The Ugly Side Of Beauty

There’s a reason why Ariel and Cinderella didn’t have female friends and only female rivals….


I decided to write this because as a female I experience negativity from other women quite a lot. The funny thing is, I’ve noticed that I’m not the only one.

So I’ve made it my mission to find out why girls be hating.

Before we begin I want to make it clear that when I speak about beauty, I mean inside and out. A person can be beautiful just on personality alone. I also want to add that I don’t class myself as the “bee’s knees” – although I’m sure some people find me attractive, I also know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.

So why do I think being beautiful is actually an ugly thing to be? Hear me out…
At 14 I was fortunate to be scouted by a London modelling agency. Although being 5ft-nothing and having an alien looking face, I managed to make a ten year career from what I was given at birth. I’ve been lucky to feature in TV adverts, billboards and films. Worked with huge brands including Lynx, Oral-B and Nike. Let’s just not bring up the Watchshop advert that’s still on TV!

During my modeling years I met hundreds of beautiful men and women and learnt very quickly that looking good, reaps plenty of benefits. However the shallow outcome of what people think of you, isn’t all rosy. It actually has a lot of negatives.

Being beautiful  brings jealousy.

All of the beautiful women I know, have at some point in their life suffered from other people’s jealousy. Especially from women. Whether that’s receiving nasty remarks or being socially excluded – they have all been a victim of someone’s green-eyed monster. I know I have.
As previously mentioned, being beautiful is much more than looks. It’s how someone carries themselves. It’s the air of confidence that they bring with them wherever they go. A lovely personality is all you need if you are to be labelled as “beautiful”. You could be a supermodel but if you have a personality of a snail, I can’t see that many people falling in love with you.

All of my best friends are beautiful. I’m not biased, they really are gorgeous! Inside and out.

Although they are all different in many ways, they all share one thing in common – they are confident. I’m quite sure that if they weren’t self-assured, they wouldn’t be friends with any of my other beautiful friends.

As Oprah Winfrey once said, You can’t be friends with someone who wants your life. I guess that also goes alongside personality and looks too!

All of my girlfriends are happy to talk about their successes and walk-the- walk. But even the nicest and inoffensive of my friends will still get a backlash of jealousy from other girls.
So why does being confident bring just as much negativity as having a pretty face?

In her TED X Youth talk, Caroline Heldman suggests that a process she calls self- objectification might be to blame. Caroline explains that as women, we naturally engage in female competition. We see male attention as the holy grail of our existence and so we compete with other women for our own self-esteem. The majority of women also see confidence as not socially acceptable. A female who isn’t modest is automatically hated because they perceive her as a threat.

Apparently when a girl walks into a room she will subconsciously analyse all of the other girls in the room to see where she fits in the pecking order. It is at this moment that if a woman believes another woman is better looking than her, or desired by men, the green-eyed monster will appear. This normally follows with name calling (Slut or bitch) and/or socially excluding the “pretty” female. These reactions are simply a defense mechanism to make the jealous female feel better about themselves.

To follow on from this, a study was conducted about how women treat each other when men are present. The research found that women have negative attitudes about particular types of other women. Vrangalova and colleagues (2013) discovered that females were less likely to be friends with another female who they saw as sexually promiscuous. When asked why they thought the woman was promiscuous, the majority of females said it was because they believe the woman was a sexual desire to the men in the room. Therefore being a threat meant the women didn’t want to become their friend.  The results also showed that if women thought another female was better looking than them, they would instantly have negative thoughts about her.
 
So is being beautiful inside-and-out not a good thing?

Sometimes.

I think good looks and confidence can help you in many cases. But socially I think beautiful women will always struggle to be liked initially. I often get a lot of people tell me how they thought I was a bitch before they even got to know me. Maybe that’s because of my confident persona or maybe, like the study showed, it’s because women want to think negative thoughts before giving that person a chance to know them.

Maybe this is why all of my best friends are beautiful? Because they can handle other pretty women and not get fazed by their existence.

On a note to leave you with – if you are a woman who doesn’t like other good looking or confident/lovely women. Or you value a person by measuring them against you; your insecurity is going to overshadow any possibility of friendship or compassion towards another woman, especially if you feel she is more attractive than you.

We are all beautiful in our own way and we should celebrate everyone’s quirks and successes. One thing is for sure, us females need to stick together!

As Tina Fey said in Mean Girls: “You have all got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores.