Sad, Beautiful Girls

[An audio version of this blog can be found HERE].

As I’ve dipped my toe back into the wild world of dating, I’ve noticed a striking pattern in the comments made to me by men. Dozens have told me that I’m beautiful. Dozens more express pleasant surprise that I’m beautiful and have a functioning brain. Several more have sung my praises for being so “unique” or “different.” What I’ve quickly learned, however, is that men will say almost anything if they think it’ll land them in bed.

When I expressed my frustration about this to my therapist, he told me, “You have what I call the ‘curse of attractiveness.’ Many women, especially women in this [eating disorder] program, have this. It’s an interesting pehenomon.” What the curse means, in a nutshell, is that beutiful girls are valued for only that, our beauty. We find this confusing and troubling. I’m here to tell you why.

We are sad, beautiful girls because we learned, from a very yuoung age, that how we look is more important that how we think, what we know, or what we can do. This is a curse because we don’t want to be valued for how we look; looks fade, always. This is a curse too, because people assume that attractive people must be happy. What more could a beautiful girl ask for? We are sad, sometimes, because we are expected to be happy. We are expected to know that we’re beautiful and for that to be…