Popularity, Pretty Privilege and Autism

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So I've been fascinated by the idea of pretty privilege for years. I first began to think about it when I was about 13 when I saw who was popular in school and how in the case of the girls it was girls who were attractive with a lot of the same features. I want to stress I'm not saying that in a negative way, but more that I noticed there was an obvious pattern. I think my school was very obvious with it though as there was literally a group of girls referred to as "the pretty girls". Anyway, I always found this confusing and the way that girls who weren't them were treated confusing. As one of the people not considered part of that group, I found I was often ignored by guys and treated like I didn't exist, as was the case for many of my friends who didn't fit that narrow view of beauty. To be fair, I think people around that age are probably worse with this stuff but I wondered what people here would think about popularity and how it relates to pretty privilege? Do you think you are less swayed by it because of your autism? Do you have any experiences with it? Just any thoughts anyone had would be interesting

My observations (we may need to take cultural differences into account) went the other way around:
The popular girls at my school weren't the most objectively pretty ones - they were the ones who considered themselves pretty.
Which prompted me to make an experiment: I started persuading myself I was pretty.
Instantly, I became more popular and in a few months, I had my first boyfriend.

The trick was, once I believed I was pretty, I started thinking differently about caring for my appearance - and, also, people are very prone to suggestion.

Part of being “pretty” and “handsome” is facial expression.

If one constantly has a frown, one, usually, would not be considered attractive.

A nice smile, or even a non-negative facial expression, usually enhances the attractiveness of a person of any gender.

This is based on personal experience.

"natural selection" at work. Instinct has a lot to do with what humans find physically appealing about another. I had severe acne throughout my childhood, was poorly nourished and neglected, had no self confidence because of abuse, and was interested and very saddened by the fact that I would never ever look like that. There is a huge amount of power in physical attraction when we are young, but that evens out over the years as we age. We have all seen girls who became old women behaving in coy and inappropriate ways that were cute when they were 17. We have all seen older guys who still have that football / all male behavior that meant social acceptance in their youth and not understanding that most of us have moved on from high school behaviors. I far outstripped the "beautiful" crowd over the years and have learned to accept my lack of beauty and physical attraction as I recognized that extreme beauty in a human being can be its own kind of handicap too.

I had enough pretty privileges experiences myself but...
I don't understand being the one to receive the end of it. I don't know what to do with it despite observing how it's done or why.

I had no idea how to take advantage of it.
I may even not want to. I'm also suspicious of people who flirts a lot, because you know how NTs are with contexts and words sometimes.

I don't even do the confidence game when I'm always busy managing my inner workings -- incoming and outgoing thoughts, senses, feelings...
I don't even make any effort to clean up myself even!.. My face isn't even the well maintained kind. Nor the overly expressive kind. Sometimes I look angry or thinks too deep half the time.


But sure. I know how to be pretty and confident, but I can be shy and outright weird. I know how projections work, but I don't utilitise them.

Here's a certain aspect I can identify with the experience -- it makes people approach you well. Sometimes, puts you in pedestals.

It simply attracts things.
Partially due to already attracting other people's attention currency and partially one's own presentations.

Thankfully I don't deal with any social competitions. Females don't usually fight me, instead they tend to drag me to interesting places and sometimes invite me to their networks.
Half the time I don't know what to do with it. This is probably cultural from where I came from.

... Also probably because I'm not reactive when it comes to said competitions. Because deep down I really don't care.

In my head it's always 'me and you/them are different/not so different'.
Almost never the 'me vs you/them are better/worse'. Though my ego's desire leans with 'me is better'.
I learnt this sort of lesson quite sooner than an average person.


But still...

TLDR;
I have it sometimes.
But I'm clueless enough not knowing how to completely take advantage of it.

And probably even don't want to.

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Adolescence is the time when people begin to perceive others at any kind of meaningful level. It is natural for people to start with the superficial.Those who have attractive features often become stunted in their own development because of the attention they garner. They may become convinced themselves that appearance matters more than it does.

As people develop, qualities like humor, kindness, compassion, and regard for others begin to be perceived and can even be valued above appearance.

It is sad that much of media seems stuck at a juvenile stage of development. Perhaps they only reflect the larger population.

It is sad when anyone, ASD or not, finds themselves lamenting being outside the circle of the popular rather than being able to advance past it.

Looking at popularity, it can seem a case of privilege, but it can also seem a prison.

I became very interested in this idea for a while when I went to college. I noticed that there were some people that just seemed to be nailing it in terms of how they presented themselves and the positive experience they appeared to be having.

I thought that it was strange that the people who were physically attractive (not to me specifically, just in the general conventional way) also seemed to be the people that understood how to dress well and how to be confident and relaxed. They just seemed to have it all worked out.

I landed on the idea of pretty privilege as a way of explaining this. I think your experience of the world can be very different if you have a pleasant face to look at. I don't just mean people telling you you're pretty or wanting to date you. I mean in quite subtle, small, day-to-day ways that add up over time. I think, if you're pretty (and I use the word here in a non gender specific way) then people will respond better to you. They will be more friendly, more generous with their time and help, more inclined to listen to what you have to say. Maybe just smile at you in the street more often.

On occasions I have caught myself going the extra mile for 'pretty' people and I've asked myself if I would be doing the same for someone who wasn't pretty.

But if you are pretty and you regularly experience people going that extra mile for you, then over time you're probably going to get the impression that people are generally nice and helpful and friendly. You're going to think this is just how people are. This is going to build your confidence because there's less risk for you that you're going to have a negative experience. This positive affirmation could infuse every aspect of your personality, how you carry yourself and how you speak. Wearing clothes that complement your body in a way that draws attention, rather than hide it or simply allow you to merge into the background. Because there's no risk in drawing attention.

Pretty privilege must exist because it gets commoditised. I used to work in hifi and it was very noticeable that the reps that these companies sent out into the world were very much 'of a type'. At the time, most of the people in my area of that industry were men and quite geeky men. It will come as little surprise that companies like Pioneer and Sony would send out reps who were not experts in hifi. They were pretty people. Because they wanted us to go that extra mile promoting their products for them and we were more likely to do that for a pretty person than we were for a hifi geek.

At one place I worked there was an interesting case study. There was a guy there who had, what I'd call model good looks. He was charismatic too, very popular and he could, and often would, say absolutely terrible things - really disgusting things. This was always in jest, but I know that if I said them they would be taken very differently. He seemed to have a license that I didn't have. There was no risk for him in saying anything. I think that feeling that there's no risk must do an awful lot for your confidence.

Time and time again, in my career, I have seen pretty people promoted over more capable people. I've seen writers get book deals because they present well, while other better writers get overlooked. I want to stress that I'm not just saying that beauty gets rewarded, it's the accumulation of confidence and connection with humanity at large that often comes as a result of being beautiful. It's a positive feedback loop.

There's a risk in talking about this stuff that us normal looking people come across as bitter and resentful. I don't mean to. I don't even like the word privilege because it's just their experience of the world as it is to them. And of course there are pretty people who get exploited and used for their prettiness and have and absolutely terrible time in life. But there are definitely patterns and I just find it fascinating.

I used to think myself terribly ugly and unattractive. It was only after turning forty that a girlfriend of mine pointed out how interested all the other women were in me. And I began to be able to see that I was deemed attractive by quite a few people. It changed how confident I am socially. I still struggle with all the communication issues but I feel more able to hold my own in company because of it. All because of how I view my own attractiveness.

Definitely! When I was in high school I got in trouble for flirting with the popular girls but not with the unpopular ones

For the record, I do think that pretty privilege does exist. As an average (maybe slightly below) average looking man, I've never experienced it but I do know that there are advantages to being attractive.

Let's talk about one of the biggest perks to be attractive which is dating. Attractive people, and especially attractive women, will have an easier time dating whether it's finding short term or long term relationships. Both my mom and my sister were very attractive women in their twenties (at least an 8/10 on the looks scale). My sister was this petite attractive blonde and from the moment she hit puberty, she had no shortage of male attention. She dated many guys and if she broke up with one, could find a new boyfriend with the snap of a finger, that's how easy it was for her. Her personality isn't even that great (no offence) but like I said, people are drawn to beauty, and are willing to overlook behavior/personality flaws if they think someone is hot.

Attractive people benefit from something called the "halo effect" which is when one trait of a person effects your overall judgement of someone in a positive way. If we think someone is attractive, we also think they're more popular, better socially, more trustworthy, and smarter. Perhaps attractive people are more confident and have better social skills because they received more attention and were less bullied growing up, which allowed them to develop their social skills and a confidence at a faster rate, compared to uglier and more excluded kids.

One reason why advertisers use attractive people in their photo advertisements is because the general audience might think that if attractive people were using these products, then I should be using them too. On the opposite side of the spectrum, if they showed ugly fat people who looked like hobos, then people might think that only losers shop there. So it appears that attractive people have a higher perceived value compared to ugly people who look like hobos. It's a subconscious thought that most people don't really think much of.

Average and below average looking people, can't rely on their looks when it comes to dating. Most of the time, romance isn't handed to us on a silver platter compared to our better looking peers. So I think that many times, average people have more interesting personalities and more well rounded interests and lifestyles, because dating was something that we had to work at which meant we had to improve ourselves and become more interesting, so people were more likely to give us a chance.

Take me for instance. I got tired of women rejecting my short scrawny unambitious ass so what did I do? I hit the gym and got into weightlifting, went to college and took my education seriously, joined all sorts of college clubs, etc... And if there was a gym for your height, I would have packed my bags and moved in and lifted like it was a full time job. I worked on myself because if I didn't, I was probably going to be single at 30. My sister on the other hand, never had to work on herself. Everything (from a romantic standpoint) was handed to her on a silver platter, so there was no drive to improve herself. So that's why she never went to college, or never got into exercise and weightlifting. After all, she was already a pretty girl with a nice husband who was going to make a lot of money for her anyways.

So the point is that just because someone has it easier doesn't mean they have it better. There's something about going through struggle in your life (whatever it is) that can ultimately drive you and make you stronger when you come out on top.

I was in awkward place in high school. Considered unpopular, I got bullied a lot and people called me ugly. However, if I did take the time to alter my appearance, even in minor ways, I was insulted because apparently that made me look like a (insert various insults related to prostitution that are better left unsaid).

That's one of the reasons I disliked high school, whenever I did anything to my appearance it was always questioned. For example, straightening my hair or changing my hair parting. It was always questions about who I was doing it for, when I just felt like trying out a new look because I could.

For someone called ugly an awful lot, I was also bizarrely sexualised and I didn't like that. I remember fading in and out of consciousness when I was ill before I was due to go on stage at a dance performance (I didn't go on in the end and sat it out). A group of teenage boys were making inappropriate jokes about my body. I'd also get sexual comments on the street from them, which was particularly awkward when I was with my family. They made up rumours about me doing sexual things as well, I guess it was funny for them. The life I was rumoured to be living was very different to my actual life.

My bullies who had called me ugly later hit on me after high school. Then I'd come out to them as gay (I wasn't out in high school) and they'd block me, which was really just doing me a favour. It's so odd when your bullies don't seem to remember what they did. One time a guy from high school, who used to trip me up in the hallway, squish me into corners, steal my chair before sitting down, chase me around, insult me in various ways and generally be a pain to deal with, contacted me out of the blue trying to get me to support his music career. Dude, I'm not going to promote your album when all of our previous interactions involved you being a jerk.

"Pretty privilege" is certainly a reality, but as with many such subjects, there is a "spectrum". As a whole, humans who have objectively higher physical attractiveness will have greater success in life. But as noted by others, some exceptionally attractive people will never have to examine their shortcomings in other ways, and may ultimately show lower success in some key aspects of life, due to the "free ride" that they're been given by genetics.

I "suffer" from perceiving a higher value in those people that I find physically attractive. I seem to be able to overcome this initial bias given enough exposure time to notice the positive aspects of a person, even when they are quite unattractive, physically. But first impressions will often steer me on a course that requires correction when additional data arrives.

I wonder how well correlated an inaccurate self-knowledge of one's objective beauty is in autism. Given that noticing the non-verbal cues that "should" telegraph how others perceive us is a skill often lacking among those on the spectrum, and that even seemingly clear, complimentary verbal statements can be so easily misconstrued, I'm assuming that many end up never having developed an objective self-image.

Given that I seemed to have been more or less oblivious to this "lack of self image" issue until my late 30s, and have had some difficult times dealing with that since it became apparent how most others perceived me, I suspect that this is a widely shared experience among the Autistic.

How many others here rarely look at themselves in a mirror, and when doing so, just can't quite "connect" with what they see?

The idea that a forced smile or other positive expressions can make a big difference in how others view you seems valid. When I was often asked to "smile" for the camera in my younger years, I would attempt to do so, then be told "more!", then end up contorting my face into what felt like a wildly exaggerated clown-like expression, only to look at the resulting photo later and see only the faintest sign of a smile.

One of my friends who is also one of the prettiest women I met in my life got a lot of male attention and was part of the popular girls club in university.

She hated them and preferred to hang out with her dogs but her looks made for a much easier first encounter with people.......shame she hates people.

To this day she still hangs out with her dog which keeps biting me, has a preference for the more outcast types and still hates cheese.

They had a herd instinct that we aspies don't have. They did their hair and makeup and wore clothes like the other "pretty people". They had the fitting in bug. If you gel with the crowd and fit in you'll be popular.