Nobody is obligated to be attracted to you. Nobody is a bad person for NOT being attracted to you. Say it with me this time.

Attraction (at least initially, and for most people who are not aseuxal or demisexual, assuming demiseuxality wasn’t an orientation made up for the sake of a role-playing game) is physical. When you’re at a party, and you approach someone to flirt with them, you approached that person (probably) because they were good-looking. Of course, your idea of good-looking may be different from another person’s but that’s the beauty of dating.

Chances are, you will be attractive to someone. There are very few people who repel every single human being in the world, if any. But like it or not, you may only appeal to 20% of the people you find attractive. Some other people may appeal to 80% of the people they find attractive. Some people will be more universally attractive than others.

The only way to remedy this, of course, is to do things to your own appearance to become more universally attractive. This usually means doing things to fit into an “ideal” or “mainstream” idea of beauty, whether you’re male or female. This isn’t necessary to find a mate, but it is necessary to become universally attractive to a wide range of people. Of course, you may not care about that–which case, good for you. You’ll save a lot of money and effort.

You will not remedy your lack of universal attractiveness, however, by bitching and moaning at the people who do not find you attractive, or implying that those people only don’t find you attractive because they’re “brainwashed”. Nobody has ever said “You know, I thought she was too fat for me, but then she started telling me what an awful person I was for not finding her attractive, and I really started to find her sexy.” This has never happened and it will never happen.

There is also a person found on Tumblr in many different iterations–a fat woman who will only date “hot, thin/muscular men” and is outraged that these men deign to prefer women who are equally thin/fit. Meanwhile, those same fat women won’t dare date a fat man, because that would be “settling”. Their usual line is, “I shouldn’t have to settle for less just because I’m fat.” Okay, really? So it’s okay to discriminate against fat men, because, ew. But fat women? They’re goddesses. You MUST date them. If you don’t date them, you are sexist, fatphobic, and Hitler.

The same people who tend to complain that being fat means nobody likes them are the people who insist that they fuck hot guys constantly. So you have sex with loads of hot guys, and you’re still complaining that nobody finds fat women attractive? Dude, if you’re really fucking as many hot guys as you said you are, then you’re doing better than most thin women and thus have nothing real to complain about!

While discrimination has no place in school, the workplace or any other institution, it is totally fine in the realm of dating because dating IS at least partially about appearance, for most people. Of course, appearance is not the basis of a long term relationship but it is the basis of initial attraction (plenty of Tumblrinas claim not to care at all about people’s looks, but their obsession with Idris Elba proves otherwise). If someone finds you physically unattractive, that’s not anywhere near the same thing as being rejected from a job because of your looks. People are allowed to have physical preferences based on whatever they choose.

Of course, if finding thin people hot is mere “brainwashing”, then these Tumblrinas who brag about fucking thin guys and yell at other thin guys for not finding them attractive are really just as brainwashed. But don’t ask them to explain this logic to you- it’s NOT their job to educate you.