About a year ago, I posted this picture to /r/amiugly without specifying my sex or race to see how people would perceive my ugliness/attractiveness depending on which sex they believed I was.
(*NOTE* Whether Iâm ugly or not was not the objective. Rather I aimed to observe how people would come to their own judgement without me telling them my biological sex.)
Putting aside objectivity, those who perceived me as male were clearly less critical of my appearance and considered me âaverage, above averageâ and suggested I could benefit from a haircut. In contrast, those who perceived me as female suggested plastic surgery. More than one comment states that if Iâm a male Iâm average, but if Iâm a female Iâm fugly. My unedited, unaltered appearance was considered to be average to those who perceived me as male, but ugly and in need of surgery to those who perceived me as female. Many saw me as androgynous, but it reaffirmed my belief that women are judged more harshly for their appearance.
I found extremely telling of how our society feels entitled to point out every feature they deem unattractive on a womanâs natural face, but will hesitate to point out the same exact unattractive features if they exist on a manâs face.
TLDR: It turns out, many commentors had no way of making a personal opinion of what makes someone attractive without the gender constructs of beauty guiding them with what is or isnât attractive. The ratings from these unsure commentors were solely based on social constructs of gender and appearance. Crazy right? Â -
(PART 2)Hello! Itâs been a few more months so I continued the experiment on two more occasions. I have repeated the post twice, once listing myself as a 23/Female and once listing myself as 23/Male to reddit to see if peopleâs comments would be affected by revealing a gender.Â
I was expecting the 23/Male photo to receive more compliments since my face and posture fit into the social construction of a âmasculineâ appearance. And I was expecting the 23/Female photo to receive harsh criticism. However, there was one thing I did not expect.**
Here are the comments on the âMaleâ post:
And here are the comments from the Female post:
The results that came in these comments reflected that society has an artificial construct  of what a female can and cannot look like. It goes farther than just calling them unattractive, it goes to the point where any female features I have that do not fall within the artificial construct of âwhat a women looks likeâ are labeled as male, masculine.** Society reinforces the myth that females can only exist a certain way by doing this. But in reality, female faces can be broad, heavy, unattractive and show a large variety of features.
This post is not to declare that âall women are beautifulâ, but to point out how society alienates women who do not fit the exaggerated constructs of feminine, from their own anatomy.  There are males in particular, who donât know how to accept unnattractive features as being ⌠female features. I believe this is because our perception of females is so deluded by artificial constructs of gender (makeup, smiling, clothes, hair, posture etc) and the media, that we rarely see a variety of females in their natural state. It attributes to males (and sometimes women) believing that females who are unappealing to feminine beauty aesthetics are somehowâŚless female.
