A Few Tips If You're Feeling Ugly
Are you feeling ugly? Let's start by making the distinction between feeling ugly and being ugly. Everyone, except perhaps for those who are narcissistic, and even they must have their "feeling ugly" moments, feels ugly from time to time. Watching soap operas can at times bring on an unhealthy dose of feeling ugly. The men are chisel-featured hunks, and the women are ravishingly beautiful. Everyone has perfect teeth. Trying to imagine ourselves playing in one of the soap opera roles is like recalling a recurring dream in which we are in the workplace in our pajamas. We just don't seem to fit in.
Feelings of ugliness perhaps shouldn't be taken too lightly. For many, it is a serious problem. Like depression, we all feel that way from time to time, but usually get over it. We get busy doing something important, and forget our assumed ugliness. Curiously, those around us don't seem to pay much attention to our ugliness at all, if they even noticed it in the first place. If you stop to think about it, really think about it, not all of your good friends, co-workers, or relatives, are more beautiful or better looking than you are. If you look real close, you can find some fault or imperfection in every single one of them. You normally don't do that though, and they don't do that to you either, not your best friends for sure.
When I was a teenager, a shirt tail relation, a grown up, made the comment that I was getting taller, and homelier, year by year. She thought I didn't hear her, but I did, and it stung, and for a long time. It wasn't a total letdown, since I never considered myself handsome to begin with, so I wasn't under any illusion. Still it hurt, and I felt ugly. About 10 years later I married a very beautiful woman. It wasn't just love speaking, others consider her beautiful as well. I still wonder at times why she married me. It certainly wasn't for the money, and she's a very bright person. Who knows?
Someone once said, - "In nature, trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, but they're still beautiful." Another quote, this one by Lucille S. Harper, is as follows - "Time is a great healer, but a poor beautician." Some people become more attractive, physically, as they age, up to a point of course. Most of us don't. All of us can become more beautiful people as we age, just by being who we are, even though being who we are isn't going to get the soap opera talent scouts on our trail.
A book on the subject of preparing for retirement gives this piece of sound advice. "Live with style." Living with style doesn't mean living beyond your means, or trying to become on of the "beautiful people". It means dressing nicely. Choose clothes that make you look good, keep them clean and pressed. Clothes make the man, even when purchased off the rack during a sale. Living with style means leading a healthy life style, enjoying those things you can afford to enjoy, and meeting people. Put a little spice in your life, and a little adventure.
Getting back to the "beautiful people". Some of them have wonderful lives, some have miserable lives. To be honest, physical beauty is important in the sense that our culture all too often equates it with success. If that were an absolute truth however, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gertrude Stein, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, and about half of our other presidents, had no business achieving the success they did. Each however, was in his or her own way, a very beautiful person.
Finally, if you're feeling ugly, and believe your closest friends will always feel that way about you, it's worth noting what George Bernard Shaw had to say - “Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?”
It would seem the same would apply to ugliness. It might help not to watch the soap operas. Watch Family Guy instead.