautiful young women act.

Also I think catgirl, far from sounding like a jerk, makes a very intelligent point that maybe this kind of behavior is a necessary defense mechanism.  We joke about women who are so pretty they have to beat guys off with a stick but that may literally be the case.  What else are they supposed to do when guys won’t take no for an answer?  Beauty and fame are blessings, but they also can be curses.

@catgirl: I don’t think you sound like a jerk, probably because I have been in a similar boat—I was an awkward shy bookish girl when I was younger, and, while I was usually too shy to be Miss Reach-Out-to-Everybody, I tended to make friends with other awkward shy bookish people. Then I got to college, where I was still an awkward shy bookish girl on the inside, but also The Hot Nerdy Chick on the outside. This is where my lifelong habits of being generally nice and sympathetic to other socially awkward people, occasionally striking up conversations, listening when other people talked, attempting to ignore comments I felt were made in poor taste instead of publicly shaming the tasteless person in question, not blatantly insulting people I wasn’t angry at*, laughing at other people’s jokes, and going out in public, all suddenly became very ineffective, if not possibly dangerous, habits to have.

So I stopped.

And if being less than totally flattered by that treatment makes me sound like Such A Bitch, then fine. If I’m such an insufferable bitch, maybe nobody will like me enough to follow me around for months and months!

*So, apparently, if Dude A says Chick B finds him attractive, and you don’t specifically say “THEN SHE HAS TERRIBLE TASTE!!”, that is code for “ME TOO TAKE ME NOW.” Now, I was brought up to believe that calling people ugly when they didn’t ask you was rude, but that was before I was pretty…

My stepmother was a great beauty, and unfortunately, she saw nothing else of value in women.

But that was how she made her living, as a beautiful woman, being supported by her two husbands. It was the only life she knew.

We were thrown together by my father at a bad time in my life: my mother dead for a year, my mother who had been intelligent and valued that her children’s intelligence.

As a child my stepmother made me miserably unhappy: but as an adult I came to pity her. Being completely dependent on my father made the last thirty years of her life miserable in so many ways.

And time is not kind to the beautiful. I think my stepmother also came to envy my independent life, and much wider experience.

I’m a person of completely medium looks, and I don’t get street-heckled, creepy old dudes don’t grab at their crotches in rural gas stations when I walk in, people don’t try to chat me up on the bus and then call me a bitch if I ignore them, I don’t get negged by strangers in coffeeshops, friends don’t feel the need to constantly point out flaws in my build when I’m trying on clothes

Given a sufficiently large population with sufficiently insufficient mental health care, this will also happen to persons of completely medium looks. /not-data-but-more-than-anecdata.

@ ktkid

I’ve found that conventionally attractive men are almost universally entitled assholes.

I don’t know if this means that, compared to my self-image, I’m less attractive… or more of an asshole.  I think I just got No True Scotsmanned into submission.

Or is it, as I’ve often noticed, more trouble than it’s worth in terms of unwanted attention and upkeep?

I would go with this. I had an absolutely stunning friend in college. Just gorgeous. And she didn’t have a lot of friends because no one female wanted to hand out around her because they “didn’t want to be compared” (I actually had another friend say that to me when I suggested we all go out somewhere so it’s not speculation on my part) and guys were just too much of a problem because it turned out (for her - so she says) that they just wanted to have sex with her right away.
It would be very hard for me to trust the intentions of any man after a while if I were in her shoes.
It was interesting hanging out in public with her because inevitably many men would act like complete freaks around her, stare, make very lewd remarks and treat her like a child “Oh do you want me to do this or that for you?” .

I have sympathy.
Being “average” is more of a blessing than more people know.

You can have people who look odd in real life who photograph as absolutely gorgeous and people who are beautiful in real life who photograph oddly.

I think Marlene Dietrich and Ingrid Bergman were kind of like that.  In black and white, they were luminescent.  In color, not so much.

Given a sufficiently large population with sufficiently insufficient mental health care, this will also happen to persons of completely medium looks

A guy who’s enough of an entitled dickwad to catcall women on the street is not necessarily mentally ill.  For one thing, that presumes that there are MANY more mentally ill men in New York, Washington D.C., and San Francisco (where I’ve been catcalled many times) than in Seattle (where I’m almost never catcalled).  The three aforementioned cities have serious issues with entitlement and diarrhea mouth, Seattle not so much, and I can assure you that Seattle has its fair share of mentally ill individuals.

The three aforementioned cities have serious issues with entitlement and diarrhea mouth, Seattle not so much, and I can assure you that Seattle has its fair share of mentally ill individuals.

keshmeshi

Heheh being in Seattle myself (and living here for 12 years after moving from MN - another passive agressive area) my guess is that they’re mostly displaying it in very passive-agressive ways. But then there are outbursts on Metro buses and serial killings and the like.

A guy who’s enough of an entitled dickwad to catcall women on the street is not necessarily mentally ill.  For one thing, that presumes that there are MANY more mentally ill men in New York, Washington D.C., and San Francisco (where I’ve been catcalled many times) than in Seattle

first off, I would argue that that level of delusional dickwad entitlement is a form of mental illness.

second: Your seattle argument is where my population point comes in. NY and DC in particular have a metric fuckton of people, and realistically a proportionally larger population of unpleasant ones. 

third: The post to which I initially responded covers a much wider swath of ground than mere catcalling. People who are aggressive enough to actually yell at/curse at/otherwise assault someone are much more likely, IME, to have some level of pathology at work beyond dickishness. Like sexual assault, these kinds of encounters are about *power*, not attraction. They happen across the board.

I guarantee you that at least 3 of the (10-12) persons who propositioned me in the past few weeks were suffering from an untreated condition.

er, “unpleasant ones” is to mean “unpleasant encounters.” Must preview!

wrongsideofthetracks,

You really have no right to call me entitled or spoiled.  Instead of ranting about how being beautiful doesn’t have nearly as many perks as downsides, I’ll ask what you would suggest I do in cases where some nice guy is interested but never asks me out.  Having a mean facade around him isn’t a perfect plan, but what other options do I have?

1)  I can say (in the middle of a crowded classroom or hallway) “Hey Joe, we need to talk.  You’ve been following me around like a lost puppy for the last two weeks.  It’s clear that you like me, but it’s just as clear that you’ll never ask me out.  You’re a nice person, but I’m not interested in dating you.  I don’t even want to be “just friends” because it’s a little creepy that you skipped classes to follow me around, which is something even my real friends wouldn’t do.”

OR

2)  I can just ask out and date a guy that I have nothing in common with, just to make him happy.

OR

3)  I can go out of my way to avoid him and hope he gets the hint.

There are problems with all these options.

1)  Even though I don’t want to date the guy, I don’t hate him.  Getting rejected sucks for anyone, but it’s especially bad if you never actually dated the person or even asked them out.  It would also be really embarrassing for him to find out that I knew the whole time that he liked me.  To make it worse, these guys often seem to have self-esteem/confidence issues to begin with.  It’s hard for me to be that cruel.  It’s also socially unacceptable for me to tell a nice person that I don’t even want to be friends with them, even if we have nothing in common. 

Then there’s the problem of how he’ll handle the rejection.  I have met very few men who have handled it well.  In these cases, my biggest fear is the response “Oh, I guess I should just go home and kill myself then because I’m worthless”.  Yes, it has happened.  No, they don’t say that just because they like me so much and are devastated and heartbroken.  Instead, it’s like this is one more problem among many.  I know that stuff like that isn’t my fault or my problem, but I can’t help but care about them.  Then there are the guys who get really angry when I don’t want to date them, and start insulting me for daring to go against them.  Then there’s the third type that won’t take me seriously when I say “no”.  Either they’ll tell me that I would fall in love with them I would just give their magical penis a chance, or they’ll beg me to go out with them and say I should just do it because they really, really want it and it doesn’t matter what I want.  These guys have the potential to become stalkers.

2)  I don’t want to date guys that I have nothing in common with.  On top of that, I simply can’t date every guy who ever liked me.  There’s just not enough time in the day.

3)  This option takes way too long and very often fails completely.  It’s really hard to do while still going to classes and living a life.

FWIW, I’ve never been skinny, and I’m not blond with blue eyes.  I’ve always been at least 10 pounds “overweight”, and I have reddish-brown hair and dark eyes.  I don’t look like a typical model, but I have a nice face and a freakishly huge chest.  There’s just no way to hide something like that.  I didn’t choose it and there’s not much I can do about it, but it makes men feel entitled to not only hit on me all the time, but to persist relentlessly regardless of my own wishes.

I’m sure no one is reading this anymore, but you really shouldn’t be so quick to judge.  There are very few benefits to being beautiful anyway.  So, I get some “free” drinks that I don’t even want and that I could easily afford to pay for myself.  Does that really make up for all this?

Well, I’m reading, and I did think calling women who have to be rude to (or around) their harassers “spoiled” and “entitled” was a bit much.  Getting glommed onto in public, being made to feel threatened by Nice Guys or not-so-nice guys, not taking our NO seriously even the third time; I consider those behaviours to be pretty rude and “entitled”, and reacting firmly against those horribly entitled sexist behaviours (or complaining about the social problem of Walking While Female) isn’t in any way “entitlement” on an attractive woman’s part, it’s asserting her right not to be harassed.  It’s a goddamned teachable moment, in fact. 

That kind of thinking is just too uncomfortably close to the thinking of the skeevy guy who “hey baby’s” a woman in a lonely, vulnerable corner, then tells her she’s a bitch when she calls him on his behaviour.  I’ve been that woman (haven’t we all?), and I resent the implication that not putting up with that bullshit (i.e. “being mean”) or complaining about it is “entitlement”.  I resent that the simple defense mechanism of looking dour while walking out alone in public is “spoiled” when really it’s sometimes the only thing that deflects the spoiled behaviour of chauvinists (this from a 5’2”, 100 lb woman who’s had her share of unwanted and very threatening male attention).  Apparently the social directive that women smile, even at their peril, lives on. I’m hoping I read wrongside’s comment wrong, because I can’t imagine that’s what he meant.  I’m also sure he understands that “deflecting with humour and diplomacy” isn’t a 100% surefire method that works with all men and all situations—especially when someone’s husband isn’t standing nearby.

There are very few benefits to being beautiful anyway.  So, I get some “free” drinks that I don’t even want and that I could easily afford to pay for myself.  Does that really make up for all this?

Well, to be fair there are at least a few benefits to being beautiful besides getting free drinks.  Off the top of my head, if you do happen to run across a person you are interested in, being beautiful probably ups your chances of getting that person’s attention and making a good first impression.  I think there are recent studies that show “beautiful” people get career advancement more easily than plain people.  I’m sure there are other things.  The old proverb “don’t judge a book by its cover” has a lot of truth to it, but nevertheless we are more likely to take a look at a book with an attractive cover; look at every SF/Fantasy paperback on the shelf at Barnes & Noble.

As far as whether that makes up for the unwanted attention and other downsides, that’s a personal question.  Obviously for you it doesn’t, and that should be respected.  I sympathize with your dilemma; but it’s a choice you have to make yourself.  That guy following you around and never asking you out may be the nicest guy in the world and share your love of BSG or True Blood or MST3K or whatever, but you’ll never know because you’re too busy defending yourself from assholes (and the chance that he’s a stalker) and he’s too intimidated/fearful to ask you.  (That was me in High School.  Or even today, for that matter.  Like Morrissey wrote:  I am the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar…) 

Someone has to make the first move for anything to happen.  Who will it be?  Who should it be?

I don’t think “automatically expecting X to happen because of trait I have Y” is necessarily entitlement. I think it’s entitlement if it’s “I automatically expect X *thing that I want to happen* to happen *and I think I deserve it*, because I have trait Y”, and “I automatically expect negative thing X to happen, even though I don’t deserve it, just because I have trait Y” would be called “paranoia”.

So perhaps beautiful people, after being treated the way beautiful people get treated for years and years and years, start expecting to be treated the way they are usually treated. This makes perfect sense to me. However, I think we need to draw a distinction between the people who expect and demand to be treated like beautiful people, and the people who are trying to get the hell away from it.

Some beautiful people might be entitled. But me and catgirl, at least, have just learned to be paranoid.

that guy following you around and never asking you out may be the nicest guy in the world and share your love of BSG or True Blood or MST3K or whatever, but you’ll never know because you’re too busy defending yourself from assholes

First of all, it’s not just one guy.  It happens all the time.  Second, I already know that I don’t like them because they’ve hanging around for weeks and they generally talk to keep up their pretense.  One guy in particular went on about how much he loves the show Two and a Half Men, but then complained when I talked about how much I like Seinfeld because he thinks Elaine is too shallow.  Not only is a big freaking hypocrite, we don’t even like to watch the same shows.  Then he sort of half-asked me to a baseball game even though I have no interest in sports at all.  Either he didn’t bother to listen to what I like, or he simply didn’t care.  Even if we did have the same interests, these guys are way more clingy than my real friends.  My genuine friends don’t skip their classes to hang out with me, and they don’t butt in when I’m trying to study.  My friends don’t sit creepily close to me just to make sure that no one might sit between us.  So even if I share some interests with these guys, they’re not good friends either.  Geez, even with my very best friend I don’t want to hang out with her for 4 hours after class every single day of the week.  You may be quick to judge, but there are plenty of guys who like me admit it, and I become friends with them (but I’m extremely clear that it’s nothing more) because we have a lot in common.  Of course, about half the time even those guys don’t really believe me when I say “no” and they try to wear me down and convince me to date them, so there’s that to watch out for.

As for the benefits of being beautiful, I can only think of one.  I can have sex basically whenever I want to with minor effort, and of course that’s great and I enjoy it.  Of course, in our fucked up culture, the sex has a 50/50 chance of being bad anyway because of the cultural attitude that sex is all about the men.  Any “free” stuff I get is never, ever free.  There’s always an expectation, even if that expectation is that I have to spend time talking to someone about something boring.  For example, my best friend and I went into a bar and got one drink, and we decided to leave as soon as we were done because there was hardly anyone there.  One group of guys was there for a bachelor party, and they insisted on buying us drinks.  I refused, but they ignored my refusal.  All the guys were married or involved, and there was no expectation of sex.  Still, my friend and I had already planned to leave before they talked to us.  I humored them for half an hour and they kept buying us drinks that we didn’t even drink.  I told them at the beginning that we weren’t planning to stay long.  I told them throughout the conversation that we planned to check out some other bars.  Finally I just said it’s time to leave.  My friend is more polite than I am and she said she felt guilty about leaving because they had bought us so many drinks, which is exactly why they did it.

Then of course there are all those ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situations.  If I smile and act polite in public, a lot of guys will take that as a sign that I’m interested.  If I scowl, then I’m just being rude and spoiled.  Honestly, one time a guy nearly 3 times my age said hi, and I nodded politely.  After he passed, I stopped for a second because of hip pain, he looked back, and he assumed that I had stopped because I liked him.  Any signal I give will be interpreted as either interest or rudeness.

Then there’s the suspicion and jealousy.  Wrongsideofthetracks jokes about his wife being “stolen” from him, but I suspect he’s only half-joking.  There’s always the assumption that I’m going to cheat.  Other people, including women, will assume that I’m full of myself and attempt to bring my alleged arrogance down a notch.  On top of that, I have to work extra hard to prove that I’m not stupid.

Then there are the 95% of guys who don’t handle rejection well.  I’ve tried every way of turning down guys, and there is just no good way to do it.  I’m opposed to lying, but I’ve resorted to the fake boyfriend a few times.  Even that didn’t work.  The guys just insist that I should leave him for them.  I can’t give out a fake phone number because the guy will give me his number then ask me to call his cell phone right there so he’ll have my number.  I’ve tried being nice; I’ve tried being mean; I’ve tried hinting; I’ve tried being straightforward; and I’ve tried just ignoring them.  Seriously, most guys just don’t handle it well.  The vast majority of guys fall into 3 categories:

1)  They’ll try to guilt me into dating them.  Some will go so far as saying they should just commit suicide, but many of them will just say “I understand; I’m worthless”.  As a human being with empathy, it’s hard for me to see people feel that way.

2)  They’ll ignore my “no” and beg me.  Either they claim to have a magical penis, or they try to tempt me with money.  If I make the mistake of giving one my phone number, I can look forward to screening my calls for a few weeks.

3)  They’ll insult me.  Of course, it doesn’t make any sense that they would ask me out in the first place if they really think I’m fat and ugly, but I still don’t want to hear that stuff.

I could go on for days about all this stuff, especially about the guys who can’t handle a simple “no”.  So I can have mediocre sex whenever I want, and a few job opportunities that I don’t want to pursue anyway.  It hardly seems worth all the stuff I have to put up with.  And I have a suspicion that it’s not that hard for average women to get sex anyway.

I have plenty of privilege.  I’m white, smart, and I grew up rich.  Being beautiful is nothing like those other privileges.  I really gain very little from it.  Unless I want to be a trophy wife, a model, or an “escort”, it really doesn’t do much for me.

Amanda asked:

Does being beautiful make people act entitled?  Or is it, as I’ve often noticed, more trouble than it’s worth in terms of unwanted attention and upkeep?

Perhaps it’s that beautiful people grow up being treated as special; aren’t they the products of their experiences?  When you grow up with everything being given to you and everything just coming your way easily, is it surprising if you develop expectations of that being the way it should be?

LiberalRob wrote:

Paris Hilton is used as the stereotype of the pampered, snooty, spoiled pretty girl; but is that really what she is like?  What do we really know about her?  Lately I find myself wondering if she’s been given a bad rap.  All I really know about her is from TV, and that’s not the same as actually knowing someone.

She’s crazy like a fox.  Miss Hilton might have all the money she’ll ever need, but she’s made a commercial success out of her celebrity.  A lot of the places she appears have paid her to be there.  She had money from the beginning, but she’s making more, every day.

wrongsideofthetracks,

You’ve called me spoiled, but you’ve never actually given me any useful suggestions.  In reality, there is no good way to deal with these situations.  So until you figure out something that works out well for everyone involved, stop judging the way I deal with it.  You really have no idea what it’s like.

As someone who grew up in a bad neighborhood, I am very skeptical of folks who use “I have to be rude” because my life depends on it style rationalizations.

Can we talk about male entitlement now?  Because not too many women would confuse dealing with muggers with dealing with catcallers or worse.  “Gendered” situations on the street ignite in specific ways.

Being a default bitch to ALL people/men because SOME men harass/harassed you is not ok!

I’m fairly sure most people on this board, as I do, would agree with this statement. I’m pretty sure most of us only get “bitchy” (charming word) after more polite solutions have failed.  To disagree with a person’s prerogative for that, however, I can’t see any rational person doing.

Being a default bitch to ALL people/men because SOME men harass/harassed you is not ok!

I’m fairly sure most people on this board, as I do, would agree with this statement.

At the same time, I can see where catgirl is coming from.  And it really is her choice, in the end.  Or it should be.

It’s just a sad situation.  I don’t have any answers.