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okay. so recently i have become "popular". and now all of a sudden people have been starting to hate me. i'm finally where i want to be, but i dont want to deal with stuff that other people put me through because of this recent "change". personally, i'm a very pretty girl. i have a lot going for me. and i dont want this effecting my school work. i havent dropped any of friends in this recent "change". but i am so sick of being told i shouldnt have made it as far as i have. i should stop going to school. i'm only popular because im "hot" and have a "nice body". how do i stop this? or atleast learn to ignore it..?
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The first step to acceptance is understanding.
Women are bombarded with messages about beauty throughout their lives, and are especially vulnerable to it before late teenage-hood and adulthood. Men are bombarded as well, but often times with completely different messages.
One of the messages that is common is that beauty makes up a very significant portion of a woman's value to those around her. It's a powerful message, because our society has been structured so that it is pretty true. A beautiful woman gets advantages in some ways over other women.
This naturally results in jealousy. But more than that, people often become uncomfortable around people that they perceive have greater value than they do. Men are not immune to this. A man can see a beautiful woman and want to tear her down, because he feels his value is lower than hers and wants to rectify that feeling. If he tears you down, he doesn't feel inferior anymore.
And all of it is based on our perceptions which have largely been shaped by things other than our own opinions. If you look at the advertised beauty standard, then look at the number of women who fall inside it, you'd think most women would never get laid. Reality is that there are alot more things that make up attraction than appearance and alot more bodytypes that are widely considered to be beautiful than advertisers want to admit.
See, advertising doesn't work if beauty isn't rare and exclusive. They can't sell you things to make you look more beautiful if you feel beautiful already without them. And it gets into everything. Shows, movies, music, popular culture. These advertised standards have taken over public perception of women to a degree that is incredibly alarming.
I'll take a moment to apologize for how long this is getting and will continue to get. I'm wordy, and there's alot to explain here.
So let's bring this back to your situation. First, the women around you.
Girls feel jealous, because you were lucky enough to win the genetic lottery. They have been told all their lives that compared to you, they are worthless. That nothing they ever do can let them measure up to you just being attractive. It sucks, to be in that position. There are literally tons of adult women who in their 20s and 30s and 40s look at a woman who is abnormally attractive by societal standards and feel ugly. She might be married to a man who thinks that his wife's body type is his personal preference for perfect body type, and you might not match his preferences at all, and she might know that, and STILL feel like her value is lower just from knowing you exist in her world.
It's insidious. Because it's all exclusionary. If you don't have X quality, you are not beautiful. People magazine doesn't go around talking about how a certain actress is really personable and fun to meet and treats people kindly. You read about her new diet or the things she said at some point that sound horrible in some way (even if they have to completely remove context to manage it)
It's all negative. And it all destroys self confidence. And women look at you and see you doing decently well in school while being more attractive by a standard they've been taught to value than they themselves will ever be, and they want to tear you down.
They don't know any better, and they are suffering just as much as you are. In different ways, but just as much as you are.
The best solution I can offer you is to try to emphasize to others what you have in common. Finding common ground is the way you bridge the differences between people. They might try to compete. Basically, "You don't have it as bad as I do, at least you're beautiful."
Don't ever let yourself get sucked into that argument. It's not about who has it worse, it's about being able to understand each other. Be the kind of person who tries to increase understanding among others, and it'll go a long way towards helping you bond with people. It'll also show you the people not worth your time, the ones who are more invested in making you feel like shit because they have no desire to understand anyone. All some people want is to feel on top of the world, and have taken the lessons in worth I talked about to heart and use them as a weapon to tear others down to somewhere they can be looked down on.
Which is where we get into the men's side of it. Men are taught to damage women. These messages, like the beauty messages, are pervasive.
We finally have a society that has matured enough to be able to talk about rape. And in talking about it, we find it's a hell of alot more common than anyone wants to believe. Men used to be taught quietly that you can get away with raping someone. It was the hushed conversation with friends who told them that they should totally go take that girl who is so drunk she can't see straight up to bed because she's not going to say no at any point in time. It was the family that hushed up the sexual abuse of a young girl by an older male family member.
Now it's in statistics you can google. It's in national news stories where the girl in Stubenville gets drugged and gangraped and the police don't even investigate it until it goes viral, and then two of the many people who had sex with her that night get two years each "because they had such promising lives and they just made a mistake"
It's in the "boys will be boys" attitude expressed by people protecting a group of guys who were publicly known as "the rape crew"
It's in a guy who got 30 days for raping a 14 year old who later killed herself while female teachers invariably get sent to state prison for serious terms of incarceration.
It's in our families, where boys grow up watching mom get abused and disrespected and mom can't or won't do anything about it. It's in our media where sexist messages abound.
The thing about guys that makes these messages so detrimental is that we are privileged.
I have been at least a little overweight all my life. My body has a slow metabolism and even if I were in exquisite shape I'd still be about 40 lbs heavier than the designated "healthy" weight because I'm 6'2 with broad shoulders and a heavily muscled build.
I've heard more fat jokes than you'd probably believe exist, all directed at me. It was the easiest thing, and as you might have noticed assholes tend to be lazy about it. They don't want to have to think about their insults, so fat just kept coming up even when I was in good shape (I played sports)
I have never considered suicide because I felt fat. When they put Brad Pitt up on screen with his ridiculous abdominal definition they didn't have 3500 dollars per month worth of products to sell me to make me look just like him. I didn't grow up being told that my skin would eventually not be good enough on it's own or that I needed plastic surgery to reshape parts of my body that aren't good enough.
In that way, I am privileged. I am a guy who has been through some pretty severe body shaming, but the effect it had on me is not a tenth of what it can do to a girl, because society rates me far more in value for things I can accomplish, as opposed to things that I just intrinsically am. It gives me agency, the power of choice to try to increase my value or to decide that I am fine as I am.
And that power gives me an advantage over literally every woman I will ever meet. Because I can, should I choose to, use these things against women and they cannot do the same. I can insult a woman's appearance without fear because if she insults mine my natural response is "so?"
Not saying that I do do this, not at all. But the point here is that if I wanted to do it I could do it, and do it easily.
Which is what the guys around you are doing. On some level, they have come to understand the power dynamic that exists between men and women. And obviously, this dynamic exists for more than just appearance. Men can shamelessly enjoy sex, where as a woman is told that there is some point between prude and slut that she is supposed to maintain. In reality, those two words are not judgements. They are weapons.
I mean, most people like sex. Alot. Asexuality and low libido both exist, but they aren't the majority. You can point at three out of four women anywhere on the planet and they like sex or at least the idea of it, assuming they're puberty age or older. Even the most devout Christians can like sex in what they consider to be the proper context (marriage)
So what are those weapons for? Slut is to tell you that you like sex too much. Prude too little. It's entirely arbitrary. Too much or too little compared to what?
Compared to literally nothing. There isn't even a standard there. There is no magical point of "you love sex exactly enough and you are neither a slut nor a prude" There is only words used to tell women that sex lowers their value no matter what they do.
Where am I going with this?
What do you think would happen if as soon as children came to understand that dead people stay dead, every child was issued a loaded handgun? If you told a 9 year old "this is a thing that can make people you don't like go away and never come back" and followed it up with alot of messages that there were zero consequences for shooting someone?
Can you imagine how fast kids would be blowing each other away?
It's the same with shaming and degrading. Boys are handed weapons which most women are severely conditioned to respond to. Girls are raised to feel ugly, and when boys understand this they use that against you. They face little to no consequences for using these weapons. I mean, from a guy's perspective, it is not impossible to get angry at a woman and decide to rape her in retaliation and figure out how to get away with it. Most men are not that malicious, but the ones that are occasionally do just that and get away with it.
That's a shitload of words. Sorry again.
The last factor here is empathy. Not everyone develops empathy to a significant degree, but it takes time and abstract thinking to grow the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. It takes life experiences which teach you exactly how shitty the world can make you feel to understand what it's like for others.
By 12 years of age the average person is beginning to develop the kind of abstract thinking abilities (this is directly tied to brain development) that allow them to understand others in this way. The more intelligent you are the younger that can skew, but then if we look at the average age that a child is old enough to understand the weapons I talked about and how to use them, we're looking at 8 or 9 years old.
And it takes years to develop a true sense of empathy, one that affects your actions on a subconscious level.
So you're basically stuck in a place full of children who are armed with weapons which they are to some degree unable to understand the effects of. This is why you see "guys in middle school are assholes"
It's not that guys just magically turn into dicks when we hit puberty. It's that we can use the weapons against others long before we have personally important reasons not to. And then people grow up, and many guys grow to understand, and things get better.
Also, high school gives alot more leeway than any other aspect of life. Adult men know they can't tell a girl "You're a slut and the only reason you got that promotion is your body" and expect to have a job the next day. So, while some guys grow up, others eventually learn that you can't get away with that shit the way you used to and have to modify their behavior enough that most women who interact with them are not subject to their bullshit.
Whew. That's alot of words.
It sucks, because there's no escaping it for you. I wish that wasn't the case, but the same way some women will be told all their lives that they aren't attractive enough, as soon as you are attractive you immediately become too attractive. Just like slut and prude, these are weapons. We even have a standard! We can describe what an attractive woman is (by the standards of advertising and societal perception) in fairly detailed terms down to the type of eyebrows she should have. And yet, the standard is completely irrelevant because even if you match every part of it to perfection you're simply labeled as too beautiful which comes with labels like bitchy, stuck up, conceited, spoiled, etc.
Dealing with it starts with understanding where it comes from. When you understand it, it's easier to not be angry at people for their ignorance. For not having the understanding or maturity to let you be you, and them be them, and have it all be ok.
Someday you will be an adult, and you can choose to surround yourself with people for whom your beauty is largely irrelevant. Until then, you just have to accept that people will say shit and you can't stop them.
But you can try to have conversations. Try to find things in common with others. You can be one of the people who starts the conversation "this sucks for everyone" and try to see if there's anyone open to a little understanding.
When you find people like that, hold onto them. Good friends can be hard to find.
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You cannot control what others think. You don't have to "deal" with their jealousy, remarks or negativity towards you. By showing people it doesn't bother you and that you're the same person as before this will fade away.
Don't give the reaction they want out of you. As long as you treat people the same as before and don't change you'll have the respect of the right people. Your friends from before are insecure and envious.
Perhaps if you tell them that it's okay to be popular but not if it's all about people's perception of your body driving it. Let them know you didn't choose this and that nothing has changed in your approach to people.
It may help to get counseling on how to handle this pressure and friends. Aside from that if jealousy and B.S. continues just ignore it and live your life. It's all you can do as you cannot control what others think but you can influence it.
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People spend too much of their lives looking at what others are doing,not doing, how they look, talk, labeling others, judging them and making assumptions.
The fact of life is that there is nothing anyone can say or do that will make us choose to change, either for the better or the worse if WE do not choose to. Change is hard for people to do. Tell me, do you enjoy when the parents tell you what they want you to do? No one likes being told what to do, even if its the right thing.
So if that is true, then why do people spend so much time focused on other people instead of focusing on changing and improving themselves for the better?
Again, its due to fear. We really are afraid that we won't like something about ourselves so we try to avoid finding out but not focusing internally on ourselves but looking outside at others for a distraction.
Every human alive has done this at some point in their life.
To clarify, the fear of not liking ourselves that I am talking about isn't due to what we see on the outside, like not liking our body shape, color of hair, shape of nose, etc.... Those with a low self image are going to focus on the outside and think thats all that defines them.
What really makes you unique as a person as I believe you already know is who you are on the inside and you're tired of people who don't want to look past the outside of you to discover who you are on the inside, your unique personality, your core values, beliefs, your hopes and dreams and fears, etc...
Kids in school may have bodies that matured but our brains aren't done maturing until our mid 20's so you may not be able to expect more from your peers for a while.
It's not hopeless. There will always be a minority of young folk who are mentally growing at a faster rate and able to make better decisions. They are hard to find, for they blend into the background, they aren't part of the vocal crowd, the judging crowd or the so-called popular crowd. Thats me. I had only a handful of true friends and to the popular people, i was of no interest. My friends were like me, we were the kids who were making good decisions, some good wisdom for our age, maturity and understood what a real friend was. I think perhaps you haven't found the right people yet. If you are considered cute or hot, the guys that are really nice and would treat you well and enjoy who you are on the inside, will never make it known they like you, never approach you because they think they haven't got a chance at all with you. The nerds, geeks and the in betweeners who don't fit any group, they're there. But you will have to really start to study people. These people never try to draw attention to themselves. Even the girls. So they will not appproach you. If you're looking for real friends who really care about you, thats where I'd start looking and you have to approach them first. They may be suspicious first if they've seen you with the popular crowd, and may have to prove your yourself, your intentions, but once you have, you will be accepted. And the more you associate with these people, the less the popular people will want to be near you.
You can't change them but they will choose on their own to forget about you.
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