When Pulchritude or Beauty Becomes a Burden

There’s a definite weight to being “beautiful” or pulchritudinous. It isn’t the kind of weight you can measure on a scale; it presses on the chest, the back, the corners of your mind. People often see your face first, your smile, your hair, the symmetry of it all. “Instantaneously you are more than human; you are a mere object, a highlight reel, a distraction.” As other people tell you casually, “You know, you're so lucky.” But have you ever wondered—what if the ‘luck’ of being seen as beautiful is forsooth a chain? Being vastly attractive is supposed to open doors. Compliments are currency. Opportunities should fall into your lap. And yet, they never fall toward your ambitions, they fall toward your body, your appearance. Your ideas are secondary. How about your achievements? “Maganda ka lang, kaya ginawa mo 'yun.” People say you’re just simply pretty—nothing more. The weight you carry of dismissal is heavier than the weight of praise. In addition, there’s envy and resentment—thinly veiled or openly displayed, the overt. Those eyes that stay prolongedly, unceasing whispers that follow you through hallways. Jealousy that stings and isolates. People think admiration arrives easily, but approval from others seldom comes without a price. You learn rapidly that trust is a fragile thing when beauty is your billboard. Friends, colleagues, strangers—all start with your looks before they see anything else. And there is maintenance. Endless. Relentless. A little battle with mirrors, hairbrushes, make-up every day. Day after day a negotiation with norms not your own. To release is to run the danger of being judged: to retain is to run the danger of being tired. Beauty, pressures the society, has to be refined. An artist of your own face, a workman of your own hair, a captive in a gilded cage of your own image. Pretty privilege is a paradox—opening doors yet blinding, attracting attention yet isolating. It is a gift, yes, but the most suffocating gifts are often the ones that glitter. You have inquiries if anyone sees you behind the exterior, or if faith has sealed you to live in the margins of your own face, a person determined by a beauty that never belonged entirely to you. The burden is always subtle, but abiding: to be admired, yet never fully known. To be celebrated, yet rarely understood. And as you stand in this quiet prison of smiles and glances, you realize that being immensely pretty is not without exception a privilege, it is sometimes the heaviest crown of all to endure.