The Side Effects of a Glow up

Life is easier on the hot? Who knew? Certainly not me.

Every person we meet performs a split-second calculation on our looks.

Is that good face? How many nostrils - and, for that matter, do they bring out the lobes? How much face? How much reserve energy does it store?

The result frames the way the world interacts with us and the way we interact with the world.

After a youth spent fat and/or ugly, I went through a pretty luminous glow-up - and, trust me on this, life’s better when you’re hot. 

I was one of those babies that hot grown-ups lay into the moment the car door’s closed. As a young boy, my adult-sized features were packed into the surface area of an infant face. 

Throughout my teenage years, I was largely a tubby fuggler, too. My ugliness wasn’t just inside my head, but also on the front of it, as I had a pretty strong base of empirical data.

“You’re so fucking ugly,” other kids at secondary school would say to me. Thanks, appreciate the frank and forthright feedback - I’ll go ahead and carry that insecurity to the grave then. 

The first girl I ever kissed was mortally ashamed. She messaged me on MSN the next day to clarify the Lambrini and darkness, rather than god-forbid any attraction, had led to this lightning bolt coming-of-age moment of mine. 

Eventually, I grew into my face; however, as adulthood came around, I soon grew out of it. Sometimes I got attention from girls, but only a kind of grim curiosity at the spectacle of me tearing through a pastie. 

I’d be grafting away, only to forever end up the decoy in a dance-floor mating standoff. Normally, quite understandably, losing out to some raging metrosexual with a major case of better-face. 

Being as I was quite hard-going on the eye as beings go, I had to showboat for attention. Although, any interest my nonsense drummed up was still met with immediate suspicion. 

Growing up an ugly duckling messes with your head. Years later, even half-fuckable goslings can’t shake the feeling any admirer’s been put up to it with a couple of bottles of Fanta fruit twist.

Of course, it’s important to remember that beauty is more than skin deep - there’s always subcutaneous fat to consider.

In my mid-twenties, the only thing my sorry ass was flirting with was morbid obesity. I could have applied for state benefits, had I the get-up-and-go. Of course, I had aspirations. But, try as I might, my fat hand could never mine the last sour cream shards from that darn Pringles can. 

Eventually, I grew tired of panting in stairwells. So, after a year of half-smirks in budget gyms and driveby-heckles on cold morning runs, I got into a different shape. 

For the very first time in my life, the size of my skull seemed anatomically sustainable. My swollen frame was so top-heavy that I was still panting in stairwells - but damn, did I look slightly better doing it. 

Then something strange started happening. That unattainable breed of gym women started watching me sweat - not out of the usual pity or repulsion, but something else, something new. 

Next, I caught a string of middle-aged women biting their lower lips at me, one untended hosepipe short of slapstick horniness. For a good while, I put it down to a particularly uplifting spell of paranoia, but the evidence began to mount. Not that I could ever see it myself, but, it seemed, against all odds… I was hot.

Then things got stranger still. Firstly, the women in my masturbation fantasies stopped belittling me. Secondly, I realised actual people were treating me differently, too. 

Apparently, the world smiles on hot people. In every shop, the staff were just that bit nicer to me, that bit more accommodating, as if I’d unwittingly joined some back-scratching secret society. The phenomenon is not exclusive to those scheming to do away with your trousers either. From what I experienced, all humans are programmed to favour attractiveness.

As an all-around worse sight, people are generally less pleased to see you. A barely perceptible look of disappointment appears on the face of every single person you meet. With a face that looks like a million dollars of debt, it feels like your appearance alone has made their day just that bit worse. 

Another odd byproduct of hotness is flirtatious laughter, whether or not a joke meets the basic requirement of being funny. Every half-formed gag is met with all-out pandemonium. Hahahaha stop it, you! Silly. A few times a girl laughed when I just stating bland fact. Haha you absolutely kill me. That reminds me, actually, I need to extend my network rail card, too. Hahaha you are just too much! I found the whole thing quite unsettling. 

It’s easy to see how a lifetime of rigged interactions leaves most of them witless. Tap dancing for scraps of attention is the only proven way to develop a personality. There’s nothing purer than the laughter the ugly earn - and, believe you me, there are no free lunches for the drop-dead obese. 

Another part of life the hot take for granted is the drip-fed ego boost of daily attraction. As a fatty, and furthermore, a boombatty, nobody so much as glances your way - ever. The larger a person becomes, the less visible they are. Passers-by sense that outline billowing away in their peripherals and filter you out of consideration completely. 

Plus, as a conventionally-unattractive person, there are none of these little games the fuckable play to entertain themselves on public transport. Everyone stealing glances at each other or staring past some symmetrical commuter’s eye-line to catch them out. 

People are generally flattered if they catch a good-looker sneaking a peak at them. However, if it’s a member of late 80’s body-positive hip-hop flop ‘MC Lard & the Fugly Bunch’, the exact same behaviour creeps them out. 

Obviously, there’s way more to life than our decorative casing. Nevertheless, it’s annoying hearing genetic miracles preach on Instagram that ‘it's what's on the inside that counts’. Maybe fall down a fire escape and let me know how it impacts your year-on-year growth?

It is what’s on the inside that counts, except, that is, when it comes to the most significant determiner in reproducing. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but we’re all pretty much beholden to the same universal metrics of fuckability.

The way desirability affects people’s lives isn’t ever really acknowledged. Life’s way easier on the hot. The better-looking somebody is, the less likely they are to get bullied into an introvert. If you didn’t crash-land in the ugly tree, there’s no way you can relate - not yet, anyway. But, just you wait, old age is coming for you, hot stuff.  

I’m no better. Now I’ve had a taste, I want to be hot, again - and forever. But I’ll probably bald away the last of my attractiveness soon enough. Here’s hoping what’s left of my fatter-than-life personality will cushion the landing. At the very least, I’ve had plenty of practice.