Poll: Self Image

yeah, i'm alittle overweight, and I got a cleft palate, sucks so yeah i'm ugly

Overweight no, probably because i'm pretty active with running and doing some kind of exercise everyday. Thats the only thing i really feel good about myself about. I know eventually when i get older i will start gaining more weight but don't really want to think about that. Ugly yes, I just can't find why people would find me attractive even though i get a lot of comments from people on my looks i feel like they don't mean a thing they're saying and are just saying to say something nice to me.

I'm just at the border of being overweight with a BMI of 25, but I don't consider myself too fat. Genetics accoount for 70% of peoples' weight. So I see no reason for feeling bad about being somewhat on the chubby side.
And no, I don't think I'm ugly although I might depart from the current Western beauty ideal in many respects. There are things I like about my appearance and things I'm less happy with.
But being social is not about appearance. I'm a little overweight and I have acne, but there are people who are really fat and have worse skin problems than I have and they have close frienships and a relationship. So, I shouldn't spend tome worrying about being ugly or anything.

People tell me I'm handsome, but I don't believe them.

My mother once told me I was unattractive. I'm glad I'm not a girl, or else it would've hurt 100 times more.

I would not consider myself attractive by any means; but I am the polar opposite of overweight. I am, last time I checked, 115 pounds, and I've been lead to believe that is very underweight for someone above 6 feet, but there is really no helping it. It is both a blessing and a curse I suppose. I can eat any amount of any type of food and never break 118 pounds. Drawback is windy days literally slow me down if I am walking somewhere. As far as looks go, I am probably the archetypal nerd.

Pardon me if I'm misunderstanding (I just joined), but are you guys just talking about physical attractiveness?

If so, then I'd say it depends on whether I'm feeling like $#%^ (I think I look like $#%^) or semi-confident (where I can be pretty objective about it and say I'm about a 5, maybe 7 if the rater doesn't mind 5" 7" guys).

My self esteem took a major beating when I was growing up. I was the kid everyone picked on, plus I had a severe overbite (one of my nicknames was "Snaggletooth"). My darling classmates called me stupid, ugly and a reject to my face. The few close friends I had I ended up losing since my family moved around so much. Thankfully I finally got braces at the age of 18, but I still feel like the stupid, ugly, awkward kid I was in high school. I exercise 4-5 times a week, more to keep myself from going insane than anything else. I'm about 145 pounds at 5'4", and I've lost a few pounds over the last few weeks.

No husband or boyfriend for me, I gave up on the thought of having one a long time ago. Count me in as asexual and I've given up hope for humanity as well. My free time is spent holed up in my apartment, working on my drawings, knitting, crocheting, writing, surfing the net, or reading. I don't go out unless I have to.

Well, I know I'm not overweight (I'm like a rail...) and I suppose I can be pretty in certain conditions. Oddly, my physical appearance is the only thing that hasn't been degraded by my harsh critisism... huh.

My father was kind enough to notice when my mother's sheltering behavior towards me caused me to put on weight(since I was not allowed to go anywhere or do anything out-of-doors), and he pointed it out to me with regularity and extreme prejudice.

He assured me that I was a fat ugly waste of skin and made sure that I knew. It was also apparently my fault that I was so fat and that I stayed in the house(apparently all the shouting and forbidding that my mother made about going outside passed over his head).

Fast forward twelve years. I exercise frenetically, am obsessed and paranoid about gaining weight, and hate myself intensely when I look in the mirror. My mind blocks out when people say that I am not a fat $#%^, and I refuse to believe them.

Just months ago I injured my knee bicycling.

Thanks, dad.