Yeah. Mothers are supposed to see the beauty in their children in ways the real world won't. That was a vulnerable moment where Donald needed his mother to pour into him, and she let him down.
My mother never said if I was handsome, or pretty, ugly, or homely. As a result, the first time I heard one of her friends compliment me by saying to her, "I think this one's the best looking of them all," I was taken aback. Growing up, I didn't question as to whether I was good looking or not. I was just me. And that worked out pretty good in the end.
I can’t decide how I feel about this. I don’t think it would’ve served him or would serve anyone for his mother to say your face is cute or you’re adorable or what a handsome boy…. As a mother, and as a very average looking woman, with average looking children, I think I would respond… with a question. Is this important to you? Or why is this important to you? or can you define ugly? Or maybe the most important question to ask would be what would you like your face to look like? And why?
For me this falls under the category of not commenting on someone else’s body. Even people largely considered to be “terrible” (I realize this can be incredibly variable.) I’m referring to the many times people have made nasty comments about Elon musks body or donald trumps body. I dislike both of them. They are terrible humans, in my opinion. But I won’t negatively comment on their bodies because that shouldn’t be how we criticize people.
Oooh, great point and reminder! It’s misplaced anger but also distracts from the very real harm that these terrible men cause. Every word out of my mouth against these men should be about their heinous actions and not their looks.
Fair point. I feel like combining Musk and Trump in a sentence is similar to aligning Putin and Biden in a sentence. The only real similarity is their gender. Hence comment. However, your point still stands above.
"Please stand down"?You personally liked the comment from a person who described Donald Trump (same Scottish Presbyterian heritage origin as Mr Sutherland)and Elon Musk as "terrible human beings ".Trump is fair game for sure, but Elon Musk hardly comes anywhere near that description.
For a long time I was convinced I was ugly, partly due to competition with my sister who most people consider the pretty one. I was sure I was ugly as a child. I started wearing makeup at 12 and to this day I won't leave the house without it. I was also resentful of men for many years because they don't get held to the same beauty standards as women, and decided weirdly that men don't have feelings and can't be emotionally hurt. It look years of life and marriage to a kind and principled man for me to work out my conditioning. No one deserves to be called ugly, ever.
I thought the rodent man article was awful but it did curate all the men I find very hot. I like interesting faces. A similar vein of articles popped up in the early aughts with Adrian Brody as the poster boy but they were labelled preternaturally beautiful. Much nicer way to put it. But also let’s not put it any way! Let’s just say we think Cillian Murphy is hot. Because he is.
I’ve always felt similarly about women. A unique look plus charisma or intelligence is always the more attractive option. The conventional beauty standards that Hollywood (or nowadays, social media) pushes feel like the aesthetic version of McDonalds- mass produced to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Would love it if society could get to the point where telling someone “your face has character” is heard as “you have a je ne sais quoi that makes you uniquely interesting and attractive”
I feel like I personally know the pain of this very well. The first, and only girl I dated for a long while, told me that because of how I looked she could never see herself wanting to kiss me or be in a relationship with and once in an community college class, the instructor was talking about relationships and looked at me and said, I think we can all agree that Jonathan is out of the game. It felt like the whole class nodded their head.
Those are just two examples of many that still stay with me even in my 40's. I host a comedy show and at the beginning I always breathe with the audience and tell them you are enough. I would never want anyone going through life feeling less than like I have.
Thank you so much! I am 💛 And I read your piece right before going to a storytelling workshop and was able to share all the feelings that came up and it was very healing to be witnessed in that way. I also went to my very first speed dating event last night and three people want to see me again! :)
Thank you again for sharing what you shared, Mikala. It feels like it came at the perfect time!
Appreciate this! It’s mind boggling that we all think it’s ok to call someone ugly, and publicly, no less. I read in another great article on here that that awful rodent article basically included only men who, 100 years ago, would not have been considered white. It’s coded but it’s also much much worse than calling them ugly. Ugh.
This is so so great!!! It never ceases to shock me how comfortable people are with cruelty towards people’s appearances, especially men. My boyfriend has described coworkers and even strangers making rude and hurtful comments about his appearance, it’s such a common occurrence and it’s baffling to me. People need to have the same basic respect for men’s feelings as women.
Fantastic essay, and this is something that should really be talked about more. Donald’s experience really is heart-wrenching. We too often treat men like unfeeling, stoic pieces of meat, when a lot of male violence is caused by men who feel inadequate and/or misunderstood. We should talk more about what hurts men, not less, if we want to begin solving society’s problems.
Good article! It is a pretty weird double standard. I remember a while ago, I got into some weird beef with some people on the internet, and despite being ostensibly very progressive people who would be deeply opposed to making fun of the way people look in other contexts, they found it perfectly acceptable to comment negatively on the weirdness of my face. Now, I didn't really mind--I'm not particularly self-conscious about that--but it is sort of bizarre that the same people who would be the most zealous in criticizing body shaming often think it's perfectly okay to make fun of the weird-looking face of someone they don't like.
This also feels like part of the issue of having to constantly churn out content. I wonder if so many of the bad takes that I read would exist without the pressure to produce. I see it more often with people who write about “culture” which devolves into shit talking. Being mean and critiquing bodies is inexcusable and lazy.
I'm a 44 YO demiboy and have struggled with disordered eating for decades. My own self-imposed standards of appearance that were ascribed to men by society writ large, are heavy and unrelenting and there isn't a day that I struggle to look in the mirror.
I'm pretty sure I'm not revoltingly ugly, but there's always a general fear of being an offensive sight to someone else because of my body and appearance. I meticulously make sure I'm clean and fresh all the time to avoid being "the greasy fat guy" stereotype I have implanted in my brain. I literally cannot look at a scale without feeling my guts boiling into my chest cavity. If I make eye contact with myself in the mirror for too long, I either look away quickly, get nauseous, or cry.
So, yeah. I see that hurt in his face and eyes. And I feel this piece. Thanks for helping to remind me that this i didn't create this problem and I'm not at fault. 💚🍄🌱
I'm glad it made you feel good. You 100% deserve to feel good in yourself! And if the scale or the mirror makes you feel bad, just don't look at 'em. No one says we have to interact with scales and mirrors all the time.
I hear you, absolutely. After all that struggle, we normally don't even own a scale in our house, but my partner needs one for monitoring of a health condition. It sucks because my brain is trained to seek it out and use it to evaluate myself based on a number. (Which I also know is bullshit)
Sutherland, please somehow let me know you died knowing lots of women thought you were basically iconically sexy. Thank heaven that what makes a person appealing and attractive is not based entirely their appearance, as evidenced by billions of relationships and crushes through the ages. Oh, the boys I favored. Talk about a gamut. Sutherland’s mischievous smile and penetrating eyes were magical. I always secretly needed to know if his sense of humor was every bit as good as I imagined. Ooo 🔥
I’ve always had a lot of insecurities about my looks, especially my Acne and how weedy (think) I am. I used to get a lot of shit at school about it. To be fair, I gave as good as I got and more, so I can't complain, but since puberty, my confidence has never recovered. I’ve got my first girlfriend and I'm always so desperate for her to tell me she thinks I’m attractive because literally no one else ever has (we met when I was 23). She had to be the one to kiss me because I literally couldn't imagine that anyone would want to be 😂
those “small dick” “shrimp dick” jokes have never sat right with me and i hate that it takes empathy to sometimes understand the impacts of these comments cause for most of my teenage years i was aggressively teased for having practically none existent breasts. It’s like why make jokes of people on things they have no control over??? it’s hurtful and MEAN!
we’d all be better off being kinder and more considerate and respectful of each other.
i don’t know how relevant this is as an additional comment but i had a powerful crush on Donald Sutherland as a teenager birthed by the Hunger Games franchise, lol i was a teenage girl lusting over a much older man (he was just that damn fine to me!) and when i looked up pictures of a younger him i wasn’t disappointed either, it’s shocking to learn that he didn’t feel so great about his looks. 💔
"Your face has character," from a mother, is gut wrenching!
Definitely tough to hear :(
Perhaps; but imagine how his life might have otherwise played-out, had his mother shielded him with a reply swaddled in dishonesty?
He’ll be harder to miss, for the legacy in work left to remember him by; but still, greatly..
Rest in Peace Donald; well done …
Yeah. Mothers are supposed to see the beauty in their children in ways the real world won't. That was a vulnerable moment where Donald needed his mother to pour into him, and she let him down.
My mother never said if I was handsome, or pretty, ugly, or homely. As a result, the first time I heard one of her friends compliment me by saying to her, "I think this one's the best looking of them all," I was taken aback. Growing up, I didn't question as to whether I was good looking or not. I was just me. And that worked out pretty good in the end.
That’s a good point.
I can’t decide how I feel about this. I don’t think it would’ve served him or would serve anyone for his mother to say your face is cute or you’re adorable or what a handsome boy…. As a mother, and as a very average looking woman, with average looking children, I think I would respond… with a question. Is this important to you? Or why is this important to you? or can you define ugly? Or maybe the most important question to ask would be what would you like your face to look like? And why?
For me this falls under the category of not commenting on someone else’s body. Even people largely considered to be “terrible” (I realize this can be incredibly variable.) I’m referring to the many times people have made nasty comments about Elon musks body or donald trumps body. I dislike both of them. They are terrible humans, in my opinion. But I won’t negatively comment on their bodies because that shouldn’t be how we criticize people.
Oooh, great point and reminder! It’s misplaced anger but also distracts from the very real harm that these terrible men cause. Every word out of my mouth against these men should be about their heinous actions and not their looks.
completely agree & wrote about that a little in the dick jokes piece
As a man who suffered a youth as the "skinny" guy, I understand this all too well.
Why is Elon Musk a terrible human? He surely isn’t in the same league as Donald Trump 🤷♂️ Sounds like more misandry.
Disliking someone who happens to be a man isn’t misandry
Fair point. I feel like combining Musk and Trump in a sentence is similar to aligning Putin and Biden in a sentence. The only real similarity is their gender. Hence comment. However, your point still stands above.
No one is interested in debating this here Anthony, please stand down
"Please stand down"?You personally liked the comment from a person who described Donald Trump (same Scottish Presbyterian heritage origin as Mr Sutherland)and Elon Musk as "terrible human beings ".Trump is fair game for sure, but Elon Musk hardly comes anywhere near that description.
Beauty is so in the eye of the beholder and I do think it’s mean to call anyone ugly, medium ugly or whatever. I hate that we’re so looks obsessed.
💖
I call donald trump “UGLY.” He IS, you know…
For a long time I was convinced I was ugly, partly due to competition with my sister who most people consider the pretty one. I was sure I was ugly as a child. I started wearing makeup at 12 and to this day I won't leave the house without it. I was also resentful of men for many years because they don't get held to the same beauty standards as women, and decided weirdly that men don't have feelings and can't be emotionally hurt. It look years of life and marriage to a kind and principled man for me to work out my conditioning. No one deserves to be called ugly, ever.
i'm happy that you started to think of things differently :)
It is a horrible thing to feel less than.
I thought the rodent man article was awful but it did curate all the men I find very hot. I like interesting faces. A similar vein of articles popped up in the early aughts with Adrian Brody as the poster boy but they were labelled preternaturally beautiful. Much nicer way to put it. But also let’s not put it any way! Let’s just say we think Cillian Murphy is hot. Because he is.
Yes, I remember the Adrian Brody thing!
I’ve always felt similarly about women. A unique look plus charisma or intelligence is always the more attractive option. The conventional beauty standards that Hollywood (or nowadays, social media) pushes feel like the aesthetic version of McDonalds- mass produced to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Would love it if society could get to the point where telling someone “your face has character” is heard as “you have a je ne sais quoi that makes you uniquely interesting and attractive”
Aesthetic versions of McDonalds - brilliant!
I’ve always found Adrien Brody extremely attractive and of course, Cillian Murphy is just gorgeous
As a kid I had a crush on George Harrison and Michael Nesmith because they were the interesting looking members of the band.
Thank you for this this!
I feel like I personally know the pain of this very well. The first, and only girl I dated for a long while, told me that because of how I looked she could never see herself wanting to kiss me or be in a relationship with and once in an community college class, the instructor was talking about relationships and looked at me and said, I think we can all agree that Jonathan is out of the game. It felt like the whole class nodded their head.
Those are just two examples of many that still stay with me even in my 40's. I host a comedy show and at the beginning I always breathe with the audience and tell them you are enough. I would never want anyone going through life feeling less than like I have.
That is so awful. I'm so sorry that happened to you. I like that you do that exercise at the beginning of your show! You're trying to break the cycle
Thank you so much! I am 💛 And I read your piece right before going to a storytelling workshop and was able to share all the feelings that came up and it was very healing to be witnessed in that way. I also went to my very first speed dating event last night and three people want to see me again! :)
Thank you again for sharing what you shared, Mikala. It feels like it came at the perfect time!
Appreciate this! It’s mind boggling that we all think it’s ok to call someone ugly, and publicly, no less. I read in another great article on here that that awful rodent article basically included only men who, 100 years ago, would not have been considered white. It’s coded but it’s also much much worse than calling them ugly. Ugh.
I missed that article on here, if you can find it & share it lmk!
I went to look for it in my "read" list but for some reason, the list has a whole month where it didn't track my reads 😭😭😭😭
I'll try to find it again and let you know
Shout out to Rachel Leeke for finding it for me https://marionteniade.substack.com/p/stop-it-with-the-hot-rodent-boyfriend
This is so so great!!! It never ceases to shock me how comfortable people are with cruelty towards people’s appearances, especially men. My boyfriend has described coworkers and even strangers making rude and hurtful comments about his appearance, it’s such a common occurrence and it’s baffling to me. People need to have the same basic respect for men’s feelings as women.
It's so sick that his coworkers would do that. ugh
Fantastic essay, and this is something that should really be talked about more. Donald’s experience really is heart-wrenching. We too often treat men like unfeeling, stoic pieces of meat, when a lot of male violence is caused by men who feel inadequate and/or misunderstood. We should talk more about what hurts men, not less, if we want to begin solving society’s problems.
100%
Indeed, we have people saying men need to do better with emotional maturity then belittle them when they open up about their hurts
Good article! It is a pretty weird double standard. I remember a while ago, I got into some weird beef with some people on the internet, and despite being ostensibly very progressive people who would be deeply opposed to making fun of the way people look in other contexts, they found it perfectly acceptable to comment negatively on the weirdness of my face. Now, I didn't really mind--I'm not particularly self-conscious about that--but it is sort of bizarre that the same people who would be the most zealous in criticizing body shaming often think it's perfectly okay to make fun of the weird-looking face of someone they don't like.
yup, totally. that's what i criticized in the small dick joke piece. It's hypocrisy
I have noticed this as well. They use their dislike/hate towards a person to justify it.
This also feels like part of the issue of having to constantly churn out content. I wonder if so many of the bad takes that I read would exist without the pressure to produce. I see it more often with people who write about “culture” which devolves into shit talking. Being mean and critiquing bodies is inexcusable and lazy.
I think you're totally right
I'm a 44 YO demiboy and have struggled with disordered eating for decades. My own self-imposed standards of appearance that were ascribed to men by society writ large, are heavy and unrelenting and there isn't a day that I struggle to look in the mirror.
I'm pretty sure I'm not revoltingly ugly, but there's always a general fear of being an offensive sight to someone else because of my body and appearance. I meticulously make sure I'm clean and fresh all the time to avoid being "the greasy fat guy" stereotype I have implanted in my brain. I literally cannot look at a scale without feeling my guts boiling into my chest cavity. If I make eye contact with myself in the mirror for too long, I either look away quickly, get nauseous, or cry.
So, yeah. I see that hurt in his face and eyes. And I feel this piece. Thanks for helping to remind me that this i didn't create this problem and I'm not at fault. 💚🍄🌱
I'm glad it made you feel good. You 100% deserve to feel good in yourself! And if the scale or the mirror makes you feel bad, just don't look at 'em. No one says we have to interact with scales and mirrors all the time.
I hear you, absolutely. After all that struggle, we normally don't even own a scale in our house, but my partner needs one for monitoring of a health condition. It sucks because my brain is trained to seek it out and use it to evaluate myself based on a number. (Which I also know is bullshit)
💜💜
Sutherland, please somehow let me know you died knowing lots of women thought you were basically iconically sexy. Thank heaven that what makes a person appealing and attractive is not based entirely their appearance, as evidenced by billions of relationships and crushes through the ages. Oh, the boys I favored. Talk about a gamut. Sutherland’s mischievous smile and penetrating eyes were magical. I always secretly needed to know if his sense of humor was every bit as good as I imagined. Ooo 🔥
😂
that's an awful thing for a mother to say to her child. excellent essay and agree 100%
Thank you 💖
I’ve always had a lot of insecurities about my looks, especially my Acne and how weedy (think) I am. I used to get a lot of shit at school about it. To be fair, I gave as good as I got and more, so I can't complain, but since puberty, my confidence has never recovered. I’ve got my first girlfriend and I'm always so desperate for her to tell me she thinks I’m attractive because literally no one else ever has (we met when I was 23). She had to be the one to kiss me because I literally couldn't imagine that anyone would want to be 😂
I'm sorry you've felt that way about yourself but it sounds like you found someone who appreciates all that you are :)
Thank you! I’m very lucky she’s a wonderful woman!
those “small dick” “shrimp dick” jokes have never sat right with me and i hate that it takes empathy to sometimes understand the impacts of these comments cause for most of my teenage years i was aggressively teased for having practically none existent breasts. It’s like why make jokes of people on things they have no control over??? it’s hurtful and MEAN!
we’d all be better off being kinder and more considerate and respectful of each other.
i don’t know how relevant this is as an additional comment but i had a powerful crush on Donald Sutherland as a teenager birthed by the Hunger Games franchise, lol i was a teenage girl lusting over a much older man (he was just that damn fine to me!) and when i looked up pictures of a younger him i wasn’t disappointed either, it’s shocking to learn that he didn’t feel so great about his looks. 💔