#2: Lie to yourself about the attention (good and bad) that you are getting.
But truth will not be mocked and this truth—that all these people find you beautiful, even the ones that mistreat you—seems best pretended not to be there, because the moment you acknowledge it, a question arises: ‘What if—by being honest with myself, by facing the facts—I have to take responsibility for this “beautiful problem” I have? It might mean facing facts I don’t want to face, hurting people I don’t want to hurt (at least not now, not while the fun is happening or while the nastiness is happening). It might even mean hurting my pride or their pride. Yes, they would—if they were listening-in on this inner conversation—argue back that the reason I’m high up on all their social lists (or high up on their hate list) is not for anything so uncivilised as, I want her for myself.
But a thousand books and films have been made about it and the painful fact behind—for example —the ‘dumb blonde’ joke, is that we can’t cope with beauty and don’t want beautiful people to be smart, mature and insightful because then we have to face the truth of our own jealous pride and humbly abandon all attempts at manipulation. And they feel it from day one: the fact of our jealous intent to make them feel guilty about being beautiful. And worse, we (our society at large) implore them to let us play this dumb and stupid game for no other reason than to even-up what we perceive as an awful inequality that the universe has cruelly bestowed, or if not that, to at least take pity on us give us a piece of their action.
