[ohTen]

Are you kidding? I used to get picked on for being the prettiest girl in my class (to make matters worse, I was also the smartest). My classmates would bluntly insult my appearance on a daily basis. Had I not been a mild-mannered pacifist with no sense of what was actually going on, I would have put those people in their place. My self-confidence was horrible until I became an adult and realized how much power I had over the way I viewed the world.

Being attractive comes with its own set of problems not limited to the vitriolic jealousy of others. As I have gotten older, I've had to contend with lecherous old men harassing me, people who only want to know me to get in my pants, people thinking that they can make a spectacle out of me, people thinking that it's okay to treat me like a piece of meat because I'm beautiful and that must mean that I have a voracious sexual appetite and don't want to be treated like a human being, or that because I'm beautiful I must be a vapid airhead (in reality, I'm an Ivy-league student, extremely spiritual, vegan, and a die-hard feminist). Yet having to deal with all of these things has wisened me up, and after a few experiences I've developed a pretty keen sense of people's intentions. Did I mention how uncomfortable it is to have people constantly staring at you wherever you go?

Granted, in some ways I really do have the world at my fingertips. And, as I'm not one to leave my destiny up to chance, being beautiful has definitely helped in getting what I want out of life - but it only augments the primary factor, which is my own confidence and determination (both of which fluctuate on a daily basis). But I didn't ask to be born this way: being attractive has its own very large set of drawbacks. People act differently in front of attractive people much in the same way they do in front of disfigured people: after a while, it's easy to see through people's acts to who they truly are and their true intentions. The only way to survive in the world as an attractive woman is to have an extremely strong sense of who you are and huge confidence in yourself, but many never get there. I cannot tell you how many beautiful women (and men) I know who take abuse that nobody should have to encounter. That said, Attractive =/= confident. We are treated just as poorly as, if not worse, than any other human being. Honestly, my experience leads me to believe that average-looking people have a better go of it - like starting life with one less handicap.

Ultimately, being beautiful does not make me feel any better about myself than the average person. My old lack of self-confidence still haunts me. Your sense of self-worth can only come from within. If you search for validation outside of yourself, you will be searching forever, no matter how beautiful you are. I've been told that I'm beautiful more times than I can count, but it doesn't change the way I see myself in the mirror: pimples, thighs that are never small enough, paunch that will never go away. The acceptance can only come from me.