As someone who has pretty privilege now, but most certainly did not in previous points in my life, I won’t sit here and try to tell you you’re wrong. But when I didn’t have pretty privilege, it was genuinely so much easier to make meaningful friendships and find people I could actually connect with authentically. Now I find so many people will be fake to try to get what they want.
I have a similar experience to #1. I grew up as the weird ugly kid. Now I’m actually kinda “pretty” and instead of being rude and horrible to me to my face because I’m ugly and weird, they’re horrible and rude to me behind my back because (as I’ve been told) they’re jealous while pretending to be my friend. So I have a really hard time making any friends cus I can’t tell if someone is really being nice or not. Might also just be because we got older and aren’t kids anymore, not entirely sure.
In my personal opinion, having experienced both, having meaningful relationships was worth a lot more than having a few things handed to me here and there. But I also say that as someone who has never been comfortable having things handed to me. Working for things makes them feel worth more. Not being objectified is amazing. And having meaningful connections is worth more than the world.
example: I had 2 coworkers (campus job) one male one female. Apparently the girl had a crush on the guy. The thing is, I worked in an entirely different office doing an entirely different job and never really interacted with either one of them. But the girl told a bunch of made up bullshit to my boss to try to get me fired. My boss then told me that she does this to every other pretty girl that works there and often gets them to quit. But she was very nice to my face whenever I saw her. Odd.
Another example: a girl pretended to be my friend, came to my parties, did my hobbies with me, but then she started shit talking me to my boyfriend behind my back and making up lies about me like that I was cheating on him. He didn’t believe her of course, but I have no idea why she switched up like that so randomly when all I tried to be was a good friend. My real friends assume she wanted to take my man.