Beauty and the Homely

What do people mean when they say: "Don't be so picky. They have great personalities"?
Are they on a charity mission for all the left over guys who weren't first picks for their looks?
Or are they telling me that I'm aiming too high for my own looks?
Or are they saying, "Sorry, we already married the hot ones. Good luck."

Because everyone who has told me that, without fail, had a hot spouse or boy friend.

My tiff here is, why am I expected to work so hard to look good but guys aren't being held to an equitable standard?  Even guys with natural good looks waste it through sheer laziness.

I already talked about coming from a macho family, but they are also a family of handsome people, cousins and all.
These aren't my words.
Every time a visitor would walk in and see the family portraits the first thing out of their mouth is: "Oh! You have a gorgeous family!" It's very flattering and annoying.
The annoying part started when my youngest brother was in....mmmm sixth grade and there was a neighbor who was smitten with him and LITERALLY every other sentence was, "Your brother is so HOT" Aaaaand, it was like that with many girlfriends since for all three brothers.

I worked at the dollar store for a year and a half in high school. When my brothers were going through jr. high and high school the kids from school would come in and say, "Hey! Are you so-and so's sister? Your brother is SO cute!" The annoying part ended when they all got married. (Sorry to disappoint ladies)

So, having that established, being comely in hygiene and dress for my family is important. I was a slow bloomer, I didn't wear make up till maybe my sophomore year because I thought the other girls looked like circus clowns. That and I was highly sensitive to how clothing fit. Any attractive clothing by default is usually uncomfortable. So it was all t-shirts and tennies for me. But, I painstakingly learned and adjusted to modest and attractive clothing even when I was ready to rip it off and burn it when it hiked up in the arm pits or was never long enough for my torso.

I learned how to do make up, an immaculate shave, primp, curl, and pamper. All because I would never attract the opposite gender if I didn't. For my brothers at least, looking good in the morning is easy.

If it's this easy for all guys, then WHY are they showing up for dates in shorts and flip flops with a three day old beard? I just spent an hour doing myself up to appease society's standard (within reason) they show up like I'm not worth ten minutes of their time even though they flirted their poor hearts out via text. What crawled up their tail pipe and died on the way over? (Their attitude upon arrival is a subject for another post.)

If it's shaving that's a pain then consider the difference of skin area that women versus men have to shave. There's got to be at least twelve square feet of skin on the legs to shave. Men's faces have what, half a foot? And let's not forget the arm pits, ladies who have to attend to the upper lip, the eye brows, arms, etc... so that can add up to nearly twenty square feet of skin women have to shave and the dudes can't shave a foot off their face? 

Haha. that sounded weird.

I think it's important to be attracted to your companion. What else would draw you together in the first place?  I think that's why the Disney classic "Beauty and the Beast" speaks to me. I grew up an ugly duckling so I know what its like to have guys' eyes glaze over and they stare at the air in front of you and they try to escape as politely as possible. Often not so polite. 

So now that I've put considerable effort into making myself "want-able" it seems unfair to have to drop or have LOW expectations for a potential spouse. It's like, taking a Ferrari and making it tow a dumpy camp trailer. Or having an Olympic athlete train for decades then expect him to dive into a kiddie pool and not have him be annoyed.

Basically, this rant is a ball of irritation caused by people telling me to lower my standards even though they didn't. Unless it was them that turned their homelies' into princes' but I doubt that.