Romance Is Difficult To Find For Women With Plain Looks

She told me how she rides the bus.

"I look out the window like this," she said, her face turned sideways so that it would be hard for a fellow passenger to see.

That was in case some high-school boys were aboard. She had found they were the quickest with the cruel remark. There was nothing subtle about their comment: "You sure are ugly."

After she left me a voice mail, I asked to meet her. She had read a piece I wrote last week about a single guy and his tale of unsuccessfully trying to find a desirable woman. The guy kept talking about how cynical good-looking women were.

Out of all the responses, I kept returning to hers. She talked about herself not cynically but matter-of-factly: "I'm not a very attractive woman." "I've given up. There won't be romance for me." "All those stories about romance are never written about women like me."

We met. She was a bit overweight, plain-looking, not very stylish. You'll find her in any large workplace, the individual you never think about having any kind of personal life.

She's now in her late 30s. She had one date in high school. A few in college. A few more after college.

"When is the last time I had a date? Oh, it must have been five years ago," she said. "I answered one those personals ads. He had written he was kind of shy. I was the only one who answered the ad."

Needless to say, it didn't work out. Guys, she's found out, even guys who themselves would be considered homely, still desire that physically attractive woman.

It's just that these days, after they get past high-school age, she said, guys are subtle about how important a woman's looks are to them.

"I don't think men are bad. They act like they're genetically programmed to do," she said.

In the workplace, if she happens to be alongside a better-looking female employee, a male co-worker will always ignore her. In a store, she doesn't get attention from a male salesman. At a restaurant, a male waiter will assiduously help a table with attractive women, while she waits for a glass of water.

She's read self-help stuff about building a better, more confident you. The problem is, her confidence has been eroding for more than two decades.

In college, she tried to make herself more attractive. She got contact lenses, bought new clothes, wore make-up. "I still looked plain," she said.

As the years went by she sank further into her loneliness.

Springtime is the worst. She avoids parks, which seem to be full of couples. "If I walk by, alone, it's like I'm an insect," she said.

She goes out by herself to a show, a movie. She's learned to avoid gushy romantic films like "Bridges of Madison County."

"It would make me feel bad," she said of watching a movie about a woman finding the love of her life.

She saw a counselor about her low self-esteem. The counselor listened sympathetically, and gave her pep talks. But at a singles event, men still didn't ask her to dance.

Her life these days is quite simple. She gets up, goes to work, returns home, maybe goes out by herself for a meal, returns to her solitary apartment and reads a book, listens to the radio, then goes to bed.

She has no pets. She's vowed not to become the lonely woman whose only companion is a dog or cat. Better not to have a pet at all.

In public, she's seen others like her, sitting by themselves. She's thought about striking up a conversation.

She hasn't, yet. The years go by, and she finds it harder to think of herself as anything else but alone.

That's what she had wanted to talk about, she said, people like her, the ones never mentioned in the advertisements for dating services or publications that run personals ads.

I said that I hoped things would work out, that maybe sometime she'd find someone.

"I don't think I will," she said; to her, a statement of fact.

Erik Lacitis' column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. His phone number is 464-2237. His e-mail address is: elac-new@seatimes.com.