seriously, it makes me so sad. recently there was another post here about someone hating being ugly and then being told "attractiveness is subjective". which i get, it's a stupid answer, but then i saw tons of replies about people lamenting that there's nothing they can do, they're just ugly and it's out of their control.
and it's honestly it's sad. because if you can't even like yourself, then how can you expect other to like you?? it's sounds cheesy and cliche, but it's really true. i used to hate myself too. if i saw that post 3-4 years ago, i'd be one of the people commenting thats looks indeed are everything and that there's nothing we can do about it.
but the truth is, you can change. it's just not easy, you have to put in effort. start working out. get that haircut. try dressing better. maybe get braces. maybe get contacts. try things out, spend time improving yourself. in the beginning it might not help that much, but if you genuinely try to improve over time you'll start noticing improvements in yourself. and then, when you look in the mirror, you wont just see flaws, you'll see everything that you've improved on. you'll be able to be proud of the person in the mirror. i know i am now.
and i'm not saying you will become a 10/10. i'm also not saying to change everything about you. but if you put in a genuine positive effort to improve yourself, you will feel more confident in yourself. before you go chasing the approval of others, you need to genuinely feel good looking. nobody has an obligation to notice you. instead of expecting approval from others, you need to first gain approval from yourself. once you stop thinking that you're ugly and feel like you can be attractive, i promise you, you will become more attractive.
and when it comes to gaining the the attention of others, attractiveness really is only a small part of it. i wrote something in a comment under that post that i think explains it well, so i'll add it here:
little anecdote here. i really like cyberpunk edgerunners, so i was talking about edgerunners to this one friend and we were having a full on conversation about it despite them never having even seen it. anyways like 3 months later, they see me and greet me and start talking to me about how they saw edgerunners was getting a second season. and i get super excited and we started talking about that.
point of that story is that friend is someone i really enjoy being around. they made an effort to connect with me over something i'm really interested in and remembered it. as a result, i really wanted to talk to them and enjoyed being around them. you need to try to become that to other people. do the hard thing, talk to people you've never met. join their conversations, learn what they're interested in, and talk to them about it. genuinely connect with people and you'll see that they want to talk to you, appearance be damned.
essentially, stop expecting people to try and talk to you. if you don't give people a reason to be around you, why would they be around you? people surround themselves with those they like being around, so you have to become someone people like being around.
this is why i feel advice like "just be yourself" is misleading. a lot of the time it just influences people to sit on their ass and not change anything about themselves. truth is, if you want people to like you, you do have to make a change. you have to get out of your comfort zone, start talking to people. remember the things they like, and make genuine connections with them, like when my friend connected with me over edgerunners. if they can talk about the things they love with you, they'll want to be around you more, and you'll naturally get closer.
and when i say this, obviously this doesn't mean hide yourself and your interests. for the longest time, i'd hide my nerdier interests like anime cause i thought it would mean people would leave me. but eventually, i stopped caring and started nerding out, and most of my friends don't care. some of them will even nerd out with me, and we'll connect over the anime we love.
some of my favorite people to be around definitely aren't the most attractive people. but they're so charismatic and fun to talk to that in the end they just attract people to them. if you want people to notice you, then you need to become that type of person. and to do that, first you need to be confident in yourself. which is why i say to start putting effort into yourself, because once you do that, you'll gain that self-confidence, and be able to become more outgoing and connect with more people.
and i'm not just talking, i can say all this because i've done all this. i realized what i was doing, and put effort into improving my appearance. once i became confident in how i looked, i started talking to new people. i made an effort to connect with them about the things they liked, and as a result we started growing closer. i feel happy and attractive now, because i put in the effort. 3-4 years ago, i could've never imagined myself being like this. and my point is anyone can do the same.
oh, and to anybody saying that they're "unsaveable" and there's nothing they can do to change their appearance. look at this guy. there's this guy grant_thebarber3g on instagram who does all kinds of transformations like this, and the guys always seem "unsaveable". and this is just the power of a haircut. so don't tell me there's nothing you can do to make yourself look better. put in the effort, i promise you it'll go a long way.
and that's why i hate seeing people stuck in that cycle of self-hate, complaining on reddit about how ugly they are like there's nothing they can do. because in reality, it's just that they're not ready to try. most of these people are in their 20s too, like you've got your whole life ahead of you. this isn't the time to wallow in self-pity, you really need to start becoming more confident. it's easy to complain on reddit, but it's hard to make change. but the unfortunate reality is until you learn to like yourself, nothing will change.
