This series of Quora questions is also really, really interesting: http://www.quora.com/Attractiveness-Attractive-People/best_questions. What is it like to be attractive/unattractive, what is it like to suddenly become much less attractive, etc. Fascinating perspectives.

I have a friend who is very conventionally attractive. She's blonde and blue eyed with a doll face and very pretty. I used to be a tiny bit envious of her, until the night we went out to a bar in Chicago. She was standing arm in arm with her fiance and no fewer than 3 guys offered to buy her a drink and asked her out to a party. She just stood there saying "no, No, NO, this is my fiance" over and over.

Since then I've never really wanted to be that attractive. I get enough unwanted attention now.

I feel that the hardships that face attractive people are very gendered in a way that the clip does a great job of showing. The woman is crying for being attractive, it seems at face value. But, it is the intersection of womanhood and attractiveness that bears that burden on her. It is interesting to see that. Then the question of how she got attractive comes into play, was this natural beauty or did she have to work hard for this state. It would be interesting to see if the people would rather change their attractiveness? Or, have prevented themselves from working to it. The film does a great job of showing another form of inequality that people do not seem to take into consideration.

I was pleasantly surprised to see people of different races featured in the trailer. I wonder if there's any discussion of race in the film... how some people are labeled as "exotic."

Yes, oh YES! And you can't really talk about it with most people, because then you're a conceited asshole.

Guess what beautiful people? Men say vulgar things to "normal" girls too.

I would be interested to see the rest of this documentary. I hope the whole things is not just beautiful people upset about how beautiful they are!

Chapter 46 of The Pale King by David Foster Wallace covers this a lot more thoroughly, if you're at all interested.

I didn't find any of these people more beautiful than any other people I know. But I guess being autistic would make my reaction different than that of a neurotypical person.

I would still like to see the rest of this documentary though...

Okay, if being beautiful is really such a bloody hardship, stop plucking your eyebrows, wearing all that make up and jewelry and get a plain haircut. What? You couldn't possibly do that? Then quit bitching.

At 1:47 when the woman asked if this was a mockumentary that really spoke to me even more than the crying woman. I thought it said a lot about her personal history and how conscious she is that there are people who won't think much of her for saying there could ever in any way be hardships for a person who looks good to others.

Ooops, sorry, not trying to be anon. Fail.

I must have a very different sense of prettiness or something because these women all seemed within the normal range of attractive to me. I look in the mirror and think I'm cuter than a few of these girls. I wonder how they were selected

I think one of the most painful things is that a lot of people undermine you, your achievements and most of all your relationships. From the time I was about 13 or 14 I was constantly told (unfortunately mostly by women and usually in indirect ways or just through bitchy isolation tactics) that I only recieved so much attention from men and boys because of the way I looked. This was in most cases true (which hurt me no end) but the fact that so many women (some of whom I thought were friends and some whose male partners would come onto me on the sly) belittled and bullied me in this way really shaped my personality. Having 'object value' in society isn't fun and it's not for the faint hearted. I wore loose black clothing, died my blonde hair black and never ever wore make up for many years. And guess what, this only made it worse because people could then see I lacked confidence (people love to comment behind your back that 'she's really pretty but a bit of a flake / skitish / dull / highly strung' or whatever, just to bring you down - but always in relation to you looks). And yes, most of the men who approached me did so because of my looks (and not my personality because I was too fucked up to express my personality). Looking like a cheer leader isn't much fun when it's natural. Oh boo hoo I hear you say. I can assure you that a great many young models would really lack self worth which can really result in serious mental health issues. It wasn't until I went back to university and became a doctor that people backed off. And it wasn't until I dated a very good looking man did I feel that he was trully attracted to me for who I am (and yes people feel the need to rank us as a beautiful couple...). Now I wear the clothes I like and do what I like and my partner isn't possesive or worried that I'll leave him for a more attractive or wealthy man (even the most 'alternative' men often eventually circum to this). But the bullying and the spitefull undermining has left its mark. However now when I walk into a room and 'get the evils' by a group of women or stop a conversation as I walk past a group of men, I hold my head up and just be myself - but it's often hard work and I've often found myself relating (to myself mind never out loud) to people who experience racism in the work place or other forms of discrimination. It's no fun to be considered a threat.

I grew up as an ugly duckling. I hasn't been until recently that I've become accustomed with receiving compliments on my appearance. Unwanted attention based on attractiveness does tend to impact women more severely. I never realized that simply developing a "womanly" shape would garner such unsolicited and often crude attention. I also failed to realize how I treated people that were attractive. I often ignored, and didn't befriend women who I felt were attractive always assuming they'd be snobs, or superficial, not realizing I was behaving as a superficial snob. I always thought the gaggles of pretty girlfriends only liked each other for their beauty, only to realize they were friends because didn't have to deal with the judgment or insecurities of others.
I dated the most gorgeous head turning man, who finally explained to me what it was like to have people assume the worst based on attractiveness. He told me that men didn't care to be his friend because they felt he was "competition." I fully admit that upon meeting him, I never took him seriously, projecting on to him a character of a womanizer just by his appearance. Sure there are perks, but I think there are for more complications for the pretty we fail to account.

Call me an asshole, but I just can't understand this "poor me, I'm beautifull" . I think it's better be thought as "attractive, but dumb" than "Ughh, ugly person".

I don't know about anyone else, but for the first half minute or so, I didn't see them are anything special. If I'd seen them in reality, sure they would turn heads, but compared to aeverything else on TV, they're not that different. There is a sort of disconnect between what you see on the screen and in the real world, and I wonder how it's going to affect the success of this documentary.

I am confused. These folk are pleasant looking but not stunning by any means. I think 'hiring them to sit in restaurant windows to attract other customers' is taking it a bit far.

I think this is ridiculous -- it should be a mockumentary.

Conventionally attractive people aren't the only people who have to deal with jealousy from others, questionable motives of friends, and objectification. The part where the woman is complaining about how being objectified makes her "not pretty" is sad and unfortunately, of course, but it's something that nearly all women, no matter how attractive or unattractive they are, will experience in their lives.

If "beautiful" people really thought that being beautiful was SO TERRIBLE, they would shower less, groom themselves less, stop styling their hair, waxing their bodies, wear unstylish clothing, etc -- but they DON'T, which is very telling. And what does it tell? That, despite the pitfalls of beauty, it is overall a better thing to be beautiful, because the pros out-weight the cons.

"If “beautiful” people really thought that being beautiful was SO TERRIBLE, they would shower less, groom themselves less, stop styling their hair, waxing their bodies, wear unstylish clothing, etc — but they DON’T, which is very telling. And what does it tell? That, despite the pitfalls of beauty, it is overall a better thing to be beautiful, because the pros out-weight the cons."

I think the trouble with this argument is that it ignores the double-edged nature of being attractive. There is an enormous amount of pressure (especially on women) to be attractive, to have high standards of 'grooming'. Yet then when women achieve what they have been taught is their 'goal' they discover that there is a negative side to it as well. What I took from this clip wasn't 'oh, the pooooor attractive people'. It was just a reflection on how women can't win. Incidentally (I don't know if this is representative of the whole documentary) it seemed that the women were expressing a lot more ambiguity about their good looks than the men. Which I kind of think proves my point.

I think what a lot of folks seem to be missing is that the "beautiful" people shouldn't have to make themselves "ugly" just to get some respect.

The problem isn't with the "beautiful" people! It's with other peoples' prejudices!!!

frankly beautiful or not shouldn't matter. It is our society which is at fault and us for propagating it.

you say beautiful people shouldn't have to make them selves ugly, but ugly people shouldn't have to make themselves beautiful either.

That's funny, I noticed that most of the girls in my school who became prefects and captains were good-looking, had crowds of admirers and somehow had to live up to all that with achievements, but mainly because they were cheered on and had plenty of encouragement. Same with college, they drank up all the adulation and did well in life and could very well choose their friends. Being told you're unattractive repeatedly (whether you are or not) can play havoc with your self-esteem and severely effect other areas in your life, relationships and work, unless you're perhaps drowning yourself in one particular thing to forget the pain of being disliked for the way you look and become a super-achiever. I don't feel sorry for these people at all. As for objectification, what about the people who are objectified for how bad they look, isn't it as bad as being turned into an object for someone's hate because their worth is reduced to their looks?

Isn't making a documentary about how tough it is to be conventionally attractive kind of like making a film about the hardships faced by whites and men?

I've been on both sides of the attractive/unattractive spectrum (thank you, South Beach). Without hesitation, I would say that the "hardships" of being attractive are far outweighed by how easy life has become now that people actually treat me like a worthwhile human being.

If our collective standards of beauty weren't so extremely narrow (in terms of age, shape, everything), the pressure on those who fit in wouldn't be so high. Not all societies have the same narrow standard, I remember reading an ethnography about !Kung women (hunter and gatherers). Almost all women (with some exceptions, such as disfigured people, who obviously suffer from being considered unattractive) are considered beautiful, are complimented and sought-after as sexual partners (the position and freedom of women is also high). As far as I remember, there is nothing said about what standard men are measured by, but women have a good deal of choice in the matter and are often having lovers. (The book is an old one, I don't know what the situation is nowadays)

On the matter of not complaining of being white as white privilege cancels out all the problems you encounter, I disagree. I've spent some time working in central america and being white both afforded me a lot of preferential treatment and benefit - and a lot of hassle as well. There was definitely a lot of distrust towards me (I was working on the countryside) and I had to work very hard to overcome that and to create relationships that could bypass that gap. I also had all the unwanted male attention, insecurity (in the city) as white in the minds of many=money), etc It wasn't all that great.

Instead of saying: 'what do you whinge about, you white/beautiful/famous/rich/male you' I think we really have to talk about the downside of fulfilling these strictly defined norms of successful being. Why? Because it shows that people actually don't benefit from these ways of narrowly defining what a successful person is. The people who fall outside of the frame don't benefit,, but the people who fit inside are limited and punished in different ways, too.

(The name of the book is Nisa, the life and words of an !Kung woman, by M Shostak http://www.amazon.com/Nisa-Life-Words-Kung-Woman/dp/0674004329/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1305277320&sr=8-1 )

The invalidation that is seen in some of these comments is quite interesting. It's perhaps a case of the needlessly black and white perspective people tend to take on social issues (not in the ethnicity sense, in the contrasting sense). As an overweight attractive person, the attention varies according to my social context, but it is very rarely something I can see in a positive light. Harassment for being conventionally attractive shouldn't be seen as automatically less important than harassment for being culturally unattractive- both forms are, after all, harassment. This documentary should not be seen as "Boo hoo the poor pretty people", but as a valid entrance into the discussion of the cultural reprocussions of the importance placed on beauty.

I can't really relate to their experiences, as I'm fairly well into the extreme opposite of the attractiveness spectrum. It seems like it's pretty tough though, especially for the women. I'm willing to be it's fairly tough to stand out in any way be it being exceptionally attractive, exceptionally intelligent, exceptionally stupid, etc... If you're not blending in, you're not blending in.

At the very least when I find people who want to spend time with me, be nice to me or give me attention of some kind I know it's because they for one reason or another find something interesting about me. After all, why would else would they tolerate me? I think it is possible that when you're that attractive you have to be suspect of all your relationships, even non-romantic ones.

they should have made a documentary on being a real hottie. i think people do treat attractive people differently but blah blah blah..we all know that, that's boring.
what would have been more interesting is to see how to men and women live that are so utterly sexy that everyone around them is constantly nervous and kinda aroused.

This is a fascinating topic, and I love the discussion in the comments. But I checked the Sundance website, and it looks like this is the entire film, not just a trailer. Too bad, because I would’ve liked to see a more thorough exploration.

I think singling this out as a documentary on "attractive people" is the real problem. As has been brought up, men and women across the spectrum of attractiveness all have different experiences that are sometimes positive, sometimes negative, and sometimes neutral. A vast range of factors (including race, style of dress, body size, the types of people your specific attractiveness might attract or disgust, etc.) are behind these experiences, and it seems almost pointless to try to distinguish the experiences of something as subjective as "the attractive person".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkoMbxHQmuM

This topic made me think of this lil' gem.

I went out to get ice cream with a very tall, pretty coworker the other day, and it was amazing - three or four people started conversations with her as we were standing in line. Nothing annoying or rude, but that probably varies in other social settings. As an introvert who prefers, generally, to be left alone by strangers, this gave me new appreciation for my short stature and average looks.

This is exactly the topic of Wonder Girls song "So Hot". The original is in Korean, but this video has English subtitles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlGCE3V4fDM

For the record, this is the whole documentary, not a trailer for a documentary. All I had to do was look it up on the Sundance webpage (http://www.sundance.com/seducation) to figure it out. It's part of a series of short (under 3 minute) documentaries called The Art of Seduction.

Very beautiful people sometimes experience the opposite reaction, also. Rather than receiving a lot of unwanted attention, they can sometimes be ignored. Many years ago an extremely beautiful friend of mine was often lonely, and was frustratred that she had such a hard time finding a boy friend. She was friendly, kind, thoughtful, and unusually attractive. Men seemed to be too intimidated by her to ask her out. And many women assumed she was a stuck-up bitch.

Also, one day I was with a male friend walking across a busy street in Vancouver. A very lovely young woman passed us going in the opposite direction. My friend said, "I really hate girls like that!!". Puzzled, I asked, "Why?" He replied, "Because she'd never go out with someone like me." He didn't even try. He also assumed that a woman that pretty was a stuck-up bitch.

I didn't see a single comment calling out how carefully crafted these people's answers are, and how aware of their body language they clearly are. They're not absolutely gorgeous--they just know how to flirt.

I don't think I'm conventionally beautiful, but I am never lacking for attention just about wherever I go. It has more to do with confidence, and whether or not you choose to participate in style, etc.

I understand completely, 100%, about being the victim of prejudice, social bias, etc, and part of me feels very deeply for all of these people. But my deep-down, personal, gut reaction to this is anger and depression. I've struggled for years with crippling depression (including cutting, non-existent self esteem, suicidal thoughts, loneliness, etc) due to my personal unhappiness with my appearance. I'm generally a healthy, intelligent person who knows myself very very well. It doesn't matter what people say about me (whether I'm attractive or not), what matters to me is what *I* believe. Because if I don't believe it, then nothing anyone says will change my mind. So although I truly can understand and empathize, I guess the issue just hits a little too close to home for me to be purely objective about it. On another note - Is the interviewer Mark McKinney, from Kids in the Hall and Slings & Arrows? 'Cause it sure as hell sounds like him. *fangirl giggle*

I, like quite a few commentors, went through the whole ugly duckling/bullied at school to the pretty swan thing.

I recently came home after living in France for seven months. There I had a lot of compliments on my looks as well as a lot of harassment. I got called a whore at one bar when I ignored a man who kept trying to get my attention non-stop. When I told him i couldn't understand him in english he pulled over a chair and proceeded to humiliate me in front of my friends and his; all because I didn't want his attention. I was out for a drink with my friends and I had tried to be polite.

Another time (I was working in a french school at the time) I was harrassed in my school's playground by a passing man who followed me to the door of the outside toilets when he saw me, even after I had told him to go away.

I went to a french friend's birthday party and was later told by a another friend that the other guys there thought I was frigid and a bitch for not being interested in talking to them; all because I'm pretty. I'm not any of those things, I'm just shy. Such assumptions, made in such a short amount of time, upset me a lot.

I realise these things happen to a lot of people, not necessarily to just good looking women. But my looks were the excuses these people all cited for doing what they did, as if that was a good excuse for being cruel or intimidating. Responses to any anger on my part to this treatment is often met with incredulity, especially from my male friends. 'But it means they think you're pretty!'- With respect, that's not the f*cking point.

Being attractive sucks more if you're an introvert. I'm super quiet and awkward and people don't understand because I'm conventionally attractive with a nice body and I dress well. They automatically assume that I'm a snob because when I'm hit on in public I don't respond, when I get invited to parties I make excuses (I HATE parties), and I walk around with a stoic face (I am an INTP personality type, apparently one of the nerdiest and socially isolating personalities around). I have lived my life as a hermit and this has been a choice of mine, I don't regret it but I do wish I was more comfortable going out in public by myself.

Men, boys, the male gender all stare at me and they are never subtle. I constantly feel like I'm being judged for my looks and body and it sucks because I spend most of my time reading and/or playing World of Warcraft in my bedroom. People automatically assume that because I dress semi-girly I can't be an intelligent being. This frustrates me because I would rather be acknowledged for my intelligence but I refuse to give in to the nerd stereotype to appease people. If you don't fit into a neat little box people are going to make assumptions and judge you negatively. Well I've never fit into a box and I refuse to try, if people can't accept that a "nerd girl" likes aesthetics and style, likes doing things outside the norm then that's their problem and not mine.

It sounds terrible to say, but it's true. I have always been
pretty looking and I usually wear no makeup, I say usually, because yes I do
like to do my makeup and getting dressed up.

I have always been extroverted and very outgoing, and very
pleased and fortunate enough to say that I have had a wonderful education and
will continue to do.

It can be annoying to
be hit on all the time and judged before someone even talks to you. Also if I
so much as speak to the opposite sex I’m not trying to pick you up.

Plus if you are in a relationship with someone the drama
that comes with it by people trying to tear you apart.

Just like the lady was saying in the video that if you’re
pretty you can't be intelligent. I feel like I have to prove myself all time and if I do say something silly it's going to be used in a dumb blonde joke. In middle
school my friend told me her mother told her to stay away from me, because she
knew girls like me and that I would get knocked up. In middle school I was a
straight “A” student involved in volunteering. I had never had really boyfriend
before. She judged me before even speaking to me. Another example I invited my
friends and their mothers to a play that I was in and they come up to me after
the show and told me that they were surprised that I had such a big part.

It still happens to me in college.

My roommate had me meet two of her high school male friends
the first thing one of them did to me when he meet me was look me up and down,
Growl at me and then pinch my butt. The other guy and him both played rock
paper scissors to see who would "get me". The guy who pinched my
butt, than tried to get in my bed. This is the first time I had ever meet him.
It's disgusting. What kind of girl do you think I am?

Course there is the stereotypical all that a pretty face
wants to do is shop, beach, ect. Not saying that I don't enjoy doing these
things, but majority of my time is school, reading books, volunteering with
animals and kids, and acting. Then there are the "double standards"
if a woman sleeps with a lot of men she's a slut. Sometimes it’s harder for me
to make girlfriends; because they are afraid that I’m going to “steal” their
boyfriends or that I’m just not a nice person

I will admit that sometimes the benefits are very nice, my
drinks are always bought for me, I get in places for free, and jobs are easier
to come by, people are more inclined to help me out or to give me things. I
will even admit to the fact that sometimes I have used my looks and
intelligence to my advantage. But at the end of the day I know that my
personality, brains, and sheer hard work is what is going to get me places.