I’m a beautiful woman by conventional standards in my country, (and I used to be not so beautiful) so the topic of physical beauty has always fascinated me. I have learned that men that say, “I’m not into beautiful women” to your face just want to DENY the power of beauty and gaslight you into believing that you don’t have any sort of power over them.

Generally, they might also do this with other traits of yours that he find threatening or disruptive to the him maintaining his self-presumed power superiority in the relationship.

It’s happened multiple times out of the blue and I start to wonder…Why the need to have this disclaimer with me? We weren’t even talking about anything remotely related to that!

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Examples:

- One of the guys I was dating for 6 months was always like, “You’re beautiful… all of my ex’s were also beautiful although I’m not into physical beauty.” This one was a high achieving athlete but he was super insecure, always told me that he's not so physically attractive and constantly asked me why I chose him. Every time I dressed up or took a nice photos he would be like, "other men would surely notice you".

- Another said to my face physical beauty is so vain after I told him that I’m aware I’m physically attractive because strangers have always remarked this to me. Long story short, he even had the nerve to debate with me about “beauty's curse” and was so sore about me pointing out his hypocrisy that he ended up saying, “You have at maximum another 10 years (for my physical beauty he meant)”. I was like WTF??

This one was also insecure and a covert narc, called himself a "polymath" and has a dark attitude toward almost anyone that has an upperhand on him in life.

- My ex-husband also has this self-proclaimed "indifference" toward beautiful women. He said he’s not into beautiful women, which as a general rule I always found suspicious. Sometimes afterwards, he shared that “ugly women simply are invisible to men and men just look pass them as if they were ghosts.” So I realized that to him being beautiful is a requisite to be relevant at all in his life, at the same time, he maintains that me being beautiful doesn't have any sort of effect on him.

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From my experience being beautiful can be a privilege, but it's something anyone can achieve with patience and research... so it's not that big a deal, anyone can be beautiful if they choose to. But then it is my business you know taking care of my beauty / dressing up / looking nice is like a hobby that I have, a thing I enjoy doing and getting better at. I'm not going to debate with anyone about it. I don't understand this need of men (in dating and other life aspects) to CONSTANTLY REMIND me that "what's in side is more important" "your soul is more beautiful" "I'm not attracted to physically beautiful women". Whatever!!! I don't want to explain my beauty and my interest in it and assure for them that I’m not dollying up for other men's attention.

AND I definitely don’t want to stop dressing up and be less beautiful as to look “humble” and prove that I am “not vain” in their eyes.🙄🙄🙄