When you see an absolutely gorgeous woman, it’s unlikely you’ll feel sorrow for her; envy maybe, but certainly you won’t feel bad for someone with an obvious advantage. That’s right- having physical attributes that society puts on a pedestal makes you more valuable. Such a fact is a sobering artifact of a hyper material society. A society filled with shallowness and self-centeredness.

I actually can’t say I blame society for being material. It’s easy to be materially focused. Material things are real and tangible. They have a calculable value. Or at the very least- a commonly understood perceived value. Although all life is equally precious, some people are born with looks that make them valuable in the eyes of our material society. When you think about it, it’s hard not for it to feel unfair that people are born with a natural advantage.

But we can’t forget that all strengths come with a potential weakness in the shadows. Where, if left unmanaged, can be more of a curse than the corresponding strength is a blessing. The women who society places in the top decile of physical attractiveness have a complicated curse lurking in the shadows. See, when society places value on you that contributes to your self esteem without actually creating the esteem, there’s an unavoidable pull to validate the esteem. To help illustrate, consider an extremely tall, athletic teenager who is considered likely to play in the NBA by everyone he knows. His tall frame carries an invisible burden-- a composite of expectations that he feels all but duty-bound to meet. So everything he does that doesn’t meet the expectations of an NBA career feels disappointing.

Beautiful women carry a very similar burden, but more abstract and cumbersome. They are pulled to live into value that society has placed on them, and it’s not entirely clear how or why. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of these women attempt to validate the imposed value with material things. At the top of the list, of course, stands a materially wealthy partner who’s also attractive. One who can shower her with material things that hopefully fill the hole of self esteem and validation that society has dug for her. A hole, that, if misunderstood, results in silently toxic entitlement. But what happens when she finds that partner who provided all the things that made her loved ones applaud at the material splendor that they thought she deserved all along? Sure, happiness is one of the outcomes, but happiness is fleeting, and it can’t possibly create long lasting self esteem. So between waves of happiness, there’s emptiness, and all the cold, dark feelings that come with it. An emptiness that can only be filled with her earning the esteem for herself. After all, it’s called self esteem for a reason. That is- it can’t be given and has to be earned by one’s self.

So what are the queens who are born beautiful to do? As a starting point, they have more urgency than others to find a solid process for creating self esteem. Otherwise, they quickly find themselves in a vicious cycle of entitlement that they feel the need to validate, but they can’t actually validate using external sources. In such a cycle, if one is not able to find humility that absorbs some of the entitlement, then the entitlement will creep into relationships and ruin them bit by bit. Even if it’s unintentional, entitlement makes other people feel less, and in many cases- imposed upon or disrespected. Clearly not healthy things for any kind of relationship.

But if our born beauties can find the right balance of self esteem and humility, then they get to truly enjoy the gift of their natural beauty without it haunting them in the shadows. We certainly hope that for all of them!