Physical Appearence

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I think you're better treated by people if you're attractive, and you can coast on it, but you'll still be victimized and seen as a child by most if you don't understand the social game.

I can't help but notice that it does seem prettier people get most of the attention.

I remember being amongst a group of "friends" and only the pretty ones were being pursued by both sexes whether it was flirting or just talk. I've seen a lot of this happen even when I'm in line, the pretty girl will be the first person noticed by a person at a food or market stand.

I'm sorry you're having a hard time.

Note well: being gorgeous does not ensure happiness.
When I was younger, everyone said I was gorgeous, and yet I still could not seem to happily make friends as much I yearned to and as I saw others doing. Of course, this was before AS was a diagnosis, so I couldn't figure it out. (In fact, I still couldn't figure it out until this past June...!)

Shoot for unique talents or fields or being nice and helpful, if you can--- I've known good-looking people who were not nice, so I didn't like them!

Nearly every "pretty" person I have known really sucked as a human being.

Being pretty means that these people have never had to do much in their entire life socially, people come to them and kiss their a$$. Their brains and souls remain somewhat undeveloped. Panic sets in for these folks when they get older and lose their good looks to the ravages of time.

I have been "pretty" when in my 20s, "ugly" as a confused teen. Being pretty is only an asset when you also have a warm heart and a caring personality. It doesn't do you a whole lot of good otherwise. You'll just get hit on by men who want to do you because it's what guys do, try to get with the pretty ones. They'll still leave you in the morning, same as if you were ugly.

It's only benefit is that you can glide through social situations a bit easier, although the women will be hating on you and saying catty things, and the guys stare with a dumb look on their faces.

My rambling point is this: You would do far better to concentrate on the strengths you have, and developing your life to it's fullest extent. Learn to love yourself. This typically requires a point-of-view adjustment. Stop using the point-of-view given to you by this looks-obsessed NT culture, and start realizing that there are as many kinds of beauty in people as there are stars in the heavens, each one a gem in itself.

Sowlowsolo, you have come to the very crux of the idea of "beauty". As the old saying goes, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

I am the taller older one in my picture, and my NT daughter is the other one. I'll share some of my past with you. When I was a kid, I was the only "dark" child in my wonder-bread white school. I had frizzy wild hair, a big nose, I was skinny, and I had zero social skills. I was picked on mercilessly. There were some kids in the neighborhood who were not allowed to play with me because they thought I was black, which is kind of funny when you think about it, but it sure didn't seem funny at the time. Their parents would glare at me if they saw me, and all I did was exist. I had kids tell me that they would kill themselves if they looked like me. My family picked on me at home as well, because I wasn't the social cute girly-girl they had envisioned that I should be. There was no respite from it, and nobody EVER gave me any compliments of any kind, just put-downs. My mother was embarrassed of me, and more than once embarrassed me in public. She never bought any of my school pictures, because, as she put it, I wasn't "photogenic". I am not making this up.

I used to read that old story "The Ugly Duckling" and totally relate to it. At the end of the story, the ugly duckling that everybody made fun of became this beautiful swan. I didn't think that part of the story would ever come true for me, but there was a tiny glimmer of hope inside my poor confused brain that maybe it would happen when I got older. I had that little bit of hope to hold on to, that the future would somehow be different if I could just survive being a kid in a world that shunned me and made me the butt of it's jokes just because I existed on it. I had to have a least a little hope, because a life with no hope is like a living death.

As I started to get older, all the other girls became busty, and I remained flat as a pancake. Just another excuse for somebody to make fun of me, and boy did they. No beautiful swan was emerging, just more taunts and misery at school and home. My brothers were embarrassed that their only sister was a real dog, and a weirdo to boot. They picked on me incessantly, but not in a friendly way, in a mean way. My parents turned a blind eye to it all, and nobody stood up for me. NOBODY. I remember getting into a fight with a neighbor girl, and my brothers were cheering on the neighbor.

I began to realize that I was on this earth alone, and abandoned any hope that my own family actually gave a rat's ass about me and my problems.

However, I still was merely existing. I got through high school, although I'm not sure how. I did have a few boyfriends who were also on the fringe socially. I married a man 15 years older than me. I always felt that he married me more for the age difference than any true attraction. I remember his mother telling me that her handsome son was always having real cute women hit on him, cute ladies with blond hair, and she couldn't understand why he married someone like me. She actually said that.

After my oldest daughter was born, I remember going to a halloween party and having somebody mention what a great fake nose I had and where did I get it. I had enough of people's nasty remarks about my Roman nose, so I went and had it reshaped surgically. I didn't do it to be pretty, but so that I would no longer have to worry about any more snide comments.

After I had it done, I left my husband. His exact words? "Oh great, now that you're actually decent looking, you decide to leave."

It became my mission at that point to get a college education, and I decided that I was going to reinvent myself. I was no longer the ugly, pathetic aspie without a friend in the world. I was going to be like I was a cute cheerleader type, full of life and bubbly, like how one is who has never experienced even one hellish day of a life such as what I had been through up to that point. It was just a game of pretend to me.

Oddly enough, it worked. I had guys ask if I had been a cheerleader in high school. LOL, if they only knew!! I kept my pain and anger inside. I would be hanging around with college pals, and some poor fat or otherwise downtrodden girl would walk by, and they would say the nastiest things, and I would get so angry at them. Who were they to establish what is beautiful and what isn't? Most of them were not exactly beautiful either, and this hypocrisy drove me crazy. The way men look at women as an object to be judged still gets my back up and makes me want to rip them a new one.

I majored in biological psychology in college, because I knew something was wrong with me besides just being a weirdo. I still felt ugly, although I had guys and even professors hitting on me at this point. When they did that, I was always shocked and a bit suspicious. I wanted a nerd for a boyfriend, but the nerds wouldn't talk to me, they were as suspicious about my motives as I was about other's. I did have a lot of fun during that time, and I did my best to shake loose of a past that was always right under the surface. I still felt like the ugly duckling underneath, and I felt like nothing next to the cute college girls.

I had a long way to go! Long story short, as time went on, I married an NT who never understood me as I really was, he only knew the part on the outside. We had a daughter (who is in my profile pic). We never connected intellectually, which is what happens when you hide your true self from everybody. The marriage lasted 11 years, until I decided that I was tired of pretending and was just going to be myself, warts and all. LOL! He started an affair with some lady at his work. It's a real ugly story and I won't bore anybody with it. However, the best thing about that whole 11 years is that I have an NT daughter who was always pretty, who never once suffered the intense emotional pain and degredation that I had to endure. I have raised to her to exceptionally empathetic, kind to others and accepting of all differences. She is the child who will stop the others from teasing a child who is different, and she has stepped in more than once in school when a lone aspie has been cornered in the lunch room by bullies. She knows my story and so makes it her business to be kind to everyone, especially the ones who are vulnerable loners.

The woman you see in my picture has gone through hell and back. I should market tee-shirts that say "I survived a childhood with Asperger's Syndrome on the Planet of The A$$holes". The most wonderful thing about being in my 40s now is that I no longer give a damn about social things, or what other people think about how I look. What's odd is, now that I no longer care, I'm starting to really look good. I can go outside and enjoy the sunshine, trees and flowers and not give a hoot if I look perfect before stepping outside my door.

And now that I no longer care, I can see past everything to the basic truth about beauty. Yes, there is a plastic outside beauty that the media keeps rubbing our faces in, but the real beauty does come from someplace deep inside, and if you let it out, it does transform your outside looks into something gorgeous.
When you help people in need, when you rescue and care for lost or hurt animals, when you are there for a friend who's down, when you can look a person who has wronged you square in the eye and without a bit of malice say, "I forgive you", then you are truly beautiful. This is the truth of it. Don't let the media, or other mean-spirited idiots, decide for you that it is something else.

Thank you for sharing your life with me for this moment. x

Sowlowsolo, thanks for the thank you

I was afraid that I had become a "thread-killer". I know, I gave a lot of personal information, but if opening up my own pain helps you to deal with yours, then I'm more than happy to do it. A lack of self-esteem in a woman is not only a handicap, but an endless source of pain and isolation. You literally CAN build it up yourself, but it takes time and patience. Be kind to yourself in lots of little ways, and understand that every one of us has a right to pursue happiness. I support each and every one of us aspies in that pursuit.

To the O.P.: I also have a lot of "beauty" issues. It's not a total obsession or a special interest, but I'm definitely a little messed up about it and have very high standards, which I don't quite live up to. I've started a few threads about it, one in the "Women's Section". I am undiagnosed as well (when I was young, AS was unheard of), so when I had more problems than my peers making friends, having boyfriends and/or getting jobs, I guess I just started to assume that it was because of my looks. I went on a mission to try and look "perfect". Even though I now know my problems are more likely due to a difficulty in picking up social cues, the "beauty" thing is so rigidly stuck in my brain, I can't seem to get away from it. (Although, perfection issues seem to crop up in all aspects of my life).

Actually, for a short time last year, I was feeling good about my looks for the first time in my life. This only lasted about 6 months, after which I was diagnosed with cancer. When I did chemotherapy, I lost all my hair, (including eyelashes and eyebrows), my stomach got marred from 3 operations, and my body just looks different to me now- (though the hair is coming back again). It seems a shame, just when I was finally starting to feel good about myself! So these "body issues" are coming back to haunt me again. Ah well, can't win.

Anyway, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I can understand and relate to this obsession, especially in the culture we live in.