What's worse in terms of one's looks/attractiveness?

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Kraftie:

Yes, there are some good looking older women, to be sure. I knew a woman in her fifties a few years ago who would put every woman my age to shame; she had a kind of Rubens-esque dark, plump beauty. She had such a pretty but shy smile - and manner - that I concluded nobody had ever told her how pretty she was before, which would be a crime.

Still, I think women my own age are usually better looking - just not mature enough and frankly too androgynous. I also don't like their dress sense, but let's not go there again.

Nope! I said before, I'd much rather be a beautiful swanling who becomes an ugly duck. Because being ugly at a young age deprives you of priceless social experiences: middle school slow-dance, ice cream dates, secretive kisses under the bleachers, prom, hookups, nightclub dancing, etc. While being ugly at an older age has a much lesser impact, if not a negligible one.

I probably have a picture, but I don't know where it is. About 11 years ago, I destroyed all photos of myself dated between high school and 23 or 24 (the years I looked the ugliest), that I could get my hands on, over 100 in total. (This didn't apply to large group photos where I'm not the focus.) About 15 of them remain, and most are at my parents' house. The rest are in my dresser somewhere, probably in bad condition by now, scattered among various junk.

Interestingly, today, one my best friends is a 25-year-old woman, and I'm 36. She's incredibly fun to be around, and cute too. I very much value her friendship, because the way we hang out is similar to how I wish I could have done in my 20's, but never got to. Silly things like dancing on the sidewalk to a street musician, drinking vodka-laced Slurpees, and walking around the city blocks just for the heck of it. I probably wouldn't date a college woman, because that's just too damn young for me; I'd feel like I'm cradle-robbing.

The anorexic look. I want a person who's healthy and more to the plump side.

I'd like to add something about the girl I mentioned in my last post. My friendship with her is almost a lucky fluke. When I met her, the circumstances were far from conducive for a long-time friendship or a relationship. First of all, we met on Tinder. Second, she's 11 years younger than me (but she might be my neurological age). Third, I met her at the beginning of summer, not exactly a "relationship season". So honestly, I didn't expect her to stick around in my life for very long; I thought it'd be a fling of sorts with accompanying fond memories, not unlike "All Summer Long" by Kid Rock.

But after I hung out with her a few times, she won me over without really trying. She was very generous with the way she treated me: she introduced me to her friends, invited me to fun activities and events I had no idea existed, and made me feel welcome. In other words, she acted like a true friend, rather than someone who friend-zoned me. At the same time, my guy friends of 16 years found serious girlfriends, and started looking down on me because I was still single. Ironically, her interest in me strictly as a friend is what made me trust her: she wouldn't negatively change my life by becoming a part of it. So as a result, I bonded with her very quickly, and we went from new acquaintances to good friends in just a few months.

"But no sex?", you might ask. At the time in 2016, I was still sexing escorts, so lack of sex with her was no big deal; friendship was more important. A year later, I completely lost my sex drive, but still enjoyed having her in my life.

I'm a guy who thinks being bad looking when young is worse. Being bad looking when young can be bad for self-esteem & make it harder for the person to get ahead in life. Looks are very important when your 1st entering the workforce. You may have more friends who can help you with networking if your attractive & employers may be more willing to take a chance the attractive person with no experience than the ugly person with no experience, especially if the job involves interacting with the public a lot like having a customer service aspect. People tend to be more accepting in general of older people regardless of if they look good or not. Older people tend to have more experience with work & life stuff in general & their peers tend to be less judgemental about looks. Plus people have an easier time finding romantic relationships when their younger & chances are the person who looks good when their young will be in a serious romantic realtionship when they get older as they gradually start losing their looks. I think a large percentage of women would be accepting of their guy romantic partner losing their good looks. The guy's good looks may of been a factor for women getting in romantic relationships when they were both younger but if they've been together for a while the women probably started to care about other qualities than looks in their current partner. Women probably also care about looks in their partner less as they age even if they haven't been with their partner very long. Older women or older people in general tend to be more focused on other things when it comes to romantic relationships than looks.

That's very true! I forgot that part. Being ugly when young not only destroys your dating/sex life at a sensitive time (unless you hire escorts), it also puts a big damper into launching your career.

In fact, me being ugly during my college years was the reason I picked IT/computers as my career. I read or even heard somewhere that it's the only field where income and promotions didn't have a correlation with looks. So I picked that as my career. (Otherwise, I'd have picked business administration, or something else non-STEM.) In retrospect, it was a bad decision. I ended up working in very stressful jobs that had me contemplating suicide, until I got good at asserting myself, and now feel moderately happy in my current job. Plus, today, income in IT might be contingent on looks too. Only now, I aged into my looks, and make a lot more money with fewer hours than I made 10 years ago.

I remember going on my first cruise, by myself, in 2012, and expecting to be bullied or mistreated by other passengers. That's because even though I already aged into my looks by then, I was still thinking like an ugly guy. So imagine my shock when women flirted with me, men treated me with respect, and local cops in ports seemed sincerely interested in helping me (as opposed to seeing me as an easy patsy). That cruise was what helped me realize I wasn't ugly anymore; aging worked in my favor. Although looking back on other experiences a year or two prior, I probably started looking better even before that cruise.

This is me at 14. I wasn’t ugly. I dressed nice.

Is anybody able to get the links?

I'm not.

I mean when you're autistic does it really make any difference? not to toot my own horn but I'm pretty good looking by all accounts and I had girls show interest in me and try to engage with me at school but I just froze up and ignored them because of my crippling social anxiety and because I didn't know how to respond or have a conversation with a girl. To be honest I was too invested in gaming at the time to even care about girls all that much but even if I did it wouldn't have mattered. I guess not all autists are as socially stunted and anxiety-ridden as me but I could inhabit the body of Brad Pitt in his prime and it wouldn't help me at all.
I don't accept the implication that unless you're good looking you grow up lonely and sex-starved either. You may not always be able to pick from the cream of the crop so to speak but I think most NTs at least have some relationship and sexual experience by the time they finish HS and almost all of them by the time they finish university.