I hate how I look and it’s affecting my life
April 8, 2022 11:44 PM Subscribe
I am a woman in my early 30s. I have never liked how I look. I’m very insecure about and unhappy with my appearance and spend a lot of time obsessing over it. I loathe photos of myself. Is this BDD or something else? How do I get over it?
As I get older I start to worry that I won’t get over this and won’t be able to psychologically deal with aging. But I never felt good about myself. Sometimes I feel sad that I have barely any photos of myself from my 20s because I always avoided cameras. I struggle a lot with seeing pictures of myself, and I feel it’s really damaging my life. I want to get married someday but I don’t know how I’m going to deal with the pictures. It’s that bad. My boyfriend sometimes tries to post pictures of me on social media and I almost never let him because I hate them all. It brings a lot of stress into our relationship, because I feel he is much more attractive than me and I’m always looking for reassurance that he is still interested.
I don’t think there is anything to really be fixed with my appearance. There’s no one thing I’m fixated on. I work out and I am fit and toned, but I am unhappy with my body shape and bone structure. I take good care of my hair and skin, but I don’t like my facial features. Sometimes I think about getting cosmetic work done but I don’t think I am a good candidate because I am unhappy with many different things, some of which simply cannot be changed. And I just don’t think I am psychologically stable enough to deal if something went wrong.
My dream is not to think I am a hot babe but to just stop caring about my appearance so much.
I’ve had really bad luck with therapy so would prefer self-help resources beyond anything else.
As I get older I start to worry that I won’t get over this and won’t be able to psychologically deal with aging. But I never felt good about myself. Sometimes I feel sad that I have barely any photos of myself from my 20s because I always avoided cameras. I struggle a lot with seeing pictures of myself, and I feel it’s really damaging my life. I want to get married someday but I don’t know how I’m going to deal with the pictures. It’s that bad. My boyfriend sometimes tries to post pictures of me on social media and I almost never let him because I hate them all. It brings a lot of stress into our relationship, because I feel he is much more attractive than me and I’m always looking for reassurance that he is still interested.
I don’t think there is anything to really be fixed with my appearance. There’s no one thing I’m fixated on. I work out and I am fit and toned, but I am unhappy with my body shape and bone structure. I take good care of my hair and skin, but I don’t like my facial features. Sometimes I think about getting cosmetic work done but I don’t think I am a good candidate because I am unhappy with many different things, some of which simply cannot be changed. And I just don’t think I am psychologically stable enough to deal if something went wrong.
My dream is not to think I am a hot babe but to just stop caring about my appearance so much.
I’ve had really bad luck with therapy so would prefer self-help resources beyond anything else.
I'm not an expert, but my impression of BDD is that it is focused on one or two specific features. For me, the features I hate are always changing as I age.
I just wanted to say I relate a lot to this as a woman a few years older, especially the photo thing. I feel I look worse in photos (hideous even) than in the mirror, which I feel I look "average" in.
I can tell you all the things that have helped me personally, as someone preoccupied with the many physical flaws I have.
First, surrounding myself with people (friends and romantic partners) who validate or compliment my looks a lot - which I suspect isn't the "best" solution, but I know it makes me feel better (even pretty!) in the moment.
I also spend a great deal of time and money on my hair, skin, and body which also maybe isn't "good" but makes me feel more in control, like I'm doing the best I can with what I have.
I do think it's interesting to reflect how you came to feel this way - in my case, it was growing up with exceptionally beautiful friends (they were pro models & actresses) and comparing myself and the amount of attention we got constantly. And for me, surrounding myself with less gorgeous people as an adult feels way better even if it's petty and silly. Moving to a city full of less hot people (so not Miami, LA, or NYC!) also helped.
Nothing else has helped me, including years of therapy, so I understand that too!
posted by CancerSucks at 1:41 AM on April 9, 2022
I just wanted to say I relate a lot to this as a woman a few years older, especially the photo thing. I feel I look worse in photos (hideous even) than in the mirror, which I feel I look "average" in.
I can tell you all the things that have helped me personally, as someone preoccupied with the many physical flaws I have.
First, surrounding myself with people (friends and romantic partners) who validate or compliment my looks a lot - which I suspect isn't the "best" solution, but I know it makes me feel better (even pretty!) in the moment.
I also spend a great deal of time and money on my hair, skin, and body which also maybe isn't "good" but makes me feel more in control, like I'm doing the best I can with what I have.
I do think it's interesting to reflect how you came to feel this way - in my case, it was growing up with exceptionally beautiful friends (they were pro models & actresses) and comparing myself and the amount of attention we got constantly. And for me, surrounding myself with less gorgeous people as an adult feels way better even if it's petty and silly. Moving to a city full of less hot people (so not Miami, LA, or NYC!) also helped.
Nothing else has helped me, including years of therapy, so I understand that too!
posted by CancerSucks at 1:41 AM on April 9, 2022
This sounds really familiar and really hard. My heart goes out to you. I spent many years, starting around age seven or eight, hating how I look. I just wrote a sentence about how those feelings tied into my severe depression, but it was such a hard, self-punishing thing even to remember that I deleted it. I’m in my early forties now, and although I don’t feel pretty very often, I love the way I look, have learned to rejoice in the confidence that my partner (who is gorgeous and whose gorgeousness is remarked upon by all and sundry) *also* loves the way I look. If any of the following would be helpful for you, they were helpful for me.
I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror. Clothed, naked, talking on the phone, singing, crying racking sobs, looking at all the different colors in the irises of my eyes, talking to myself about things and people I love, eventually telling myself I am here for me, holding myself, stroking my hair, telling myself I love me and will never leave me, telling myself what I like about my face, my body, my personality, my efforts to admit mistakes and try to do better, my relationships.
I look at people in the street and paid attention to when I was judging their looks as good or bad, and began trying to just observe and appreciate how everyone has their own physical presence, what expressions they make, what they choose to wear, how they project their own personalities and values in visual ways.
I think about all the non-physical qualities that drew me to people I have been attracted to or cared for in the past, and then work to trust that the people who love me are just as capable of loving me for my non-physical qualities, and to rejoice in the part of their care for me which has nothing to do with my looks.
I learned to ask my partner to “tell me that I’m pretty” - this was one of the scariest things I have ever done. But I learned from the best parts of internet culture that it is perfectly ok to want your partner to like the way you look, and to ask for it honestly and joyfully. (I’ve always dated people who didn’t give compliments as a matter of course, and so I wouldn’t hear it if I didn’t ask for it.) It was awkward the first few times, but now it doesn’t feel any less wonderful to hear my partner say it when I ask than if he had decided to say it all on his own (which he does more often now, with beautiful tenderness, because now he knows that this matters to me, and he wants me to feel beautiful, and to know that he finds me beautiful). When he compliments me, I work to take him seriously, and release assumptions that he’s just saying things to create a useful fiction of liking my looks.
A conventionally-attractive acquaintance who has done some modeling taught me a beautiful lesson: she hates getting compliments on any part of her looks that aren’t a choice. Her hair grows out of her head; her eyes are the eye color provided by her genes. She prefers to give and receive compliments based on *choices*: clothes and hair and makeup, style, manner of expression, all the things about people’s looks that are their own doing. I started practicing this myself, giving out compliments for other people’s choices, and it feels AMAZING. It also reminds me to enjoy my own style - I don’t wear makeup or fancy clothes, but I wear things that make me feel like ME, and they make me smile and feel GOOD, and that makes me more likely to express myself more fully and unselfconsciously, which means folks can be charmed by all my great non-physical qualities.
In what circumstances do you feel most yourself? Not prettiest or most-positive, but the most YOU? What if you started paying attention to your body during those activities, focusing on cultivating neutral appreciation for your body in those moments? Eventually, you could take photos of your body while doing this activity, or practice it in front of a mirror, and try to observe that body you appreciate doing the thing that makes you feel so much yourself. You never need anyone else to see these unless you want them to.
What about asking your partner to stroke your hair, your face, your shoulders, your arms, while you lie with your eyes closed, not needing to take compliments or endure their gaze, but just letting them show you with touch that yours is the body they love? What about doing this yourself - you could put on a song you love and connect bodily with tenderness to your face, your features, to feel them as parts of you, and parts that are deserving of gentleness and care?
I’ve written a lot. This is a tough feeling to sit with, and what’s helped me might not be helpful for you. The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor is a beautiful book. I do hope you try another counselor or therapist at some point, because this is a fear that obtains for so many people, and I feel hopeful you eventually would come across someone whose professional expertise would really connect with you, and help you either come to neutrality or even positivity about your body.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 1:45 AM on April 9, 2022 [35 favorites]
I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror. Clothed, naked, talking on the phone, singing, crying racking sobs, looking at all the different colors in the irises of my eyes, talking to myself about things and people I love, eventually telling myself I am here for me, holding myself, stroking my hair, telling myself I love me and will never leave me, telling myself what I like about my face, my body, my personality, my efforts to admit mistakes and try to do better, my relationships.
I look at people in the street and paid attention to when I was judging their looks as good or bad, and began trying to just observe and appreciate how everyone has their own physical presence, what expressions they make, what they choose to wear, how they project their own personalities and values in visual ways.
I think about all the non-physical qualities that drew me to people I have been attracted to or cared for in the past, and then work to trust that the people who love me are just as capable of loving me for my non-physical qualities, and to rejoice in the part of their care for me which has nothing to do with my looks.
I learned to ask my partner to “tell me that I’m pretty” - this was one of the scariest things I have ever done. But I learned from the best parts of internet culture that it is perfectly ok to want your partner to like the way you look, and to ask for it honestly and joyfully. (I’ve always dated people who didn’t give compliments as a matter of course, and so I wouldn’t hear it if I didn’t ask for it.) It was awkward the first few times, but now it doesn’t feel any less wonderful to hear my partner say it when I ask than if he had decided to say it all on his own (which he does more often now, with beautiful tenderness, because now he knows that this matters to me, and he wants me to feel beautiful, and to know that he finds me beautiful). When he compliments me, I work to take him seriously, and release assumptions that he’s just saying things to create a useful fiction of liking my looks.
A conventionally-attractive acquaintance who has done some modeling taught me a beautiful lesson: she hates getting compliments on any part of her looks that aren’t a choice. Her hair grows out of her head; her eyes are the eye color provided by her genes. She prefers to give and receive compliments based on *choices*: clothes and hair and makeup, style, manner of expression, all the things about people’s looks that are their own doing. I started practicing this myself, giving out compliments for other people’s choices, and it feels AMAZING. It also reminds me to enjoy my own style - I don’t wear makeup or fancy clothes, but I wear things that make me feel like ME, and they make me smile and feel GOOD, and that makes me more likely to express myself more fully and unselfconsciously, which means folks can be charmed by all my great non-physical qualities.
In what circumstances do you feel most yourself? Not prettiest or most-positive, but the most YOU? What if you started paying attention to your body during those activities, focusing on cultivating neutral appreciation for your body in those moments? Eventually, you could take photos of your body while doing this activity, or practice it in front of a mirror, and try to observe that body you appreciate doing the thing that makes you feel so much yourself. You never need anyone else to see these unless you want them to.
What about asking your partner to stroke your hair, your face, your shoulders, your arms, while you lie with your eyes closed, not needing to take compliments or endure their gaze, but just letting them show you with touch that yours is the body they love? What about doing this yourself - you could put on a song you love and connect bodily with tenderness to your face, your features, to feel them as parts of you, and parts that are deserving of gentleness and care?
I’ve written a lot. This is a tough feeling to sit with, and what’s helped me might not be helpful for you. The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor is a beautiful book. I do hope you try another counselor or therapist at some point, because this is a fear that obtains for so many people, and I feel hopeful you eventually would come across someone whose professional expertise would really connect with you, and help you either come to neutrality or even positivity about your body.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 1:45 AM on April 9, 2022 [35 favorites]
Unlike the first poster above I believe you when you say the root cause is your feelings about your appearance and photos. I think the fact that you recognise this as a problem and want to address means you have taken the most difficult step already and now you just need strategies to help you achieve your goal.
It has also been my experience, both personally and observed in friends, that as one gets older these concerns about appearance fade and self acceptance grows. Your desire to address this issue as you are in your early thirties reads to me as part of this natural process of growing into one's self with age.
I have struggled with similar issues in the past, although not to the extreme that you describe. I'm now older and objectively less attractive than I was when these issues were at a height for me but the DGAF attitude of my forties plus some focussed self work mean that now I'm pretty relaxed about photos. I still get a little spike of anxiety sometimes, but I can quickly dismiss it.
Some things that have helped me are below.
Agree on cutting out the negative self talk. In addition can you add positive self talk about your body? For example, when you start to have negative ideas about yourself replace the thought by thinking about how your legs are strong and you can walk, your hands help you to make meals for your loved ones, your eyes and mouth help you to communicate etc...
In respect to the above I found yoga helpful. Specifically Yoga with Adriene as she has a gentle but consistent focus on body positivity and loving yourself.
Regarding photos specifically, four things have helped me:
Firstly when I look at old photos, that I used to hate I realise that I don't look so bad. So now when my photo is taken I think, in five years time I'll be happy when I look at this photo AND I give myself permission to not look at the photo for five years!
Secondly, I regret not having photos of me with people I love. So now I make a particular effort to take photos at special moments with loved ones. And I see it as collecting memories of my relationships rather than something appearance based.
Thirdly, if the people I love tell me it's a nice photo then I believe them. I think of the photo as something that brings them joy and reframe it away from something related to my appearance. I don't want to deprive them of the joy of collecting memories of me because of my hangups.
Fourthly, I got a trusted friend to help me figure out some poses / facial expressions that show me at my best in photos. Some photos are unflattering and I was lucky enough to have a friend who is honest enough to say this and kind enough to give me advice on how best to pose.
Good luck with this. I believe you are on the right track and I believe you can address this for yourself.
posted by roolya_boolya at 1:50 AM on April 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
It has also been my experience, both personally and observed in friends, that as one gets older these concerns about appearance fade and self acceptance grows. Your desire to address this issue as you are in your early thirties reads to me as part of this natural process of growing into one's self with age.
I have struggled with similar issues in the past, although not to the extreme that you describe. I'm now older and objectively less attractive than I was when these issues were at a height for me but the DGAF attitude of my forties plus some focussed self work mean that now I'm pretty relaxed about photos. I still get a little spike of anxiety sometimes, but I can quickly dismiss it.
Some things that have helped me are below.
Agree on cutting out the negative self talk. In addition can you add positive self talk about your body? For example, when you start to have negative ideas about yourself replace the thought by thinking about how your legs are strong and you can walk, your hands help you to make meals for your loved ones, your eyes and mouth help you to communicate etc...
In respect to the above I found yoga helpful. Specifically Yoga with Adriene as she has a gentle but consistent focus on body positivity and loving yourself.
Regarding photos specifically, four things have helped me:
Firstly when I look at old photos, that I used to hate I realise that I don't look so bad. So now when my photo is taken I think, in five years time I'll be happy when I look at this photo AND I give myself permission to not look at the photo for five years!
Secondly, I regret not having photos of me with people I love. So now I make a particular effort to take photos at special moments with loved ones. And I see it as collecting memories of my relationships rather than something appearance based.
Thirdly, if the people I love tell me it's a nice photo then I believe them. I think of the photo as something that brings them joy and reframe it away from something related to my appearance. I don't want to deprive them of the joy of collecting memories of me because of my hangups.
Fourthly, I got a trusted friend to help me figure out some poses / facial expressions that show me at my best in photos. Some photos are unflattering and I was lucky enough to have a friend who is honest enough to say this and kind enough to give me advice on how best to pose.
Good luck with this. I believe you are on the right track and I believe you can address this for yourself.
posted by roolya_boolya at 1:50 AM on April 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
Everyone has had positive and negative feedback about how they look, studies suggest the people who feel better about their looks aren't any more attractive than those who don't (however it's judged.. being 'symmetrical' or whatever). In a way that's by the by, because it's got to be an internal job, but I think it's interesting..
I wonder if you feel worse about your looks when your mental health generally is not in good shape? Put what you can in place to nurture that.
You need the Body Image workbook - a real gem... loads in there.
Thinking about/looking into different ideas of beauty across generations and cultures can be a good thing. There is so much more beauty than the Western multi national driven porny, face booky, pouty, standard (by no means all) male gaze would have us believe. Not assuming you aspire to that, but that pressure is powerful social control.
I started work at a place once and honestly worried about how I could even TELL PEOPLE APART because all the women had made themselves look the same. Give me character, uniqueness and personal style (including I'I don't give a **** about it') any day.
posted by tanktop at 3:51 AM on April 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
I wonder if you feel worse about your looks when your mental health generally is not in good shape? Put what you can in place to nurture that.
You need the Body Image workbook - a real gem... loads in there.
Thinking about/looking into different ideas of beauty across generations and cultures can be a good thing. There is so much more beauty than the Western multi national driven porny, face booky, pouty, standard (by no means all) male gaze would have us believe. Not assuming you aspire to that, but that pressure is powerful social control.
I started work at a place once and honestly worried about how I could even TELL PEOPLE APART because all the women had made themselves look the same. Give me character, uniqueness and personal style (including I'I don't give a **** about it') any day.
posted by tanktop at 3:51 AM on April 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm sorry, this sounds so tough. A FOAF had BDD very severely and it was overwhelming and awful for her. I don't want to get into armchair online diagnosis, but it might be worth you looking into it as a possible explanation, if that would help unlock the correct help? It's described here as "a disabling preoccupation with perceived defects or flaws in appearance" which kind of sounds like what you're describing. My comments below are based on that, not from a place of "Oh, yeah, that's clearly what you've got", but as a possible avenue for you to explore more.
BDD is a mental health condition, and so it's something that really deserves medical/mental health support. As this page says, it's a serious condition and shouldn't be ignored. Sorry to hear you've had bad experiences with therapy before - I wonder if you can find someone who has specific BDD expertise and will 'get' what you're facing and how it can be dealt with? I was just reading this twitter thread earlier today about how neurodivergent people need neurodivergent therapists, otherwise they just end up having to educate their therapist in sessions rather than receiving genuinely understanding support. Similarly, for something as specific as BDD, you might benefit from finding someone who is at least trained in the way BDD presents itself, rather than a general therapist who might just use generic techniques that don't work on BDD and will wind up with you feeling frustrated and misunderstood?
Perhaps talking to your GP would be a starting point? Probably depends where you are and how good your health system is at directing people to very specialist help.
The BDD Foundation is UK-based, but there are a lot of resources on their website that you might find useful - check out this page - which does include the gladdening news that "BDD is a treatable condition. With the right help recovery is very possible." That whole Foundation website might be a good place for you to start dipping your toe in the water to see if it feels like a helpful label that would give you a path to access the right help.
You don't say where you are, but this page has links to online BDD support groups in the UK and USA (scroll to the bottom for the latter), where you could talk with/listen to people with BDD. It might give you the chance to see if it feels like it's a descriptor that fits your experience enough to be useful, without having to go to professionals. I guess you'd either find you feel less alone with it, and get some idea of what approaches have worked for others, or you'd wind up thinking "No, this isn't me" and deciding BDD's not quite what you're facing. Best of luck.
posted by penguin pie at 4:43 AM on April 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
BDD is a mental health condition, and so it's something that really deserves medical/mental health support. As this page says, it's a serious condition and shouldn't be ignored. Sorry to hear you've had bad experiences with therapy before - I wonder if you can find someone who has specific BDD expertise and will 'get' what you're facing and how it can be dealt with? I was just reading this twitter thread earlier today about how neurodivergent people need neurodivergent therapists, otherwise they just end up having to educate their therapist in sessions rather than receiving genuinely understanding support. Similarly, for something as specific as BDD, you might benefit from finding someone who is at least trained in the way BDD presents itself, rather than a general therapist who might just use generic techniques that don't work on BDD and will wind up with you feeling frustrated and misunderstood?
Perhaps talking to your GP would be a starting point? Probably depends where you are and how good your health system is at directing people to very specialist help.
The BDD Foundation is UK-based, but there are a lot of resources on their website that you might find useful - check out this page - which does include the gladdening news that "BDD is a treatable condition. With the right help recovery is very possible." That whole Foundation website might be a good place for you to start dipping your toe in the water to see if it feels like a helpful label that would give you a path to access the right help.
You don't say where you are, but this page has links to online BDD support groups in the UK and USA (scroll to the bottom for the latter), where you could talk with/listen to people with BDD. It might give you the chance to see if it feels like it's a descriptor that fits your experience enough to be useful, without having to go to professionals. I guess you'd either find you feel less alone with it, and get some idea of what approaches have worked for others, or you'd wind up thinking "No, this isn't me" and deciding BDD's not quite what you're facing. Best of luck.
posted by penguin pie at 4:43 AM on April 9, 2022 [2 favorites]
The book Mirror Mirror Off the Wall may be useful to you. A woman realizes that her concern about her appearance is making her life worse, and tries a bunch of things (including avoiding mirrors for a year) to get past that.
posted by metasarah at 5:18 AM on April 9, 2022
posted by metasarah at 5:18 AM on April 9, 2022
I started hating my looks pretty early in life, thanks to being a pudgy, pale, stringy-haired kid and struggling with acne during my teens and weight during most of my adult life. But I have achieved a measure of peace about my looks over the years, and here are some things that have helped.
The concept of working towards feeling neutral about my physical features that I do not love, rather than striving to feel positive them, has been helpful. Sometimes flipping body part hate into body part love is a big ask, but achieving a more neutral feeling may be possible. For example, my body part I think is unattractive is my stomach. When I see myself naked in the mirror my initial reaction is often “eww” but over time, I’ve learned to accept it. Yep, it’s a big stomach. Wish it were smaller, but it’s not. I wish I had a flat stomach and a waist and that my face wasn’t so pudgy. But if I can stop focusing on those things and look at my other features, I often see things I do like. My boobs look pretty good, and my hair is really pretty today, and I’m gonna put on a cute outfit and some makeup to bring out my eyes and some fun jewelry; and focus my attention on what I like about myself and the things I can fix, and then go do some life stuff and quit thinking about my looks altogether for a while.
I find it helpful to remind myself that physical beauty is not the be-all end-all of life. Beautiful people have problems just like anyone else. They sometimes struggle in spite of their beauty, and sometimes because of it. They often attract and are attracted to people who treat them like objects. Other people may be envious of their looks and act shitty about it. And while pretty privilege is real, it isn’t all-protective. Beautiful people get cheated on, dumped, fired, etc. just like everyone else. They can be insecure about their flaws, and may find the physical changes associated with aging to be particularly traumatic. Just look at all the actors and actresses who wind up unrecognizable as they age from having so many cosmetic procedures done. Years ago I was close friends with a very beautiful woman, and seeing some of her struggles convinced me that physical perfection is truly a double-edged sword.
Are there people in your life or famous people you admire who you find attractive in spite of their less-than-perfect features? Maybe spend some time thinking about them or looking at pictures/video of them and appreciating how it is the sum total of everything they are that makes them appealing, rather than physical appearance alone. Body language, attitude, kindness, intelligence, passion, humor, style, a way with words, a beautiful voice, flirty eyes… the list of things that make a person attractive is really endless. See if you can pinpoint what attractive qualities you have, above and beyond the simple shape and arrangement of your body/facial features.
If you hate the way you look in photos, try taking selfies regularly. I hate having my picture taken. I’m not naturally very photogenic, and I very rarely look good in a photo snapped by someone else. But I started taking selfies for various reasons (to get decent profile pics for social media, to document a cute outfit or hair or makeup look) and I discovered that I can get a pretty good picture of myself. I may have to take 10-15-20 shots to do it, using different camera angles, facial expressions, moving into better light or against a different background, etc. There will be some bad ones or mediocre ones but always, there are at least a few in which I feel I look cute. If this seems like cheating or faking it, let me assure you that even the beautiful people you see on social media do the exact same thing. We’ve all got better and worse angles.
Something that helped me years and years ago is the book “Having it All” by Helen Gurley Brown (the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine.) It’s pretty dated, and there may be some problematic stuff I’m not remembering, but her basic message is: make the most of everything you’ve got. She wasn’t a beauty but she made the most of her looks with fashion and cosmetics, and used her brain and ambition and daring attitude (for the time) about sex and love and dating to create a really great and satisfying life for herself. It was inspiring to me as a young ugly duckling, to know that I could find happiness in life even though I wasn’t beautiful. That was not the message I picked up as a child (my family was very focused on looks and weight, and some of my childhood friends were unusually pretty and I got compared unfavorably) so it was very helpful to me to see that I wasn’t just stuck being a sad-sack for life because I hadn’t won the beauty lottery.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 6:50 AM on April 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
The concept of working towards feeling neutral about my physical features that I do not love, rather than striving to feel positive them, has been helpful. Sometimes flipping body part hate into body part love is a big ask, but achieving a more neutral feeling may be possible. For example, my body part I think is unattractive is my stomach. When I see myself naked in the mirror my initial reaction is often “eww” but over time, I’ve learned to accept it. Yep, it’s a big stomach. Wish it were smaller, but it’s not. I wish I had a flat stomach and a waist and that my face wasn’t so pudgy. But if I can stop focusing on those things and look at my other features, I often see things I do like. My boobs look pretty good, and my hair is really pretty today, and I’m gonna put on a cute outfit and some makeup to bring out my eyes and some fun jewelry; and focus my attention on what I like about myself and the things I can fix, and then go do some life stuff and quit thinking about my looks altogether for a while.
I find it helpful to remind myself that physical beauty is not the be-all end-all of life. Beautiful people have problems just like anyone else. They sometimes struggle in spite of their beauty, and sometimes because of it. They often attract and are attracted to people who treat them like objects. Other people may be envious of their looks and act shitty about it. And while pretty privilege is real, it isn’t all-protective. Beautiful people get cheated on, dumped, fired, etc. just like everyone else. They can be insecure about their flaws, and may find the physical changes associated with aging to be particularly traumatic. Just look at all the actors and actresses who wind up unrecognizable as they age from having so many cosmetic procedures done. Years ago I was close friends with a very beautiful woman, and seeing some of her struggles convinced me that physical perfection is truly a double-edged sword.
Are there people in your life or famous people you admire who you find attractive in spite of their less-than-perfect features? Maybe spend some time thinking about them or looking at pictures/video of them and appreciating how it is the sum total of everything they are that makes them appealing, rather than physical appearance alone. Body language, attitude, kindness, intelligence, passion, humor, style, a way with words, a beautiful voice, flirty eyes… the list of things that make a person attractive is really endless. See if you can pinpoint what attractive qualities you have, above and beyond the simple shape and arrangement of your body/facial features.
If you hate the way you look in photos, try taking selfies regularly. I hate having my picture taken. I’m not naturally very photogenic, and I very rarely look good in a photo snapped by someone else. But I started taking selfies for various reasons (to get decent profile pics for social media, to document a cute outfit or hair or makeup look) and I discovered that I can get a pretty good picture of myself. I may have to take 10-15-20 shots to do it, using different camera angles, facial expressions, moving into better light or against a different background, etc. There will be some bad ones or mediocre ones but always, there are at least a few in which I feel I look cute. If this seems like cheating or faking it, let me assure you that even the beautiful people you see on social media do the exact same thing. We’ve all got better and worse angles.
Something that helped me years and years ago is the book “Having it All” by Helen Gurley Brown (the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine.) It’s pretty dated, and there may be some problematic stuff I’m not remembering, but her basic message is: make the most of everything you’ve got. She wasn’t a beauty but she made the most of her looks with fashion and cosmetics, and used her brain and ambition and daring attitude (for the time) about sex and love and dating to create a really great and satisfying life for herself. It was inspiring to me as a young ugly duckling, to know that I could find happiness in life even though I wasn’t beautiful. That was not the message I picked up as a child (my family was very focused on looks and weight, and some of my childhood friends were unusually pretty and I got compared unfavorably) so it was very helpful to me to see that I wasn’t just stuck being a sad-sack for life because I hadn’t won the beauty lottery.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 6:50 AM on April 9, 2022 [4 favorites]
I am so unqualified to weigh in here and I hope I don't sound trite but I wanted to ask if you are dressing in outfits that reflect who you really are.
Last Christmas I got an edgy haircut/colour and wore a punk/newwave (lite) outfit that my 1986 self would have loved. I felt more like myself than I have in literally decades.
I realized that I had suppressed -- for most of my life -- the part of me that expresses myself through fashion. Relationships with conservative men and fear of looking like a washed-up wannabe were the biggest factors for me.
I haven't completely changed my wardrobe yet but I do have a bit more courage now. I have made a pinterest board with outfits I like etc.. Now when I look in the mirror I can recognize myself a bit more.
Maybe a practice like that could be a small tool in your arsenal.
Beaming good vibes to you.
posted by i_mean_come_on_now at 7:52 AM on April 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
Last Christmas I got an edgy haircut/colour and wore a punk/newwave (lite) outfit that my 1986 self would have loved. I felt more like myself than I have in literally decades.
I realized that I had suppressed -- for most of my life -- the part of me that expresses myself through fashion. Relationships with conservative men and fear of looking like a washed-up wannabe were the biggest factors for me.
I haven't completely changed my wardrobe yet but I do have a bit more courage now. I have made a pinterest board with outfits I like etc.. Now when I look in the mirror I can recognize myself a bit more.
Maybe a practice like that could be a small tool in your arsenal.
Beaming good vibes to you.
posted by i_mean_come_on_now at 7:52 AM on April 9, 2022 [7 favorites]
Women get external validation for their looks for three different things. One is how average they look, one is how nubile they appear and one is how well they do the status and conventional appearance competition game. To be considered truly beautiful you have to pull off a high score in all three of those things.
Looking average is one of the important things that make us complacent out our appearance. I remember reading about a study once where they tested how long babies looked at people and found that they would look the longest at strangers who looked like their family. If all the adults in the family had hooked noses they wouldn't stare at a stranger with a button nose unless there were also kids in the family with unformed snub shaped button noses. They wanted to interact with people who had a nose that was the average of their family nose.
So this wiring goes deep. If you don't look like the people you see, you are going to feel like you look weird. My suggestion is that as much as you can you immerse yourself in people who look like you. The more visual media we consume the more likely we are to be looking at some cultural default, comparing ourselves to it and feeling bad about our looks. Is there any way you can change your media to one that showcases people that look like you? If you come from a genetic strain with round and soft chins and you loathe your chin, look for Flemish Madonnas that depict women like you as the peak of beauty and look for an exercise video made by someone Dutch with that lovely soft jawline. If you come from a genetic strain that has an enormous flat nose, try to figure out what genetic lineage that came from, or what other genetic lines also have enormous flat noses and try to spend some time looking at media produced by people from that part of the world. At the same time, reduce the time you spend looking at our culture's cloned females - something potentially as simple as not walking through the mall with the office tower and all the perfectly groomed high fashion aspirants when you go for your mid-morning coffee, and work on developing an interest in British films or films made by independent directors, anything but the Hollywood look.
Then there is the nubility factor. If you are essentially suffering from age dysphoria - if you feel inadequate because you do not have the complexion of a child not yet hitting puberty, the body of a woman who has an hour glass figure with a tiny waist and a big butt and boobs, and the coltish long legs of an adolescent, you can explore why you want to look like an ingenue and what it means to you. Sometimes the feeling comes from the sense that you have missed your chance and you are no longer starting fresh and it is all downhill from here. It's a funny thing - I don't think anyone wants to be back to the age where they attract peak predator and put up with the loathsome behaviour which drives middle school girls to travel only in packs, but they do want that spark of interest and appreciation that it used to trigger in sentimental older people, and the people we would be interested in as partners.
If no longer looking nubile is your thing and you want to be young and pre-insecurity when the world was full of promise; if you look at your photos and dislike them because you look old, or tired, or cranky, of anxious, you've got deeper work to do, based on the disappointment of how your life didn't hand you that promise, and how it is steadily ticking away, providing fewer and fewer opportunities. Your path is going to require you to work on reframing things as how life is giving you a chance to figure out what goals you want to and need to focus on, rather than how it isn't full of unlimited opportunities. It may require you to work on figuring out your desire for external validation. But again one thing you need to do is look for people who are like you and look like you and what they are doing that causes you to either want to be like them or to not be like them. Use those people for a guide, not Hollywood media or TikTok influencers.
And then there is presentation. If you look scruffy people treat you badly. If your clothes are clearly cheap and you are not decked out in conspicuous consumption of time and money, make up, hair and eyebrows, finger nails, gym toning, the right diet... They will treat you better because they perceive you to be winning at this competition. Presentation is how you show status and that you are winning the competition against other women, most of whom are not even playing that game because they would rather use their time and energy to do things they find fulfilling rather than spending twenty minutes every morning fixing their face with two hundred dollars worth of cosmetics to make them look like they are made out of plastic and are not using credit cards to finance a wardrobe that is almost never designed to wear while doing functional things. A lot of people don't respect that look and those values, including some people who do it themselves, but when it comes time to walk through a crowd or negotiate salary the people who look like that get more personal space and more money. It's the popular kids from middle school all over again.
So if you are unhappy with your presentation you need to look at your feelings about your status in the female appearance competition. It could be that you are not getting the status respect you want and are blaming that on your presentation, or it could be that you are mistaking your status presentation for your appearance. If you look in the mirror after primping and say, "I look really good today!" you are well on the way to self loathing, because no, you don't look good today - you can't even see what you actually look like under that make up. What you are seeing is just the skill at the presentation. You don't look good today, but your make up looks really good.
This is a terrible trap to fall into. If you only feel like you look good when your make up, hair and clothes look good, you are creating a dichotomy where the you without the status presentation is unacceptable. It's a highly effective way of encouraging self loathing, body image issues, eating disorders and worse. The thing to do is to separate the presentation from your body underneath. When you look in the mirror after primping say, "My make up looks really good today," and focus on your skill at putting on make up. "I did a really good job with my make up today." Compliment your skill at grooming, compliment the products you use, "That is a really pretty iridescent peacock blue," but work hard on separating presentation from person.
I think that sorting out what you want to look like, and why you don't look like that, and why you want to look like that, will go a good distance towards helping you figure out why you don't like the way you look. I think considering this by thinking about those three ways women get validation will help you figure out why you feel revulsion for the most precious thing you own.
I think learning to fall in love with your different body parts because they are functional is going to help. Maybe your teeth are so small that when you grin you don't flash those pearlies, but they are solid, bite into a steak effectively and give you no pain. Would you rather have false teeth that looked really great with jaw pain and no ability to eat steak? What about your knees? Knobby, hairy... but that is not their function. Their function is to get you walking and climbing stairs and they do that admirably. Would you prefer beautiful knees, a steady diet of arthritis pills and dreading stairs?
Compare yourself to those with a worse body, not those with a better body. Look for ways that other people have set unrealistic standards for you - to look like an adolescent, but also to appear effortlessly smart and cool, to meet work and career goals that are unrealistic, to own material things that are beyond the budget of anyone in income brackets two levels higher than you, and so many other ways that we are manipulated into feeling inadequate.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:56 AM on April 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
Looking average is one of the important things that make us complacent out our appearance. I remember reading about a study once where they tested how long babies looked at people and found that they would look the longest at strangers who looked like their family. If all the adults in the family had hooked noses they wouldn't stare at a stranger with a button nose unless there were also kids in the family with unformed snub shaped button noses. They wanted to interact with people who had a nose that was the average of their family nose.
So this wiring goes deep. If you don't look like the people you see, you are going to feel like you look weird. My suggestion is that as much as you can you immerse yourself in people who look like you. The more visual media we consume the more likely we are to be looking at some cultural default, comparing ourselves to it and feeling bad about our looks. Is there any way you can change your media to one that showcases people that look like you? If you come from a genetic strain with round and soft chins and you loathe your chin, look for Flemish Madonnas that depict women like you as the peak of beauty and look for an exercise video made by someone Dutch with that lovely soft jawline. If you come from a genetic strain that has an enormous flat nose, try to figure out what genetic lineage that came from, or what other genetic lines also have enormous flat noses and try to spend some time looking at media produced by people from that part of the world. At the same time, reduce the time you spend looking at our culture's cloned females - something potentially as simple as not walking through the mall with the office tower and all the perfectly groomed high fashion aspirants when you go for your mid-morning coffee, and work on developing an interest in British films or films made by independent directors, anything but the Hollywood look.
Then there is the nubility factor. If you are essentially suffering from age dysphoria - if you feel inadequate because you do not have the complexion of a child not yet hitting puberty, the body of a woman who has an hour glass figure with a tiny waist and a big butt and boobs, and the coltish long legs of an adolescent, you can explore why you want to look like an ingenue and what it means to you. Sometimes the feeling comes from the sense that you have missed your chance and you are no longer starting fresh and it is all downhill from here. It's a funny thing - I don't think anyone wants to be back to the age where they attract peak predator and put up with the loathsome behaviour which drives middle school girls to travel only in packs, but they do want that spark of interest and appreciation that it used to trigger in sentimental older people, and the people we would be interested in as partners.
If no longer looking nubile is your thing and you want to be young and pre-insecurity when the world was full of promise; if you look at your photos and dislike them because you look old, or tired, or cranky, of anxious, you've got deeper work to do, based on the disappointment of how your life didn't hand you that promise, and how it is steadily ticking away, providing fewer and fewer opportunities. Your path is going to require you to work on reframing things as how life is giving you a chance to figure out what goals you want to and need to focus on, rather than how it isn't full of unlimited opportunities. It may require you to work on figuring out your desire for external validation. But again one thing you need to do is look for people who are like you and look like you and what they are doing that causes you to either want to be like them or to not be like them. Use those people for a guide, not Hollywood media or TikTok influencers.
And then there is presentation. If you look scruffy people treat you badly. If your clothes are clearly cheap and you are not decked out in conspicuous consumption of time and money, make up, hair and eyebrows, finger nails, gym toning, the right diet... They will treat you better because they perceive you to be winning at this competition. Presentation is how you show status and that you are winning the competition against other women, most of whom are not even playing that game because they would rather use their time and energy to do things they find fulfilling rather than spending twenty minutes every morning fixing their face with two hundred dollars worth of cosmetics to make them look like they are made out of plastic and are not using credit cards to finance a wardrobe that is almost never designed to wear while doing functional things. A lot of people don't respect that look and those values, including some people who do it themselves, but when it comes time to walk through a crowd or negotiate salary the people who look like that get more personal space and more money. It's the popular kids from middle school all over again.
So if you are unhappy with your presentation you need to look at your feelings about your status in the female appearance competition. It could be that you are not getting the status respect you want and are blaming that on your presentation, or it could be that you are mistaking your status presentation for your appearance. If you look in the mirror after primping and say, "I look really good today!" you are well on the way to self loathing, because no, you don't look good today - you can't even see what you actually look like under that make up. What you are seeing is just the skill at the presentation. You don't look good today, but your make up looks really good.
This is a terrible trap to fall into. If you only feel like you look good when your make up, hair and clothes look good, you are creating a dichotomy where the you without the status presentation is unacceptable. It's a highly effective way of encouraging self loathing, body image issues, eating disorders and worse. The thing to do is to separate the presentation from your body underneath. When you look in the mirror after primping say, "My make up looks really good today," and focus on your skill at putting on make up. "I did a really good job with my make up today." Compliment your skill at grooming, compliment the products you use, "That is a really pretty iridescent peacock blue," but work hard on separating presentation from person.
I think that sorting out what you want to look like, and why you don't look like that, and why you want to look like that, will go a good distance towards helping you figure out why you don't like the way you look. I think considering this by thinking about those three ways women get validation will help you figure out why you feel revulsion for the most precious thing you own.
I think learning to fall in love with your different body parts because they are functional is going to help. Maybe your teeth are so small that when you grin you don't flash those pearlies, but they are solid, bite into a steak effectively and give you no pain. Would you rather have false teeth that looked really great with jaw pain and no ability to eat steak? What about your knees? Knobby, hairy... but that is not their function. Their function is to get you walking and climbing stairs and they do that admirably. Would you prefer beautiful knees, a steady diet of arthritis pills and dreading stairs?
Compare yourself to those with a worse body, not those with a better body. Look for ways that other people have set unrealistic standards for you - to look like an adolescent, but also to appear effortlessly smart and cool, to meet work and career goals that are unrealistic, to own material things that are beyond the budget of anyone in income brackets two levels higher than you, and so many other ways that we are manipulated into feeling inadequate.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:56 AM on April 9, 2022 [9 favorites]
I think this is dysmorphia, and I think you should find a therapist who specializes in it and go hard, hard, hard on working through this. I say this because I have a loved one who could have written your question, but she's never had the willingness to work through it. She's now in her late 50s and she's basically spent a significant portion of every single of her day hating her looks, and it certainly has never, ever gotten better over time. Spare yourself the next 30+ years of this kind of thinking.
posted by BlahLaLa at 9:44 AM on April 9, 2022
posted by BlahLaLa at 9:44 AM on April 9, 2022
Besides your partner, do you tend to hang out with conventionally attractive people? I ask because I found it very helpful to really notice how much of friends' and acquaintances' beauty/attractiveness was something that couldn't be captured by photographs or even mirrors, but happened in action and in concert with their personality. As with anything, it's easier to learn this about other people than it is about yourself, of course. But I do recommend really taking notice when your good-looking friends don't seem quite as hot in photos as you know they are, or conversely when someone you initially thought had unfortunate features turns out to be attractive due to the way those features are animated by charm, vivacity, or some other je ne sais quoi. I suspect you're catastrophizing about how you look, in a way that might be BDD or might not (I'd be inclined to say it is, but if you're truly uninterested in seeking therapy or treatment I'm not sure how much it matters). But even if you're not, the objective structure of someone's face and body is only one of the components of attractiveness. It may not even be the main one.
(I also really recommend Chloé Cooper Jones's memoir Easy Beauty, which came out last week! I mean I recommend it anyway, it's so so good. But especially to you.)
posted by babelfish at 9:45 AM on April 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
(I also really recommend Chloé Cooper Jones's memoir Easy Beauty, which came out last week! I mean I recommend it anyway, it's so so good. But especially to you.)
posted by babelfish at 9:45 AM on April 9, 2022 [5 favorites]
A few things have helped me with this:
-considering what it would mean if I never look “perfect”
-thinking about what I admire in my friends (it’s not that they look good)
-imagining what it would feel like to fully not even think about my body as anything but a neutral aspect of my being
-spending a full week picking out my clothes with my eyes closed (turns out, it was fine and not awful)
Fwiw this feeling of worthless surrounding body image is often the product of years of being explicitly and implicitly communicated to that your physical form holds more bearing on you worth then any other attribute of yourself and that is hard stuff to work through but slightly easier if you keep reminding yourself when you feel inadequate that this messaging exists and that it is not really true.
posted by donut_princess at 10:21 AM on April 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
-considering what it would mean if I never look “perfect”
-thinking about what I admire in my friends (it’s not that they look good)
-imagining what it would feel like to fully not even think about my body as anything but a neutral aspect of my being
-spending a full week picking out my clothes with my eyes closed (turns out, it was fine and not awful)
Fwiw this feeling of worthless surrounding body image is often the product of years of being explicitly and implicitly communicated to that your physical form holds more bearing on you worth then any other attribute of yourself and that is hard stuff to work through but slightly easier if you keep reminding yourself when you feel inadequate that this messaging exists and that it is not really true.
posted by donut_princess at 10:21 AM on April 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
I don't think this is likely to address the issue by itself, but for something a bit outside the box, I wonder if learning to draw portraits/the human figure could be therapeutic if you treat it as kind of a meditation on human variation. It could expose you to a wide range of different physicalities and a chance to engage with and appreciate features that may not be conventionally attractive that could open up some space to extend that kind of appreciation to yourself.
posted by space snail at 1:42 PM on April 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by space snail at 1:42 PM on April 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
I think you've gotten a lot of good advice above. One thing that has helped me, because I have an interest in art, is looking at full body studies of people who are very average looking who have posed for an artist. Including people who are fat, old, or just plain. People are amazingly varied in skin texture and color, body shapes, how we age. So much more so than what we see in movies and TV. Broaden your understanding of what a person can look like.
Speaking of which, if you want to stop feeding your brain's fixation on a clearly narrow idea of acceptable, maybe go on a media diet. No fashion magazines, maybe just less visual media overall for a while. You aren't really seeing yourself objectively, you are filtering what you see in the mirror through a million anxieties and assumptions. You're caught in a feedback loop. So I agree that a BDD therapist, maybe plus meds, might still help break that. But also look for ways out of that punishing loop that is hurting you and holding you back.
posted by emjaybee at 2:54 PM on April 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Speaking of which, if you want to stop feeding your brain's fixation on a clearly narrow idea of acceptable, maybe go on a media diet. No fashion magazines, maybe just less visual media overall for a while. You aren't really seeing yourself objectively, you are filtering what you see in the mirror through a million anxieties and assumptions. You're caught in a feedback loop. So I agree that a BDD therapist, maybe plus meds, might still help break that. But also look for ways out of that punishing loop that is hurting you and holding you back.
posted by emjaybee at 2:54 PM on April 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
One of the things that helped me with photos was someone talking about having very few of their mother because she hated her appearance. The person did not care, loved their mother, thought they were beautiful, and yet...that internal voice was so strong for the mother that the child was left with very few photos. And all of them staged and prepped to a version the mother deemed acceptable.
I didn't want that for my loved ones. I have many photos now where I can see how ridiculous I look. But between the love in the eyes of family and friends, and my own dislike of trash talking bodies, I hesitate to say ugly. I mean it fits - I'm 40 with pimples (big ones, with scabs), wrinkles, lopsided and uneven, double chin, even my hair is in a terrible in-between stage. I'm fat, weirdly proportioned. I can see all of that in the mirror, so I rarely look.
What I rely on is the eyes of my loved ones. When my partner says I'm beautiful. When my friends do. When my family do. When my kid does. I wear what I feel good in. I don't spend time trash talking myself - I'd never do that to another human being, I refuse to do it to myself.
Do I still dismiss some selfies? Yeah. But I trust my loved ones to love me the way I love them. When I see a picture of them I don't focus on the narrow demands of attractive norms - I love their lopsided grin, the way the light plays over scars, the looping grace of their hairline, I love them.
I refuse to be so self-centred that I not only obsess about my body and appearance, but also undermine and mistrust them.
Therapy may help - it does depend on the therapist. But this is a level of obsessive self-judgement and hate that is a problem and is interfering with your life. Small things can help - the moment you start trash talking walk away from the mirror. Trust your partner to love you. Do things for your body that are kind and good.
You don't have to live in this self-loathing.
posted by geek anachronism at 3:22 PM on April 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
I didn't want that for my loved ones. I have many photos now where I can see how ridiculous I look. But between the love in the eyes of family and friends, and my own dislike of trash talking bodies, I hesitate to say ugly. I mean it fits - I'm 40 with pimples (big ones, with scabs), wrinkles, lopsided and uneven, double chin, even my hair is in a terrible in-between stage. I'm fat, weirdly proportioned. I can see all of that in the mirror, so I rarely look.
What I rely on is the eyes of my loved ones. When my partner says I'm beautiful. When my friends do. When my family do. When my kid does. I wear what I feel good in. I don't spend time trash talking myself - I'd never do that to another human being, I refuse to do it to myself.
Do I still dismiss some selfies? Yeah. But I trust my loved ones to love me the way I love them. When I see a picture of them I don't focus on the narrow demands of attractive norms - I love their lopsided grin, the way the light plays over scars, the looping grace of their hairline, I love them.
I refuse to be so self-centred that I not only obsess about my body and appearance, but also undermine and mistrust them.
Therapy may help - it does depend on the therapist. But this is a level of obsessive self-judgement and hate that is a problem and is interfering with your life. Small things can help - the moment you start trash talking walk away from the mirror. Trust your partner to love you. Do things for your body that are kind and good.
You don't have to live in this self-loathing.
posted by geek anachronism at 3:22 PM on April 9, 2022 [3 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
A small fake it till you make it thing that I’ve seen help my own mother and a few other people in my life is to immediately try cutting out all self-deprecating language, especially about your appearance. It’s really hard!! But my mom always talked about how she didn’t think she was pretty, or even particularly average, and I happen to look very much like her. So she was damaging my self esteem as we were growing up by damaging herself. When I realized this after being away at college for a while, I came home and talked about this with her. Turns out my mom’s pretty awesome because since then she has been careful to not disparage her own appearance around me (it’s been almost twenty years, eek!) and says that when she started thinking bad things about her appearance when I’m not around, which is most of the time, a little me pops up in her head being like “stoppit!! You’re fine!!! Stop doing the thing!!” And it helps her. And honest to god she’s nearly seventy and also btw cute as a damn button, not that that matters, and her self esteem really has improved. She is more confident, and when looking at stuff like her old wedding pictures, she comments about her memories from the day, or the silly vintage fashions, instead of her previous habit of grumbling about how she can’t smile for pictures and how uncomfortable she looks and how much nicer her sister looked etc etc etc. I don’t think she even realizes she’s changed that much, but she has.
But my mom is not you. She has never contemplated plastic surgery and then given up because things were unfixable, or sought too much validation from her partner because she felt so much less attractive than him, or used her distaste for her appearance to keep her from getting married. I really think that you are dealing with something a lot harder to overcome. I really would recommend addressing your symptoms of anxiety and obsession with a doctor and going from there, in addition to working on your self-talk.
posted by Mizu at 12:47 AM on April 9, 2022 [14 favorites]