But yes, in general, most attractive people look attractive because they groom themselves and take care of themselves, in fact this is what really makes a person physically attractive.
I have seen ''ugly'' people start to look really good by finding styles and grooming that they really like and attractive people end up looking like a mess because they let themselves careless
Maybe your problem can be solved
While attractive people do sometimes groom and take care of themselves, many of them are also just genetically blessed and socially. These are people who, even when they were young and would have still been learning how to best groom and care for themselves, were already fairly good-looking. Saying you just need to groom and take care of yourself is both invalidating and simplifying something that depends on a multitude of factors. There are people who don't meet conventional beauty standards who groom themselves and try to take good care of themselves and are still considered unattractive by societal beauty standards.
Also, the ability to groom and take good care of one's self is a privilege that not everyone is afforded. From mental health struggles to poverty, a lot of people are not in a position to do those things. You have to remember that beauty standards are based on status. They change alongside signals of wealth and power. For example, in the West, in the past, the beauty ideal was to have pale skin since that was a sign of being wealthy enough to not have to work outside in the sun. Then, that changed to being tanned when being wealthy was associated with being able to travel the world and vacation in exotic tropical countries. Being skinny was in until Kim Kardashian came along and got a BBL and then being "slim thicc" was seen as the ideal body type. Then it changed back to being skinny again after Ozempic started taking over Hollywood and after Kim Kardashian got her BBL removed, now revealing her new and much slimmer figure. Along with that, a lot of aspects of the new beauty standards require some sort of cosmetic procedure in order for you to keep up with them. These standards change a lot and are becoming increasingly impossible to reach without the help of a plastic surgeon. This, again, ties into how wealth relates to all of this.
These standards also extend to race. The same features that people of colour get bullied and shamed for are appropriated by wealthy white individuals, turning their features into trends to parade around. Remember a few years back when the trend was to look half black and half white? Or how having East Asian facial features was and still is despite those same features being mocked years ago? The cultures and stereotypical physical attributes that can be found amongst BIPOC are treated as trends and the worst part is that we still get shamed for our appearance. If we don't get shamed then we get fetishized. You don't get to be seen as a beautiful individual unless you are a white person with those traits. Once the trend is over, everyone goes back to shitting on those features.
Even within communities of colour, the beauty standards are based on your closeness to whiteness. For example, I am part white (not half white, but I do look biracial). I happen to look closer to the idealized image that people have in their heads when they think about having a biracial child who is half black half white. As a result, I have gotten the privilege of not going through the same discrimination that a lot of brown skin and dark-skinned black girls go through. When other black people see my hair, they love it. Not because it's anything special, just because I have a looser curl pattern. Having a looser curl pattern is seen as the ideal within the black community as it signals that you must be part white or are at least closer to whiteness in appearance. Kinky hair, especially 4c hair, is shamed in the community and is seen as ugly. Same thing with a lot of features associated with blackness, such as having a wider and flatter nose. A lot of dark-skinned black women in particular have talked about the discrimination they went through being shamed and bullied for their appearance, not just by white people but also by black boys and men, while people like me get to be put on a pedestal. Hence why there is so much representation of people who like me in black media in comparison to women who are dark-skinned. Think of the women you see in most music videos by black artists. The women who black men get within most movies made by black people. I'm not attractive, but I've always been seen as more attractive than most dark-skinned black women, even those who are arguably better looking than me, just because my appearance is one associated with those who are closer to whiteness.
This is also reflected in how white people view their biracial children, too. There are some people (usually white women, though not all of them of course) who have a fetish for mixed-race children. It's pretty disgusting, especially since a lot of them talk about their kids the same way one talks about their dog. They obsess over what they are mixed with and it isn't uncommon for some of them to mistreat their kids once they grow out of that "cute phase". However, they tend to dislike their mixed-race kids if they don't meet the ideal aesthetics associated with it (such as having tanned skin, loose curls, light-coloured eyes and hair, full lips, etc in the case of biracial kids who are part black). They want a child who looks "exotic" or, at the bare minimum, looks like they are part white. If they don't come out that way then they are kind of screwed. For example, when I was a child I was on the bus with my mom and her friends. My mom's friends pointed to some white lady who was staring at me a lot and they watched as she called up her kids, one by one, and compared their features with mine (they all had stronger black features). When she noticed that they were staring at her she looked away in shame. Even the way how your parents view and treat you can sometimes hinge on your association with whiteness, since "looking too black" is seen as bad and ugly by these people.
These are issues that grooming alone cannot fix. Beauty standards and what is considered to be "attractive" is something that heavily intersects with a variety of issues, from poverty to racism to fatphobia to gender expectations to wealth, etc. Grooming alone isn't going to do shit if you aren't already, at the bare minimum, a thin average looking white person from a middle-class (or higher) background. Otherwise, you need to pray that you are born pretty or else you are kind of screwed.
In reference to the original post, I relate OP. I also hate my appearance quite a hit. I genuinely want my family to destroy any photos of me when I die. My appearance causes me distress sometimes and always find myself feeling insecure while in public because of it. Sometimes, I wonder if wearing makeup would help a bit, but I know that it would probably just make me feel even worse about myself.
