Why some people have such an unrealistic self image physically

It is the taboo.

You do not explain to someone less attractive than you that you know exactly why all the girls or guys go for you instead of your less attractive friend, who is a good person, and an upstanding citizen, but who simply cannot get laid if his or her life depended on it – at least not without putting a considerable effort into it. You could tell him or her exactly what the problem is but that would be offensive to them. It’s not like it’s a huge secret it’s just that if they cannot see it, there is no way for you to teach them that. If they are so blinded to others, that they cannot realistically compare themselves to others, there is NO WAY for them to become what they need to become in order to do what you do so easily. If you cannot see your own flaws, you cannot fix them, either. If you cannot admire another person, you cannot emulate them to become more like them (in your own way – as cheap copies also do not work). But then again, we keep telling them that the things they know matter do not matter. We undermine their accurate observation of others and reassure them that that is not the problem… So they feel stupid fixing a problem everyone keeps telling them isn’t the problem.

Instead, you explain to them something vague, tell them to just be themselves – because you believe deep within each individual is a sparkling magical being waiting to be freed… But I am starting to think that might not be true. Before something can be freed, it has to be born, nurtured, and created. You’ve done the job, they haven’t… And you don’t really want to make it too clear how much work has gone into actually BEING that awesome, not just APPEARING that good… Because that would also be a little depressing for them – you believe – so you save them being burdened by that information.

And cheap copy is always a cheap copy.

Women are even more deceived than this. NOBODY criticizes a woman. Men are more forthright with each other, and they take instruction better, and women are not shy to give feedback. Mentoring is more a norm in male circles than female circles. Even if we’d take someone under our wing, we mollycoddle rather than challenge. We protect them from the cruel realization that you’re not actually very attractive as a woman, rather than say: “You know what, this thing you’re doing, it doesn’t work. This would.”

I remember the first time I went out with a friend of mine who wasn’t… Attractive. She was wearing lace-trimmed cotton socks in hideous walking shoes that were all the rage that time – but I suspect locally. A several-tone duffel coat, and jeans that were not fitted too well. I remember taking a look at her from the top of her head to her feet and thinking You’re Wearing That as your best effort…?! This is the only time in my life I’ve ever paid much attention to what people were wearing, and thinking “I’ll never be seen with someone who wears something THAT AWFUL.” In fact, I had never noticed that she wasn’t that well-dressed until the moment I was supposed to be seen together with her. The socks were 10 years out of fashion and paired with the wrong kind of a shoe, and I have an inkling suspicion she had been saving them for a special occasion, too. We were not 10 when they were fashionable for about 6 months after that ZZ Top video came out, and we were 16 at that time we went out for the first time. I had to go completely against my own grain to express that this was not going to happen, I cannot remember how exactly I managed to utter the words required to never see the dollar-shop variation of the ugliest fashion socks ever created again but I did. 😀 I think I might have said something like “oh great, we can get dressed together! Fun!” I let her coat slide because I figured it would be too costly to get another one, even if it was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, and hope by the next season she’d do better. (She did, along with the shoes… That I hated perhaps even more so than the socks, that at least HAD a possible cute application if you had the legs for them, which, she didn’t). And That is all I’ve ever done to mentor her in any way. The rest has been excuses and things she picked up from us anyway. But I did go shopping with her a lot, to veto any more fashion crimes from occurring. 😀

I became a master of expressing myself in a way that I would never directly lie to her while giving her a compliment or encouragement at the same time as dodging the taboo: “Honey, you haven’t got a clue and since you are beyond help, I’ll just pretend like I don’t see it.” My master moment was when I had run out of excuses to explain to her why I was going at boyfriend #LostCount while she hadn’t yet landed her first and yet, I had to keep her going. I had used up all the excuses I had, so this occurred to me: “But you are the dream girlfriend of a stereotypical American guy,” (we’re Finnish) “…you do house chores, you want to have babies, you’re a nice girl, and you don’t nag.” Firstly. There’s no such thing as a stereotypical American guy, which, from the Finnish stand point is NOT a movie star but a Middle-American dim-witted stuck-up bible basher who only wants a nice girl to raise his children in the covenant of marriage, so it was safe to say THAT TYPE would approve of her.  I figured that by the time she actually meets the first American man, two things must have happened: a) She’s already safely married to a Finn. or B) She still speaks too little English to actually have a conversation with an American man, so I would never have to explain to her what I actually meant.

She married a great Finnish guy before she lost all her strength to go on. 🙂

It is not true that “popular people” are mean to those who they don’t like or who they don’t consider their equal. Mean girls are the ones who are trying to irritate their superior into either taking the lead in their group (make us the same as you) or give up the competition over popularity. The victim of mean girl -bullies are the one who they see as a threat or an asset – one or the other – but who, mostly, would never say a mean word to or about anyone else, particularly such who they consider a friend. Boys do exactly the same thing, but their bullying is more physical, and they also target weaklings in the hopes of making them stand up for themselves. The way average people think though is that if they are accepted into a group without this initiation process, THEY ARE the same as the other members of the group, and if they are not being trained with a heavy hand, it  means they must be full-fledged members of the social group in which they belong in, even though this is rarely the case at all.

What is more, those on the top of the ladder do not feel the need to push people down off that ladder. I do now, in a sense, and my explanation is this: I have become acutely aware of the way people “beneath me” think. I have always thought they know their place in the pecking order, and that they have a level of respect to the differences in skills, knowledge, talent, and other virtues, but they simply don’t. They BELIEVE they are equal because they mistake equality in human rights for equality in traits, skills, and knowledge etc. They truly believe such things as “if we have had the same education, we should be paid the same”, because they do not see the difference between someone who barely passed to someone who passed with full marks, or at least someone who passed with full marks to someone who had an average score, let alone the difference between a naturally talented person who graduated with an slightly above average score, but who has such natural assets that school would cause damage rather than improve on that… That added to values that only the top of the rung seems to understand…

Now… I do not want to push anyone DOWN on the ladder, by any means. I hope everyone will make their way in the world, but what I DO want to see happen is that those on the top of the rung stop feeling guilty about loving others for their achievements and their assets rather than stop appreciating others while trying to show love to those who… “need it more” or “deserve it more” (deserve being “because nobody else does”), or hire the least talented person simply because they think it’s the charitable thing to do.

In some sense, that will result into a drop in social status for those who are now climbing the social ladder based on favors, guilt-trips, insistence, feminist propaganda and the like (yes, I’m an anti-feminist, or the type that believes gender should not be an issue, which means everyone has to prove their worth equally, male or female, and that accusing the audience of their lack of engagement is not the fault of the audience but the performer). I have become too aware of the amount of emotional charity the top rung gives out, rendering the lower rung people incapable of seeing themselves in a realistic light, lulling them into a false sense of achievement and giving them a false ego to boot. Evolution is impossible for someone who thinks everything is fine, or even better than fine.

I also realized it was not respectful of us to treat them as if they cannot learn or to evolve. Or to think that our opinion of them should matter to them more than the opinion of their own kind. We are constantly making ourselves ‘the thing to have’ or ‘the thing to chase’ by dangling a carrot in front of their noses giving the impression we’re theirs to have when in reality we will never be truly theirs, even if married to them.

I realized that dishonesty is not a virtue, it is never a virtue, even if it is “a white lie”. It is the easy way out for sure, but not a virtue. It is nicer to resort to a lie when you know someone is going to get hurt, but I simply realized that it wasn’t helpful, respectful, or a good strategy in the long run.

I know it’ll get worse before it gets better, but if I’ll have my way… Things WILL improve.

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