Can you be too pretty?

It was such a beautiful day yesterday that Mia, Sara and I headed out on our bikes. We told ourselves that it was to get much-needed exercise but we ended up at Sam’s, and so really it was more about splitting some fried calamari, quaffing a beer and people watching.

Our calamari had just arrived when two gorgeous, busty blondes walked by and sat down by the bar.

All heads turned, including ours.    

“Man, I’d love to get me some of that action,” one of the 20-something guys at the table near us said as his buddies nodded in agreement.

And for the next half-hour, the women — actually, their breasts, their bods, their beauty and what it would be like to see them naked and in action — dominated that frat-boy table’s conversation.

“See,” Mia said. “This is why I don’t want to be beautiful.”

“But you are beautiful, silly.”

“You know what I mean. These guys and probably every other guy in this place are lusting after those two just because of their looks. And, you know what? They’re probably entitled bitchy snobs who get everything they want just because they’re so damn pretty.”

“Whoa, Mia: you’re sounding just as judgmental as the guys next to us; why shouldn’t people appreciate beauty?” I said.

“Oh, please! Those guys aren’t appreciating their beauty,” Sara said. “They’re objectifying it. They’re being crude and reducing them to sex objects.
Who wants that?”

“I’m totally OK with being a sex object; I mean, if I have to,” I joked.

But, not really.

Do I want people to think I’m beautiful and sexy? Sure. And funny and smart and kind and creative and  giving and …  There’s so much more to me than just the physical, after all.

But to hear it from the 10s of the world, being beautiful can be a drag. Other women are jealous of you, most guys objectify you, nice guys think you’re “out of their league” and so won’t approach you, and you’re a target for all sorts of creeps, pervs and rapists. Everyone judges you for your looks, and projects all sorts of crap on you, including how intelligent you may or may not be, and how sexually accomplished you may or may not be.

So, should we feel sorry for beautiful people?

I don’t think so. Attractive people make more money and have more opportunities than the rest of us, as numerous studies have proven. Hard to feel sorry for that.

Still, I can understand their frustrations about being objectified, but I also can understand the frustrations the rest of us have, too. If you’re not all that pretty — aka, you have a “nice personality” —  you have to have a lot of other stuff on the ball, like wits, smarts, humor, etc., and then hope someone can see through the plain wrapping to discover the gift inside.

But one thing the sort-of-pretty or not-so-pretty or just plain unattractive women thankfully don’t have to deal with is all the men who have paid big bucks to be trained by pick-up artists on how to land a hottie — the holy grail of dating. Being approached by men who have their game on has to be a drag; it’s not sincere.

Of course, being courted just because you’re unattractive, like “beauty-disadvantaged women” were a few years ago by the mayor of Mount Isa, a remote Australian mining town, has to be a drag, too.