What the Barbie Movie Taught me about Sad, Beautiful Girls

From ages 19–25, I was with the same romantic partner. When that relationship ended and I started dating, I had no skills. No good template for interacting with the opposite sex. I did notice a pattern though, which was this: dozens of men told me that I’m beautiful. Dozens more expressed pleasant surprise that I’m beautiful and have a functioning brain. Several more sung my praises for being so “unique” or “different.” What I quickly learned 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 the [eating disorder] program, have this. It’s an interesting phenomenon.” What the curse means, in a nutshell, is that beautiful girls are valued for only that, our beauty. We find this confusing and troubling, and here’s why.

We are sad, beautiful girls because we learned, from a very young age, that how we look is more important than 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…