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Do You Ever Feel Ugly?

TheSpectatingLoner said:
I missed this. All I can say is that those photos that put me in the 99.5% of humanity... take a million takes. All that just to look okay. Perhaps if you saw what generally comes up when I step before a camera, you'd get my insecurity. There's not a day that someone doesn't whip out a camera and I end up looking completely hideous in the photo.
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Oh, I understand THAT. I have "bad photo face", too. Not long ago, I decided I was going to literally PRACTICE smiling for a photograph. I set up my camera in front of me, and tried about 150 expressions while taking photos. And I liked...three of them? The other 147 ranged from maybe-passable to hideous. I'm just not a photogenic person. (And I've since forgotten how to make those three facial expressions - must be time for more practice.)

But with me, at least, it seems the camera is to blame. Or, more accurately, my reaction to it. Someone asks a bunch of us to get together for a picture, and the camera person says "OK, smile...smile for REAL, Lex...LEX, NOT a stupid smile, a REAL smile...GODDAMNIT LEX!" Every. Single. Time. :) But take a candid photo of me, and you have a halfway decent chance of catching me looking OK. Not great, of course, but not terrible. But if it's a posed photo, I just sort of start overthinking the fact that a camera is in front of me, and I try to deliberately force a decent expression on my face...and it's like trying to force yourself to breathe correctly. It doesn't work at all as well as doing it naturally. Now, if only I knew how. :)

Lex
 
^^^
Most everyone takes bad photo's. Digital Camera's are EVIL... That's why Photoshop was invented.
 
Well, it isn't a matter of "some of my photos look weird" because now, in the age of digital cameras, we have a ton of them. Grab my parents' photo album, and start looking back through the years. I've simply always failed at doing the "smile for the birdie" camera smile that everybody else seems able to throw on at a moment's notice. Even in the staged family photos when I was seven, the best ones have me in a goofy smile that at best can be thought of as "endearing". And that sort of wore off around age eight. :)

Lex
 
I wouldn't say I ever feel monstrously unattractive, but I don't really consider myself to be all that attractive. Then again, we're our own worst critic. I have a friend who is incredibly attractive (both his personality and his looks :-)) and he thinks I'm cute... coming from someone of his calibre, I figure I'm not so bad looking :-)
 
TheSpectatingLoner said:
I photograph far worse than most. I say this being someone who has extensive experience with a camera and is constantly photographing others. That's generally how these things start. When I go over photographs involving a dozens of friends and realize I'm the only one who looks God awful.

And I'm not using hyperbole either, when I say I take hundreds of photos to find a few that look good. I literally will set up a tripod and put it on multiburst hoping something looks good, only to pick out one if I'm lucky.

It's whatever. Certainly not the end of the world, but it does suck being fugly. Especially in the industry I'm stuck in at the moment.
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You have hair stylist syndrome. Have you ever noticed that most of the best stylists can make anyone else look incredible with only scissors, 8 minutes and some kid's leftover glue stick from art class, but they end up shaving their own heads or they have some sort of odd mop of unruly nonsense going on.

If you are in any way a good photographer, you will by definition be unable to pose in front of a camera with a natural pleasing expression on your face. It's kind of a curse or something.
 
I never fail to feel monstrously unattractive on the 27th day of any month whose name ends in "uary". #-o
 
I've often felt ugly throughout the course of my life. I think low self-esteem and insecurity is extremely common for gay men. I live in a gay village and work at a gay bar and it's all around me... Beautiful, beautiful people are also all around me, all the time. There are tons of guys with perfect hair, skin, teeth and bodies with a gorgeous face. It's hard not to feel like I don't stack up. That my 5 year relationship ended with my ex telling me he was no longer physically attracted to me hasn't helped me these last few months either.

I also work in the serving industry like TSL and I do understand what he is saying about beautiful people. It's part and parcel with the industry and while it really has no effect on quality of service, bars still tend to hire big breasted bitches and less often muscle bound jocks to work in their stores. It is also true you get better tips depending on your looks. While with my ex I was about 30 lb heavier than I am now and at the gay bar I work at I got pretty decent tips. After we broke up, I shed most of my extra weight and 3 months after we split my tips were 15 - 20% higher on average.

I still feel like I look awful in every picture I'm in and I still feel very overweight even when my friends are telling me I need to stop losing... When guys with hot bodies message me on Grindr I assume they're having eyesight problems and ignore them... but I've used that as inspiration to go to the gym, eat healthy and hopefully get myself the pecs and abs I've been wanting for Christmas... I try to tell myself I'm never going to be the prettiest, but I'll also never be the ugliest. It's a constant struggle and it's one that I think many many gays endure.. after all the other crap we have to endure growing up.. The fact that gay men can be some of the harshest, most judgmental critics of each other doesn't help.

Just telling someone to be happy with themselves is easy, actually doing it can be a real challenge. I recognize that I have image and other problems though and I try to work through them by keeping a rational perspective on things.. ie. my looks will only affect my success in one area of life and I've got so much else to focus on that is just as important. I can't always frame my life this way, but it helps when I can.
 
Well maybe he doesn't have the look he feels he wants to have, or feels unworthy to the attention he gets.

I sure as fuck can relate to both points, especially nowadays.
 
My avatar is me so you be the judge. It's a pub to be fair and most of the staff is not gorgeous. I was hired on my customer service skills I'm pretty sure; the manager knew me from another restaurant in the same chain that he also oversaw and asked me to switch locations to the village one. Either way, having a job there doesn't make me feel like I'm any better looking.


TheSpectatingLoner said:
^You actually are beautiful enough to GET a job in a gay bar?

I''m always amazed that someone that much higher on the totem pole than I am, lookswise, can actually feel upset about their looks. When I walk into gay bars, I'm pretty much invisible. Certainly not ever offered a job at one.
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"Gorgeous" isn't a term I would use for...well, anybody, really. If the OP or CTC were in a crowded room, they wouldn't pull my eye. But that just puts them in the same realm of about 99.99% of humanity. (I can literally count the number of times I've had that happened on the fingers of my left hand.) But they're both attractive, and yes, I'd totally do either of them. And geloge too, for that matter. :)

Lex
 
CTorontoC said:
My avatar is me so you be the judge. It's a pub to be fair and most of the staff is not gorgeous. I was hired on my customer service skills I'm pretty sure; the manager knew me from another restaurant in the same chain that he also oversaw and asked me to switch locations to the village one. Either way, having a job there doesn't make me feel like I'm any better looking.
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I think you're very handsome and attractive. I bet if you smiled it would be amazing.
 
Telling a person something that isn't true does not help a person. People told _________ he could be an escort. That was an exaggeration.

You can tell a person they look good and not over do it. You aren't helping a person by lying to them

Ctorontoc,
I really appreciate the guts I know it took to post your photo.
I think you look too serious. You could take the same photo and just have a half smile on your face. And as you can see, I need to take my own advice. (photo posted in album in my profile)
 
m1thousand said:
Telling a person something that isn't true does not help a person. People told _________ he could be an escort. That was an exaggeration.

You can tell a person they look good and not over do it. You aren't helping a person by lying to them

Ctorontoc,
I really appreciate the guts I know it took to post your photo.
I think you look too serious. You could take the same photo and just have a half smile on your face. And as you can see, I need to take my own advice. (photo posted in album in my profile)
Click to expand...

Not sure exactly how to take this comment lol... It took no guts at all for me to post my pic. I am not embarrassed by how I look, nor am I concerned about the judgements others have. A pic of me has always been my avatar here. I have been told by a few I should smile in my pictures and I probably should, but that pic has got me laid.. quite a bit so it can't be all that bad. I never have to msg others on Grindr and over 100 want to meet me on PoF but that wasn't really the point of what I said.

I still feel ugly sometimes and not so much other times. It just seems to be an internalized thing for many gay men because of what so many of us were subjected to in our youths. It's hard to have high self-esteem when your peers and society are constantly eroding your self worth when you're young. Like I said, I've tried to make it positive by channeling it into the gym and what not and now I have a body I'm not ashamed of. I hope to have a body to be proud of by the end of 2013 - a goal which isn't too far fetched.

Like G-lex said, 99.99% of men don't make me stop and drool. There are a lot of great bodies with perfect hair and teeth but they still don't have gorgeous faces. I figure if they're not making me drool, I'm probably not doing the same. I rarely see a guy and think he's stunning. Usually, I just find people attractive or colloquially - fuckable. Heck, there are Andrew Christian models who I think are just OK. I kind of feel like I'm rambling nonsensically at this point though... Everyone except the extremely egotistical feels ugly sometimes I think. Gay men more than most.
 
There are a lot of great bodies with perfect hair and teeth but they still don't have gorgeous faces.

^^^THIS is your problem. You are rating other people so of course you rate yourself.
 
CTorontoC said:
Not sure exactly how to take this comment lol... It took no guts at all for me to post my pic. I am not embarrassed by how I look, nor am I concerned about the judgements others have. A pic of me has always been my avatar here. I have been told by a few I should smile in my pictures and I probably should, but that pic has got me laid.. quite a bit so it can't be all that bad. I never have to msg others on Grindr and over 100 want to meet me on PoF but that wasn't really the point of what I said.

I still feel ugly sometimes and not so much other times. It just seems to be an internalized thing for many gay men because of what so many of us were subjected to in our youths. It's hard to have high self-esteem when your peers and society are constantly eroding your self worth when you're young. Like I said, I've tried to make it positive by channeling it into the gym and what not and now I have a body I'm not ashamed of. I hope to have a body to be proud of by the end of 2013 - a goal which isn't too far fetched.

Like G-lex said, 99.99% of men don't make me stop and drool. There are a lot of great bodies with perfect hair and teeth but they still don't have gorgeous faces. I figure if they're not making me drool, I'm probably not doing the same. I rarely see a guy and think he's stunning. Usually, I just find people attractive or colloquially - fuckable. Heck, there are Andrew Christian models who I think are just OK. I kind of feel like I'm rambling nonsensically at this point though... Everyone except the extremely egotistical feels ugly sometimes I think. Gay men more than most.
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Why is it that important that you make guys drool?
 
Ctorontoc,
I was probably was channeling myself when I thought it would take guts for you to post a photo of yourself.
Unlike you, I message other guys and very rarely get replies. So much so that I posted a thread asking others about their reply rate.

I'm glad it hadn't hindered you that way. Good for you. :-)
 
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