Do you cut off your best friend if they are bad for your self esteem?

What is the threshold of how "brutally honest" your best friend can be with you? How do you define brutally honest? How do you know if the brutally honest "facts" that they are trying to tell you are indeed a problem, or is it their perception? 

I grew up, more often than not, in a male dominant social circle. I like that no bullshit, no passive aggression, no slowly seclude you from the group. What comes with a male dominant social circle is that they can be rough with their words. Yeah sure, we have all been there. It's a form of play fight verbally, or teasing, or having fun insulting each other. To a certain extend, I play well that way too. The thing is that, I am a sensitive person, to others and how to perceive the words of others. I don't get butt hurt a lot, but I am also careful around the jabs I throw. I don't make fun of things that I know people are self conscious about, or know when to read the signs that someone has taken offence of the joke and apologize for it. 

But guys generally aren't that sensitive. 

I grow up with a lot of enforcement, saying that I'm cute (because I'm a smiley child) and I perceive myself as pretty. I grew up believing that even at my ugliest phase of life (puberty). I am pretty confident with myself, thus I was pretty assertive when I want to get things done. Then I started having crush on guys. I hung out with the group of guys from my class because I had a crush on one of them, and by then I was really close with Nicole as well. 

One day, on the bus ride back home, it was only me and the boys. Form 3 me was pretty naive. They started having this conversation about how pretty Nicole is, how cute she is. I thought it was normal for that particular friend to said so, because he was having a huge crush on Nicole. It came to a surprise when all of them started agreeing. At least for me, I've never seen Nicole that way as an insanely pretty girl (well, now I do because she is really pretty). While they were going on and on about Nicole, they started talking about other girls whom they find pretty as well. Seeing my crush there, my curiosity got the better of me. And I asked them, what about me then? Then they said with a dismissive tone, you're not pretty. And that particular friend that had a crush on Nicole had to rub it in, saying things like Nicole is so cute, you where will look pretty beside her la? 

That's when I started seeing myself as unpretty. And it only got worse when I grow up. 

I know logically I'm not too bad looking. At certain angles I can be said that I'm pretty too, but deep down I don't think I believe that. I always feel like the ugly duckling amongst my girlfriends. During form 6, I would often look around the class and think that look-wise, I must rank the lowest. After the incident, I developed a habit of walking with my head down, eyes on the floor. Even until now, I have problem holding eye contact with people. 

As I enter university, I learnt to put more effort into my appearance. Even more after I started working. I have always been chubby, so I am always watching my weight one way or another. I will never feel light enough to feel feminine. During my first year, I gotten into a diet that I'm supposed to eat 1000 calories a day, but I got so obsess that one day I found myself only eating 600 calories and still feeling guilty that I am eating too much. But lucky that I caught myself and I know I couldn't go on that way. 

Meanwhile, that same friend that said I don't look pretty became my best friend. We kept in contact while he's in UK. We talked about our struggles in studies and in life. At one point we were really close, because he would listen to my self-pitying thoughts and would still listen day after day. When he was in his 2nd year onwards, he was struggled in his studies and I was really concern of his mental health. We both had struggled mentally before, but maybe the lesson that we got out from it is different. 

I came out of my struggles learning to be more kind with myself and to treat my "negative" emotions kindly. I don't know about him. Partially, I felt we couldn't talk anymore without being confrontational. The last time we meet up when he graduated, I felt as thought whatever that I said was heavily evaluated and at one point we started arguing because I said I felt the overpopulation is the reason behind all environmental issue and I wouldn't want to have my own child. 

I've recently been struggling again for my self esteem and my femininity because dating is difficult. It was difficult recently too because I felt lonely a lot. Although I know a lot of the effort to move on comes from myself, but I have always have the strong need for emotional dependency, or at least to feel that I have friends with me while I try to get better again. But as adults, everyone is busy with their own things. Nobody has the time or patience to listen to your self defeating thoughts over and over again. Nobody has the patience to tell you that you are worthy over and over again. They expect you to be able to tell that to yourself and believe in that and never to lose that by sitting with you and listening to you cry for that one day. 

Obviously I would confine to my best friend, he is after all my best friend. But the way he reply is less than comforting. He says that from how he know me, that I can be too opinionated. That I should work on being more feminine. That I should put more effort into my appearance. That I maybe lack the flirtiness that guys look for. That I look ok, at least I don't have any deformities or so obese that people don't find them attractive. Whatever he decided to tell me always makes me feel that he is implying that I don't try to make myself better, that as if I don't already am very self conscious about all the things he pointed out about me and not trying to work on them, implying that I'm not good enough. And I tried to let him know that whatever that he is saying is exactly the things I think about constantly and trying to change but nothing has changed in terms of outcome, and I keep tormenting myself because of how he is saying things, that everything that happens is in a way my doing, my fault for not being perfect. And he would continue by saying things as if he haven't been listening all the time. "Why? Just because he doesn't like you only?" when I told him countless times it's not just this one time but every single time. Then after saying what I should be doing and working on, he would say things like just be yourself. I was being myself until you told me that I am too opinionated, that I'm not feminine enough, that I'm not a good company. 

Suddenly I realized that, perhaps the worst of all is not the things I couldn't figure out about how to be likable, but things that I could be happy about myself are always picked apart by him and made to feel like I'm not a likable person. People around me loves that I have my own mind, while he thinks I'm too opinionated. People say that I have leadership skill, he said that I'm too alpha. People say that I am cute, he said I need to work on my appearance. When I post a photo of myself saying I felt only my legs were nice in the photo, he commented saying it's not nice. 

Perhaps I was too afraid that if I lose him as a friend I would have no more friends around me. But now I'm thinking, perhaps I would be healthier if I don't have him as a friend. What do you think?