People are fired up over this woman's letter about her 'ugly friends'
A woman recently wrote an anonymous letter to “Dear Therapist,” a NY Mag advice column, asking how she can help her “two friends who would not be described as conventionally attractive” find love.
Seriously.
The letter, which should have contained a trigger-warning for its “Mean Girls” style of logic, begins with the woman describing herself and her friend group as “very attractive, slim and fit” before expressing concern for two single girlfriends who she believes, fail to live up to her warped standard of beauty.
Here’s the full letter. We’ve bolded segments that are particularly problematic/nausea inducing.
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Please bear with me as I try to give some context for what is going to sound very unpleasant. I am a reasonably attractive woman in her early 30s. I have a long-term, doting partner and we are extremely happy in our relationship. I am part of a female friendship group that would typically be considered very attractive, slim, and fit. Most of us have long-term partners and when we go out, most of us are never short of propositions from male suitors.
My problem is this: I have two friends who would not be described as conventionally attractive. They are both longing for a partner and a family, and as we all get farther into our 30s, this is becoming increasingly problematic.
All I want for them is to be happy, and it’s making me so sad to see such wonderful people being constantly rejected and humiliated in the dating scene. It also seems particularly unfair to me that so many of our mutual friends are objectively beautiful women and receive what is almost an embarrassing amount of attention from men. The comparison is drawn, and it’s obvious what the problem is for these two lovely friends.
I have done my best to listen and be empathetic, I encourage them to find hobbies and ways to meet men outside of our social circle, but they are both at a point now where I would say that they are suffering from some level of depression. I am constantly begging them to seek the help of a therapist so that they can learn to love themselves despite the fact that much of male society thinks they are not worth loving, but they ask me what use that could possibly be when what they truly want is a partner and a family. I’m stuck. I’ve repeated the same encouragement so many times that I have nothing left to say.
I am widely considered to be an honest friend, sometimes even brutally so. I want to support my friends through the difficulty of what they are experiencing but I often find myself saying something flippant in order to avoid the reality of the situation. I want to know how I can help these two loving, worthwhile women. I am tired of seeing them suffer and want to help them to help themselves. I hope I don’t sound heartless when I say they are not “pretty” but I think their success rate in the dating world speaks for itself — they often can’t get past a first date. Please help me!
SMH.
We’ve all met women like this. Maybe at one point in time, we’ve been this woman. The one who believes that fitting into the conventional Western definition of beauty is the only way to hook a man. Better yet, that landing a man and gaining male attention is the only measure of a woman’s worth.
Its times like this advice columns should publish names and addresses so we could locate this woman in the shallow end of the swimming pool and put her in contact with the therapist she so desperately believes her single friends need. More importantly, we should locate her single friends and tell them to kick this “concerned friend” to the curb, wash your hands from the trash, flip your hair and never look back.
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Lori Gottleib, the column therapist did her best to politely read this emotionally stunted woman in her 30s by pin-pointing holes in her logic. Gottleib writes:
“How do you explain the statistical majority of women in the world who aren’t “very attractive, slim, and fit” — and yet somehow find themselves married to men who presumably consider them “worth loving”? Observe any public place that’s not a pickup scene — the post office, Costco, the DMV, the TSA line at the airport — and look at the preponderance of women who might not fit the “very attractive, slim, and fit” description but have wedding rings on their fingers or boyfriends holding their hands. Next time you’re jogging around a park on a lovely Sunday, take a look around you. Look at all the average-looking people! Look at all of these not-conventionally-hot people sitting with their partners and families, laughing or kissing or chasing their kids across the grass.”
Gottleib closes by pointing out the dangers of using attention from men (or women) as validation of a person’s worth. It can be particularly troublesome for a woman on the other side of thirty who is knee deep in free-drinks and imagining her life as a Sex and the City episode, to one day, have it all disappear. Gottleib calls the “concerned friend” to action, writing,
“I want to suggest, DTH, that you question your assumptions about men and women and attraction and worth, not just for your two friends’ sakes, but also for yours. Eventually, you too will lose your power to draw male eyeballs in the way you do now. One day you’ll be sipping drinks at a table next to some very attractive 25-year-olds, or walking down the street with your teenage daughter and her friends, and find that the propositions from male suitors are directed elsewhere. And by the time that happens, I hope you will have discovered that you are still worth your partner’s love.”
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