Who taught us that being attractive was a prerequisite for being loved?
I was maybe four years old when my parents, mostly my dad, started criticizing how I looked. By five, I was on diets. By seven, I had convinced my parents to temporarily dye my hair black. I can’t recall when I started sneaking makeup – around seven. Because of how my parents talked about it, and because of what I saw on television in the nineties, I developed a very strong internal belief that I absolutely could not be worthy of love unless (or until) I became smaller and more beautiful.
What the Research Says
In 1997, psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts introduced objectification theory. One of their central ideas was that girls and women can learn to see their bodies through the eyes of an observer. So, rather than experiencing our bodies primarily as the places where we live, feel, move, and generally exist, we start actively monitoring how they appear to other people. The researchers proposed that this constant monitoring will likely contribute to an ongoing sense of shame, anxiety, and a deep disconnection from the experience of actually being in our bodies. In other words, my experience is research-backed and I. Am. Not. Alone.
I am sad to say that I don’t recall ever feeling truly attractive until I was much older. I even dated people and got married without feeling that I could possibly be perceived as desirable to them. This became what I would describe as my deepest source of shame and insecurity. I was so concerned about whether my appearance was acceptable to other people that I’d become disconnected from the experience of just being in my body.
The Conditions We Set
In 2003, psychologist Jennifer Crocker and her colleagues published research on contingencies of self-worth. They were studying the conditions people believe they need to meet in order to feel valuable. Using data from 1,418 college students, they identified seven areas on which people based their self-worth: physical appearance, approval from others, academic achievement, outperforming others, family support, being a good or moral person, and feeling loved by God.
One of the important distinctions in their research was between sources of self-worth that depend heavily on external validation and those that are more internally grounded. For example, if your self-worth depends on being attractive or receiving approval from other people, your sense of value can rise and fall depending on how you think others perceive you.
In subsequent research, Crocker explored the costs of pursuing self-worth through these conditions. Her findings suggested that basing self-worth on external validation, particularly appearance, was associated with greater stress and symptoms of disordered eating, among other difficulties. In other words, the things we believe make us worthy may influence not only how we feel about ourselves, but also the decisions we make and the things we’re willing to sacrifice to maintain that sense of worth.
The Cost
In my case, I’d made physical attractiveness a condition for deserving love. And because I didn’t believe I met that condition, I tried to compensate by being extraordinarily useful. I hadn’t just developed an insecurity about my appearance. I’d organized an enormous part of my life around trying to make up for it.
While I never would have dared to say it out loud, I lived with this constant buzz of fear that my husband would someday leave me because I wasn’t actually worthy of his love. Eventually, he would get sick of me, and all the things I assumed he did like about me wouldn’t be enough anymore. I kept his life interesting and fun. I contributed financially. I took care of the house. I thought those were the things that made me worth keeping around. What if he eventually realized I wasn’t worth it? Then I would be left alone. I had spent all those years trying to earn love, still believing I was unworthy of it.
My Body Is My Outfit
Around 2022, I started seeing a life coach and a therapist. I was able to start dramatically shifting my thinking and questioning this deeply held belief that being worthy of love or respect depended on people finding me attractive.
In late 2025, during a coaching session, I had an aha moment. The mindset I landed on was this: my body is like my outfit. In real life, I don’t care all that much if people like what I’m wearing. We all have different styles, and that’s something I really appreciate about people. It’s cool how everyone has their own, and it would be boring if we all dressed the same. Other people are free to like it or not, and it was never what decided whether you’re worth keeping around.
So I decided I didn’t need to care so much about what people think about my body outfit. I never actually got the love or approval I was trying to earn by making myself worthy of it anyway. So I may as well focus on enjoying who I actually am. I also needed to stop focusing so much on other people’s body outfits and pay more attention to the real thing that made them stunning, which is who they are.
So Where Am I Landing
So here we are. I’m letting this go. I’m reframing how and why I take care of my body. And I’ve really been enjoying seeing how beautiful people are, both in their body outfits and in who they are. People are so neat.
I hope that, if you are reading this essay and any of this resonates with you, you will do this work as well. Your value as a human does not come from what other people think or see about you. It comes from who you are. Who you really are, past your “body outfit,” is the real deal. And it’s perfect. I hope you can find a way to enjoy it and to enjoy yourself.
References
Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T.-A. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21(2), 173–206.
Crocker, J., Luhtanen, R. K., Cooper, M. L., & Bouvrette, A. (2003). Contingencies of self-worth in college students: Theory and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(5), 894–908.
