People will just tell you. It is that easy.

You get free merch. People insist on paying for your stuff or you cutting in line. Random compliments. Contagious smile. People imitating you. Being asked out.

Babies always stare at you for ages. apparently babies like to stare at faces that are considered conventionally attractive and I found this out when I searched “why do babies always stare at me”

If people are generally nice to you by default, and willing to break little rules for you, you are probably attractive. Attractive people are treated better on average, and strangers you interact with who have no obligations to you will have a positive bias towards you. They might let you into the shop to grab something real quick as they close, or a person on break might help you when they were off the clock, or invite you to take something normally reserved for a specific group you’re not a part of. Those are perks and special treatment, and not the norm for people who are unattractive.

If you find yourself thinking “well people do that for me sometimes but it’s just because I’m polite and friendly” or something, now you’re getting it.

I‘m fat but good looking. I used to be thin and good looking, before that I was fat and good looking (lockdown, food delivery and minimum order value made me fat again)

People are nicer to you when you’re good looking. When you’re fat, they see you as fat before they see you as a person.

Once they know you, they’re nice to you. But before that you’re just fat, no person.

If you spend any amount of time engaging with “influencer” social media content, then you likely have a skewed perspective and damaged self image.

I never saw myself as ugly, but I always just assumed I was pretty average. It’s not like people were tripping over themselves to spend time with me. I didn’t have supermodel attraction powers or anything; the most attractive people in my school never gave me the time of day. Every person I’ve ever dated asked me out, but I just assumed that was normal for anyone who wasn’t absolutely hideous.

(For the record, I tried to ask someone out once and it went so wrong, I never had the courage to ask anyone else out again, so the only time I dated anyone was when they approached me. Which happened quite a bit throughout my younger years.)

I’ve had friends talk about how jealous they are of certain features of mine (strong jaw, ability to grow a thick lumberjack beard, being taller than most of our friend group, etc.) but I was also jealous of certain features my friends shared, so I didn’t ever feel physically superior to anyone. You want what you can’t have, right?

But now I’m in my 40s, my hair is starting to thin, and thanks to a permanently busted leg and two bad knees, I can’t exercise without pain and have gained probably 60+ pounds in recent years. All of a sudden, I’ve realized that people don’t really notice me anymore. I don’t draw much attention when I go out in public and people aren’t as captivated by my conversation like they used to be.

My wife also used to love pointing out when strangers were staring at me in public. She used to brag that she’d snagged an attractive man and that other girls are just jealous. I used to think she was just trying to hype herself up, since she used to talk down about herself a lot, so I’d play along and praise her for being so lucky (and also let her know how lucky I was for getting to spend time with a woman like her). But it’s been years now since she’s pointed out anyone staring at me in public.

It’s kind of dawning on me that I may have been pretty attractive as a young man. But like all things, beauty fades with age and I’m in an awkward phase where people aren’t really paying much attention to me anymore. It’s definitely hitting the ego, not only noticing the lack of attention, but realizing too late that I had that kind of attractive power in my youth. If I hadn’t been crippled with introversion most of my youth, I probably could’ve been extremely popular.

I will point out, I shared a link to a blog of mine on Lemmy sometime earlier this year and I got a single comment, praising my attractive profile pic on my blog. Which is the first positive thing anyone’s said about my appearance in years. That was a wonderful feeling, but also kind of hit hard, realizing that people don’t really comment on my looks anymore.

That profile picture is maybe 5 years old now, and whereas I want to replace it with a more current one, I’ve been struggling to take one that doesn’t make me feel old and ugly. So I’m going to keep using that older one until I feel like it no longer looks like me.