I really wish you're corret about it, even though I see it differently - my perception is that we're living in the era of image, so appearance seems to have a significant role on everything. And, yeah, it's completelly a genetic lottery, something you have little power over, but will influence your whole life. I really understand why a person who feels ugly wants to commit suicide, but life isn't all about it - you still can find your way being ugly, since you accept that opportunities aren't equal for everyone, and it includes the lookism (discrimination based on looks).
some people are very beautiful and some people are not. it is not just filters. lookism is real. The part about you can still find your way being ugly is true also. Some people who are ugly are still very successful and happy and have relationships.
people are mean to people who look different, like actually incredibly mean at times, and it can be little things, the tone in people's voices, little looks, the lack of following through or doing anything extra.
the next part i am writing based on the belief OP is not just being irrational and look normal. so that instagram girl makes almost everyone look not as good looking by comparison. i don't know OP if you are average and wish you were hot or are actually facially a bit different and people are really that mean to you. You told me about the mask and pandemic, how people treated you better, so im going to believe this is real and not just in your head.
It really sucks to not be beautiful and being ugly is awful. it's the horrible objective truth. You said your eye area is pretty. The good thing for you is if there is something you are trying to correct, the eye area is the hardest thing to correct. It's very difficult for craniofacial suregeons to correct eye area placement and eye size, so if you have nice eyes, the hardest part is taken care of. Noses are easy to correct. Jaws can be corrected. It's doable but takes a while. Facial asymmetry can be partially corrected. Incorrect midface proportions are really hard to correct. They can correct a lot. Lip size and placement they sort of can't correct. Fillers often end up looking awful. If your face is slightly off, you usually don't want things like lip fillers or extreme cheek implants to try to be sexy because thry often make people look unnatural, which is terrible, and they eend up looking worse. But there are some things that can be sometimes done to make someone look more pleasing. If you weren't born naturally beautiful, you will never have that, but if you are ugly for specific reasons, like a mild jaw deformity and recessed chin, they can sometimes correct stuff.
I'm sure people will get mad at me for suggesting this option (live cheap, work hard, get plastic surgery), because the conventional advice is what others have said ("oh those girls just wear a lot of makeup and use filters and beauty comes from within") but I don't know if that's what you want.
Some of these problems resulting in looking a certain way are genetic, some are behavioral like sleeping too much on one side and/or having a hard mattress as a kid, and some is poor nutrition as a kid and/or lots of childhood stress. Mostly it seems to be to be based on maternal health. Older mothers with bad maternal health (smoking, drinking, eating food with preservatibes and processed crap) tend to have less healthy kids who end up ugly. Sometimes it's genetic. Interestingly, small heart defects sometimes tend to correlate with facial issues. There's this movie mommie dearest and joan crawford ties her adopted daughter's hands to the side of the bed so she'll stop sleeping on her face and it's sort of portrayed as abuse in the movie, but the daughter grew up pretty enough to become an actress... joan crawford was probably right. When you are a kid, a lot of times if you have bad parents they just yell at you and never explain things and don't really teach you stuff.
If the sole reason you are here is how you look, it may be worth it to get an in demand job that doesn't require much trainig and then just see a craniofacial specialist. Also, if they say you look normal, then you know it's psychiatric. Nurses and nurses assistants are usually in demand. As a less attractive person, it's important to choose a career in which there is a shortage. You don't want to have to struggle to get a job in your field, because people will not open doors at first if you are ugly. You could also do home health care without being a CNA and get paid little but just work a lot, but it would be slow.
It really sucks because often people with craniofacial issues have them because of poor maternal health during pregnancy and like, it's the sort of thing which having a super supportive family would help with, and usually if someone's mom had bad maternal health it means their family is less likely to be supportive and more likely to be selfish. People whose parents had them at older ages are sometimes more financially stable.
My mom smoked during her pregnancy, then berated me as a child during certain years for having behavioral problems due to ADHD, which is literally caused by maternal smoking, and then was controlling and awful, not letting me leave the house as a kid to do things like walk down to the store and come back, making my health worse, while criticizing me for not being like other children and not being athletic. All of it impacted my health and much of it can't be undone. I had really awful parents in certain ways, but I suppose lots of people do. I have some craniofacial issues that would be hard to correct, but could be corrected with enough money. At my age, I don't feel like it's worth correcting, and I have eye placement and eye size.issues that make correcting other things harder. Like one side.of my face is smaller and sort of higher than the other, but if I tried to make itnmore normal (jaw elongation, jaw implants, cheek implants, etc) thrn my eye would still be in the wrong place relative to all that. It's like partly my facial bones are compensating for "off" eye placement. One pladtic surgery office I talked with said it would cost 500K to "correct." (This would be for extreme craniofacial surgery with the world's best surgeon. This is not the typical cost of craniofacial surgery.) It's not so bad that it's worth it to me. I wish my jaw were bigger. I feel like there's not enough room in my mouth. I wish these issues had been corrected when I was younger.
There are some people for whom their facial situation is so bad, like many things "off" in different ways, that it would be a terrible uphill battle to try to look more normal. But if you have nice eyes, it may be less bad then you think. Eyes are usually the hard part. Do you know specifically what about your face is off? Would you be willing to get a job as like a CNA and live in a tiny cheap place (cheapest place you can find), and put all the money into seeing a craniofacial doctor?
Keep in mind there are greedy doctors out there, and some will take your money even if this is psychiatric, and sometimes plastic surgery can leave someone looking worse, and the best outcome is usually "above average." But if it's something specific (jaw defect and recessed chin), they can change that stuff.
To give you some perspective, if you have a 50K a year salary, get 40K after taxes and live on 25K, after 2 year you would jsve 30K. Take out a 20K personal loan, 50K total, that's enough for craniofacial surgery to coreect jaw issues, chin issues and/or rhinoplasty if needed. Like, I know it's not the PC answer, but correcting stuff somrwhat is doable. You can still live a great life without doing this. But it's an option.
I also meant what Insaid before about being a hero. You can try to find a way to change the world, to make it better somehow. Something that isn't just about looks. Most of those beautiful people will never be heros. I don't know what that would be like for you, what you would want to change about the planet.
