Re: Been there

I'll tell you something I haven't yet mentioned here: I'm almost 40 and starting to feel very unattractive too. I'm losing my hair, getting a paunch around the mid section, and I am pasty white with raccoon eyes. Not a pretty picture, is it? And yet, a few days a go a 29 year old woman who looks much younger (very petite, gorgeous face, worked as a stripper at one time) actually hit on me. She told me she wished she'd met me before she'd met her current husband. So you see? We're rarely as ugly as we think we are.

I know the feeling, and I think you got it spot on: we can never live up to our ideal of beauty because our ideal is children. I look at a group of 10 year old girls and all but the ugliest ones are beautiful (the ugliest ones are merely pretty) - I imagine teleiophiles might feel the same way about adults - but it feels so foreign to me that it is hard to really feel it.

And likewise, those MAPs I've met in person tend toward the attractive.