I’m so glad you wrote this. I’m glad someone else noticed this. I discovered this in my late teens, too.

I saw my attractive friends get treated like minor celebrities, only a lot less nice. They attracted attention everywhere. (I did too, but for different reasons.) They couldn’t ever have a moment to themselves in a public space, while I remained relatively unbothered. This also led me to question, why male attention was important to me, in the first place. I stopped being “jealous” of these women in my college years, and spent most of that time horrified at the stories they told about their lives. Of all my friends, I was the only one who hadn’t experienced sexual assault of some kind. All I’d ever experienced was occasional catcalling, or sometimes some guy doing something foolish in my presence.

Pretty women’s time, and minds, are not their own, and are meant to be used on behalf of making entitled stranger’s lives better. I was not constantly pressured by strangers to do emotional labor for them. I got a little bit of flack, from time to time, because I was cute, but I was never anyone who’s looks were especially arresting, and I was fat, so there was that. I noticed that pretty women who didn’t want to be bothered got called a b***h, and if they did allow it, they never got a moment to themselves.