It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for pretty. Ever since I fell in love with Morten Harket at the tender age of 7 because of his velociraptor like cheekbones and piercing eyes (sigh), I have battled becoming an idiot every time an attractive person said hello to me.
I levelled up my dating game in Mexico, a place where most women are dolled up to the nines, caked in makeup and curling their eyelashes with a spoon the second a traffic light goes red. The minute I succumbed to some of those beauty standards, handsome men dropped their cloaking devices and I was dating a much more objectively attractive category of man.
I’m cute, but I also come covered in food and with a finger puppet obsession. Not really the girlfriend of choice for underwear models. But in the disguise of a dress and some lipstick, said models were piggybacking me home at the end of the night.
For a while I was living the ‘date sexy’ dream. The thing is more often than not these guys were nothing special. They were painfully average. Sometimes even below average. I once dated a guy who thought the expression was ‘escape goats’. The same guy thought he was entitled to preferential treatment everywhere he went because, you know, his face. I guess when you’re treated like royalty because you lucked out in the gene pool stakes you start believing the hype.
The thing about the handsome bubble is that it couldn’t exist if it wasn’t facilitated and enabled by people outside the bubble. It’s a wonder these already inflated egos haven’t exploded with all the ego pumping going on. Mediocre writers being encouraged to start lifestyle blogs, monosyllabic banter boys being encouraged to become motivational speakers.
Why are we enabling these people? My friend Diana (gorgeous both inside and out) once said to me that she didn’t really give attractive people much time, they had to prove there was more to them than genetics. I’m inclined to agree.
The halo effect has us giving kudos, opportunity and even money to people with no real skill other than the fact their chromosomes lined up real nice. On the flip side, less attractive people are actually more likely to be attributed negative qualities, and considered to be ‘inherently bad‘. It’s a crazy world.
A few years back an older, cooler and stunning friend told me she’d met Morten Harket at the height of his fame (and hotness). She’d approached him for an autograph and without even looking at her he scribbled his name on a napkin and handed it over without pausing his conversation. She took one look at it and dropped it on the floor before heading over to talk to Simon le Bon. He was really lovely apparently.
Pretty is as pretty does I guess.
Every-time I think I’m out, I get pulled back in again.
runslikeabeigegirl 
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