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Woman who lost her 'pretty privilege' says it changed how she saw everyone

"The fatter I got, the less attention was paid to me."

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A smiling blonde woman.

There is something extremely unfair about people born with great genetics who are extremely attractive. Sure, folks can improve their looks after putting in some work at the gym or learning how to present themselves. But many people we consider conventionally good-looking hit the jackpot by simply being born that way.

With little effort, these people have an incredible social advantage in life. They are seen as morally virtuous, receive random favors, are always the center of attention, and are more likely to get raises and promotions at work. The funny thing is that those with pretty privilege don’t realize the incredible advantage they have until it's gone.

What happens when people lose their pretty privilege?

In a since-deleted post, a woman on Reddit shared how she realized the power that comes with pretty privilege when she gained a lot of weight, and the world immediately began treating her differently.

“Whether we want to admit it or not, pretty privilege is a thing. And it’s something that I now realize I had for the majority of my life,” the woman wrote in a viral post. “People were usually very nice to me. I got offered perks like drinks at bars and extra attention when I went out. And I was stared at a lot.”

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Things changed for the woman after she had a health condition that required her to take a medication that slowed her metabolism, which resulted in rapid weight gain.

“The fatter I got, the less attention was paid to me," the woman continued. "I didn’t notice it at first, but I began to have to ask for customer service at places instead of being offered, and I started to feel invisible, because no one looked at me. No one. People would walk right by and not even acknowledge my existence. It was strange at first, then incredibly humbling. I thought, well, this is the new normal.”

The power of thin privilege

It’s important to note that being a certain weight doesn’t automatically make you good looking. People can look good at any weight. However, it would be naive to believe that thin people don’t have an advantage in this world.

woman, pretty, privilege, looks, attraction, beauty, thin A thin woman poses in front of bushes. Photo Credit: Mwabonje Ringa/Pexels

The drastic fluctuation in the woman’s weight made her conscious of what other people who don’t have the privilege of being pretty or thin go through in life. It allowed her to have greater compassion for people, regardless of how they look.

“My personality started to change a little," she wrote. "I began being thankful for any small interaction someone had with me, and responded to any small act of kindness with gratefulness. I noticed other not conventionally pretty people, and other overweight people, and made an effort to talk to them and treat them like they mattered. I became a better person. Not that I wasn’t a good person before, but I was now more aware and empathetic to those around me.”

The woman soon went off the medication and, just like that, she lost weight, and people began to treat her as they had before.

“The first time I noticed it was when I was in a store looking for something, and a handsome male worker came up to me and asked if I needed help. He looked me in the eyes. I felt like I mattered again,” she continued. “Then I instantly felt sad and horrified, because of the cosmic unfairness of life, that how we look really does determine how people treat us, even though it shouldn’t.”

woman, pretty privilege, attractiveness, beauty, standards, sun, sunset, empowerment A woman stands in front of a sunset. Photo Credit: Jill Wellington/Pexels

After the woman lost her privilege, she better understood what other people go through. On one hand, she probably enjoys the privilege, but on the other, she feels that the world is much less fair than she once imagined. At least, in the end, it’s taught her to be more empathetic to everyone she meets.

“And also, when someone looks at me and smiles, no matter who they are, I give them a huge smile back,” she finished her post.

This article originally appeared in May.

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'World's greatest pickpocket' shows how he uses misdirection to steal a man's watch and wow

He duped the whole audience at the same time, right in plain sight.

TED/YouTube

Apollo Robbins steals a man's watch in front of an audience.

It's weird to know that there are people out there who can fool the rest of us completely, manipulating natural human tendencies in order to dupe and deceive. We call these people con artists or crooks—except when they do it for entertainment and we're in on the ploy, in which case we call them sleight of hand artists or magicians.

In many ways, the latter takes more skill. Fooling someone who isn't expecting it is easy compared to fooling someone who knows you're trying to trick them. Masters of the craft are able to trick the average person even as the person watches carefully for signs of trickery, and they do it through the art of misdirection.

sleight of hand, pickpocket, misdirection, Apollo Robbins, human behavior, TED TalkMagic tricks often use misdirection.Photo credit: Canva

Apollo Robbins is one of the world's leading experts on pickpockets, confidence crimes, and deception (being skilled at all of the above himself) and his TED Talk demonstrates exactly how he uses misdirection to dupe not only the man he brings onstage, but the entire audience as well at the same time.

Robbins starts his Talk by asking if the audience thinks it's possible to control someone's attention and predict human behavior. It would be a superpower, wouldn't it? Then he walks audience members through a series of tasks to illustrate how we don't fully use our powers of observation at all times. For instance, he asks everyone to recall what icon they have on the bottom right of their phones and then check to see if they're right. After putting the phones away, he then asks what time was on the screen they just looked at. Most people didn't take note of that because it wasn't where their attention was.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Then he points out that they've all been looking at him for a couple of minutes, so he asks them the close their eyes and recall what he's wearing. "What color is my shirt? What color is my tie?" he asks. These are all tasks meant to illustrate how many things we don't consciously notice or perceive that are right in front of us.

Robbins begins to explain how our brains work and how he is able to manipulate our attention as a limited resource, but then says it's easier just to demonstrate how he does it. He brings a man from the crowd on stage and proceeds to do a series of sleight-of-hand tricks with a poker chip while simultaneously stealing the man's watch and putting it on his own wrist.

But then, at the end of the demonstration, he asks the audience once again what he's wearing. And that's the real mic drop. Woah. (Watch the above video if you haven't yet—spoilers below.)

People were wowed by how fooled they were.

pickpocket, misdirection, Apollo Robbins, human behavior, TED TalkApollo Robbins is an experienced pickpocket.Photo credit: Canva

"So he made it seem like the volunteer was being distracted and we as the audience were watching him be distracted while the magician obviously showed off stealing the volunteer's items, but in actuality we as the audience were being distracted while the magician did a quick change act. Wonderful way to prove the concept!"

"It’s especially great when things like this work on both and audience and the people watching the video."

"'Don’t have to close your eyes this time. What am I wearing' Me:.... It’s rewind time."

"This was mind-boggling, had to replay several times just to understand what was going on. Amazing live performance!"

sleight of hand, card tricks, misdirection, gif, skillSleight of hand tricks often use misdirection.Giphy GIF by Digg

"It's fascinating, that even though you know he is somehow going to 'trick' you, you just can't get over it."

"What he said at the end has stuck with me - 'If you could control someone's attention, what would you do with it?'"

That's the million dollar question, isn't it? If someone can control people's attention for nefarious purposes, can we do something similar for good? Either way, being aware of how our minds work and how our behavior can be manipulated is important to know, and Robbins' TED Talk perfectly demonstrates that.

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Productivity expert shares counterintuitive advice for getting your brain to focus better

He calls it "scatterfocus."

Photo by Nubelson Fernandes on Unsplash

Our minds are overstimulated, leading us to crave distractions.

If you have a hard time staying focused on a task, you're not alone. In a Crucial Learning poll of 1,600 people, two out of three responded that they have a hard time staying focused on one task or one person. And this difficulty focusing happens in both of the major areas of life, with 68% responding that they have a hard time focusing at work and 62% said they struggle to focus at home.

It's not surprising that most people have attention deficit issues, considering what the vast majority of us are carrying around with us all day long. It's no longer just other people who occasionally interrupt what we're doing, but rather our daily barrage of message, emails, app notifications, news headlines, social media check-ins, advertisements and other distractions our phones or other handheld devices offer us.

However, according to productivity expert Chris Bailey, it's not so much the distractions that are keeping us from focusing, but rather the overstimulation of our brains that cause us to seek out distractions in the first place.

In a 2019 TEDx Talk, Bailey, author of "Hyperfocus" and "The Productivity Project," shared that the key to focusing better isn't to try to try harder to focus, but rather almost the opposite: Rediscover boredom and let your brain wander where it will, or what he refers to as "scatterfocus."

The first step in combating the overstimulation of our brains is to consciously lower the level of stimulus. Bailey himself began trying this out with an experiment. He noticed that most of his day was spent going from screen to screen, from the moment he woke up in the morning to when he went to sleep at night. The biggest culprit was his phone, so he spent an entire month only using his phone for 30 minutes a day.

"It took about a week to adjust downward into a new, lower level of stimulation," he shared, "but once I did, I noticed that three curious things began to happen. First, my attention span grew. It was like I could focus on things, not effortlessly, but with much more ease than I could before this experiment started. In addition to this, though, as I was going about the world and especially when my mind wandered a bit, I had more ideas that my mind arrived at, and on top of this, I had more plans and thoughts about the future. Getting rid of one simple device led to these three effects."

The experiment was so successful that he decided to try to lower his level of stimulation even further. He asked his followers to share the most boring things they could think of for him to do, and he would choose one a day to do for an hour. After a month of doing things like reading the iTunes terms and conditions and watching a clock tick for an hour, he noticed the same kinds of effects as he did with his phone experiment. He was able to focus even more effortlessly, not because he had fewer distractions, but because he was less stimulated and therefore didn't seek the distractions in the first place.

Bailey makes a strong case for creating more empty space and less stimulation in our lives so that our brains are better able to focus.

Watch him explain:

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These online games help shatter misconceptions about learning and attention issues.

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What if you could see what life is like through someone else's eyes — just by playing an easy online game?

Like a word challenge! Seems simple enough.

Copying sentences? No sweat! (Right?)

OK. Maybe these games aren't so easy after all.

These games were designed by Understood.org to give people a sense of what it's like to have a learning or attention issue. Check out the video for more:

Understood.org created this series of simulations to help put parents and others in the shoes of children with learning and attention issues.

The simulation series, called Through Your Child's Eyes, is an interactive set of games designed to represent the challenges that many kids with learning and attention issues face. Learning and attention issues are brain-based difficulties in reading, writing, math, organization, focus, listening comprehension, social skills, motor skills, or a combination of these. Dyslexia and ADHD are some examples of common learning and attention issues.

After conducting extensive research with over 2,200 parents, Understood.org found that one theme kept coming up over and over again — the parents of these kids simply wanted to understand what their children were going through.

Let's face it: There are many misconceptions surrounding the topic. Some people think that learning and attention issues are an indicator of low IQ or that kids will outgrow them — not the case at all. In fact, kids with learning and attention issues can have above-average intelligence and even be gifted. If parents, teachers, and all of us can better understand the challenges these issues can create, we can better provide kids with the support they need to thrive in school and in life.

It's also crucial to understand that not all learning and attention issues are the same.

Perhaps a child has trouble recognizing certain words in a sentence. Or maybe dealing with numbers is what's giving them difficulty. Or maybe they're having a hard time paying attention in class.

Whatever the case may be, Through Your Child's Eyes addresses each scenario by separating the simulations into five different categories — reading, writing, attention, math, and organization. By experiencing each one, users get a much better sense of the specific challenges that accompany them.

More than just immersive games, Through Your Child's Eyes also offers practical solutions for parents to help their kids reach their fullest potential.

One of the most important ones is establishing a continuous dialogue with children about what they're going through. In this case, talking about everything at once might not be the best course of action. Rather, it's a process that needs to be addressed and adjusted on a regular basis, throughout a child’s journey.

Through Your Child's Eyes also has videos of children from preschool to grade 12 telling stories about their own experiences dealing with learning and attention issues. It’s a much more personal look into the challenges they face, along with the support from parents and teachers that made a difference to them — in their own words. After all, every child is unique.

That's why Understood.org gives parents a chance to customize their program in order to get more personalized resources and advice from experts and parents just like them.

It's a simple concept, but it can have a profound effect on a parent's point of view.

One loving mother definitely had her eyes opened. "I get it now, or at least I am beginning to," she told Understood.org. "My heart is a little lighter as I know that I have just found a key to unlocking my understanding and relatability to my precious children. ... I can’t wait to put into practice some of the new tools that I have just been equipped with!"

When they have a supportive network on their side, parents are able to create a more supportive environment at home and work hand-in-hand with teachers to make sure the best possible steps are being taken to nurture their children's gifts.

This only makes it easier for kids to be themselves and instills the kind of confidence that every kid should naturally have with them — every single day.

Curious to try the games for yourself? You can play all of them right here.

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