The Very Attractive Women (VAW) Syndrome
Characteristics
Superficiality
Loneliness
Isolation
Promiscuity
Eating disorders
Multiple unnecessary cosmetic surgeries
Aging Distress
Depression
Anxiety
Romance Addiction
Physical Harm including rape, stalking, harassment, battering, murder
An Example of a VAW Addiction
Jenny walks into the room with happy anticipation. Making an entrance is one of her favorite things. The men look at her for a second and then jump, almost imperceptibly, as the full impact of her loveliness hits them. It’s as if they have suddenly seen their most private fantasies come to life. Women react differently. Instead of a start of pleasurable recognition, many flinch as if being dealt a blow straight to the heart. She smiles sweetly to soften the impact but sees no change in the faces of the women around her. Oh well, what can she do? People have told her she is very beautiful. She can’t help the way others respond when they see her.
Back in grade school you would have seen her with many notes from boys tucked into a corner of her desk and girls gathered around to share in the excitement. She feels like a princess. How can it be that she is the one so many boys want? Her appearance makes her feel special and secure. Even so, she knows she can easily lose her popularity. A bad haircut or dorky glasses could render her invisible. She depends on her beauty to make friends and worries about losing her looks. She also feels guilty about and sorry for the girls the boys ignore. She knows she has done nothing to deserve all this admiration except to grow her hair long and wear pretty clothing.
Her mother takes her into a store in town when she is only 13 years old. Grown men stare at her. She doesn’t do a thing; she just walks into the store with her Mom and pretends indifference as the men stare. Fear and exhilaration flood her body in equal measure. How can she, just a child really, have so much power over grown men? Her mother notices the stares and becomes frightened for her daughter. She tells her, “Please be careful around men, darling.” The girl wonders, “How can she be careful? All she is doing is standing here. What is she supposed to do to be careful? What bad things can happen because men look at her this way?”
Still, Jenny loves the attention and experiments with her charms, developing them gradually. She isn’t quite aware of what she is doing, but she hones her skills all the same. She learns how to wear makeup and the best color and style for her hair. Jenny studies her figure in the mirror and buys clothes that show her body to the best advantage. She learns which styles are most flattering and which colors make her glow. Attention to these details increases her attractiveness even more. Jenny enjoys seeing how pretty she can become.
Jenny also becomes very aware of how she carries herself. The first time she tilts her head and smiles a certain way her body senses an increased effect on males. The interest she usually sees becomes an even stronger rush of desire. Jenny likes their more intense reaction and repeats this combination again. Then she adds new elements bit by bit, like a teasing twinkle in her eyes, and a cute nose wrinkle. Please understand that Jenny doesn’t really know she is doing these things. Just under her awareness she feels each change bring her bigger and bigger hits of interest. You might say that she becomes addicted to male attention as her body seeks more and more potent ways to secure their enthusiastic regard. Male admiration becomes her drug of choice. The more men who notice her, the greater the charge she receives.
Jenny learns to extend and tighten her waist, stretch her height, hold her breasts high, and sway her hips gently as she walks. She isn’t really meaning to drive men wild with sexual desire. Believe it or not, she doesn’t exactly think of her actions in this way. Instead she is only trying to feel good about herself, to feel safe, worthwhile and confident. You see, she has seen in others’ eyes since she was a child that the most striking and important thing about her is her beauty. Because her beauty has always been there, she isn’t exactly aware of what she is doing. Much of her behavior is purely instinctive. Her biological drive for survival is leading her to maximize her chances of attracting the best possible mate using everything available to her. These drives are embedded so deeply into her genetic biology Jenny doesn’t even know they are there. All she knows consciously is that she somehow feels safer and better about herself when men are admiring her.
Her female biology comes from a good and worthwhile place. Male desire for attractive women has insured the survival of the human race. Traditionally, the most beautiful women have attracted the most powerful men. The ability to attract a strong man gave a woman food and physical protection from other men and wild animals. An attentive male meant a protected environment for her children and helped insure the survival of the human race. A woman needed to interest a man enough to persuade him to return to her again and again. Among the ways she did this was to capture his sexual interest and grant him status. The more men a woman could attract, the greater her power as a trophy. The more powerful her attraction, the more likely she would be to attract the best man to give her the safest possible environment. In female biology, the ability to interest men was not a frivolous thing but a matter of life or death for her and her children. This drive is deep, elemental and strong. This same ancient drive fuels Jenny today.
As Jenny gets older, the girls at school are less eager to be her friend. They don’t want to look at her. She knows the other girls feel bad when they see her. She doesn’t like making them feel bad. She tries to hide her popularity with boys when she is around girls. She looks for things to compliment about the other girls, and talks about the things she doesn’t like about her own appearance in an attempt to make things more equal between them. When with other girls, she is sweet and kind, hoping they will like her. Though Jenny makes a couple good friends, there is a wall between even them that she can’t seem to climb. Some girls don’t give her a chance at all. The meanest girls are so hostile toward Jenny that she is actually frightened of them.
Jenny’s beauty is a gift that many covet. Men either want to claim her for their very own and show her off to the world, or punish her because they know they will never win anyone who looks like her. The most dangerous men look for a way to do both. With women, she can see envy as they long for her slimness, her lush features, or her full breasts. Many women wish they were more like her and hate her for making them feel bad. They tend to keep their distance and leave her very much alone. Beauty is a gift that many covet, but Jenny isn’t sure what exactly to do with this gift. What does this gift really worth in today’s world? Jenny doesn’t even know enough to ask that question yet.
She doesn’t know that she doesn't value women as much as she values men. Women don’t give her the same high that she gets from men. Of course almost all women value male attention more than they do female attention. This is a part of the biological impulse. Still, Jenny has taken her interest in men to a new level. When she is talking to women, her awareness is on the men around her to see if she is being noticed. This helps her collect as many hits of desire as possible. Women feel used as props to help her animate her face and make men notice her. They don’t much enjoy being used in this way. Can you blame them?
Jenny wants to talk to someone about the way other girls feel about her, but there is no one she can talk to. She can’t even admit that she thinks the problem might be her looks. People would only say she is conceited and ridiculous. Can you imagine the rumors about her? “She thinks she’s so beautiful that girls don’t like her!” People gossip about her behind her back all the time already. Jenny keeps her feelings, questions and loneliness to herself. There is no safe place to talk things out.
Strangely enough, despite all the attention, she isn’t sure she is beautiful. While everyone else is faced with her beauty every time they see her, she sits in her in body looking out. She only sees her face when she looks into a mirror. Honestly, sometimes when she sees her reflection, she is shocked. Jenny feels pretty ordinary inside. When she sees her image she is almost always pleasantly surprised to see that she is really very pretty.
There are other girls who are even more beautiful than she is. The women in the movies and magazines are perfect. When Jenny compares herself to their air-brushed photos she sees every one of her own imperfections in bold relief. The slight bulge in her stomach looks huge and unsightly. Seeing other’s flat stomachs is like a punch in the gut. Why can’t she look like the models she sees on billboards? Jenny knows others will think they are prettier than her and this makes her feel sick inside.
If Jenny is not the most beautiful in the room, she feels like she’s nobody. People would be surprised to know how very insecure she is about her appearance. If they thought about it, though, I think they would see this is true. Why else would she be so worried about always wearing makeup and having her hair carefully styled? Why else would she spend so much time and money looking perfect? Doesn’t this prove she feels she is nothing if she is not pretty?
Men have varied reactions to her. On one hand they want her and long to be near her. They also see she does her best to attract lots of men. Obviously she can’t be with all of them. Very few men are going to get the contact they really want. She leaves the rest of them with their noses pressed against the glass, longing for what they cannot have. At some level, the men know she is deliberately playing them. They feel used, teased, manipulated, rejected, and foolish with their tongues hanging out with lust. When they call her prick tease, she is outraged. She isn’t doing anything! All she is doing is standing here, dressed attractively! But hey, doesn’t every woman have the right to look her best? And it isn’t really her fault either, you see. Men have trained her to respond this way without her even being aware of what is happening. She isn’t deliberately manipulating them. Still, their anger is understandable because she is manipulating them even if she doesn’t quite know what she is doing.
Many men want to sleep with her but do not want to marry her. She wonders if they are ashamed to take her home to meet mother because she has a sexy appearance. Because she has dated so many men, do they think she is a slut? Some men court her furiously until she spends the night with them. Then they dump her by the curb in the morning and never want to see her again. Every time this happens Jenny feels sick and ashamed. This has happened so many times that maybe she is a slut. Can everyone see a stain on her? Is this stain why men treat her this way?
Sometimes men become so angry that they want to hurt her. Men stalk her apartment and harass her on the telephone. She is frightened that someone will rape or murder her. It doesn’t escape her notice that serial rapists often attack the most beautiful women. The victim photographs of nurses or pretty coeds are evidence enough to let her know the dangers of beauty.
Sometimes there is a new girl in town and attention shifts from her. Suddenly Jenny is not the IT girl. Instead she has to watch someone else get the attention. At these times she goes into withdrawal and feels invisible. She will do almost anything to get the attention back. There’s no better word to describe her feelings than desperation. You might say that she feels she would die without male stares. Jenny is addicted but who has ever heard of VAW addiction? She has no idea what is wrong or why she feels so bad. Some people are heroin junkies and will do almost anything to get the drug they need. Sometimes Jenny is like that. She does some things she is not proud of. These times she feels like even more of a slut, but she tries not to think about herself that way. She will just forget about what happened and start out fresh, being more careful not to let men take advantage of her in the future. She can’t think of herself as a slut. That word hurts too much.
Some people act like she is a joke and react as if every word from her mouth is stupid. She is actually smart and has the grades to prove it, but there are always people who treat her like a bimbo. No matter how professionally she dresses at work or how careful she is to stop flirting, some men treat her like a girl ready to jump out of a cake at a bachelor party. People say she doesn’t earn her promotions and that she sleeps her way to the top. She feels her role is limited and people only want to see her one way. When she tries to shed her glamour girl image to become sternly professional, men look at her new image with renewed interest. It is like the stereotype of the quiet librarian being turned into a sex kitten. She feels trapped into playing the vamp no matter what she does.
Regardless of whether she is with men or women, the fact is: most people never see her at all. Instead, they see only her beauty.
She was born beautiful. Really, what can she do?
Long Term Results:
What happens to a girl like Jenny in the long run? How do her earlier experiences affect her adult life? Very Attractive Women (VAWs) are not all alike. They don’t respond to the challenges of their beauty in the same way. However, the world reinforces behaviors that can cause a certain set of problems. Some VAWs may have none of these problems, others may have a few or all of them. I call these possible problems VAW Syndrome.
Jenny’s story shows us how a VAW’s appearance can create strong blasts of attention from the world around her. These blasts of attention make her feel special, powerful, and stimulated. The desire to experience more of this exciting attention can cause a young girl to become very focused on the people around her while she ignores her own inner experience. As a result, some VAWs live their life as observers. They look at how they look, and look at how others are looking at them, and lose touch with their inner reality. Instead of responding to their own feelings and drives, they go through life like actresses on a stage playing to their audience. This outer focus can make them very superficial.
This is a lonely life because when the audience goes away, they are alone with no inner guidance system to show them who they are. VAWs can feel this as an inner emptiness that they don’t know how to fill. Depression, anxiety, perfectionism, and obsessive-compulsive disorders are possible reactions to this interior void. Addictions, promiscuity, eating disorders, repetitive plastic surgery, compulsive shopping, cutting and suicide gestures can also result.
A reliance on the excitement of romance can distract them from accomplishing enduring life goals. We complain about a world that turns young girls into sex objects. It is important to recognize that this focus causes the girls to see themselves as sex objects too. This is where the greatest damage is done. Not only do others see them as a sex object but they behave like one too.
When out in the world, a VAW can be a lightning rod for anger from men who resent the power they have and from women who feel threatened by the male interest they attract. VAWs attract not only interest but also anger. A VAW is more likely to be stalked and harassed. Rapists often target VAWs. When reading about serial killers, the photos of the victims is often a gruesome gallery of VAWs. Even when male attention is not deadly, many VAWs must deal with unwelcome advances on a daily basis. Anger from men who feel diminished by VAWs can be frightening and constant.