5 ms·

>> make a living some as coaches or streamers And in those jobs being good at chess is only part of the equation. You have to be personable, someone that peop

>> make a living some as coaches or streamers And in those jobs being good at chess is only part of the equation. You have to be personable, someone that people aspire to. Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming. I once chatted with concert violinist. She was not happy about trends in the soloist community. "The moment I saw an exposed midrift in a concert hall, I knew I would never be a soloist."

colmvp 5y ago
> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming. That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people. I also notice that with Company Profile page, where who they show is not really indicative of who comprises the company.
- alasdair_ 5y ago
  >That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people. There have been several studies on this. Apparently being an attractive woman is a net negative when it comes to being hired by other women (6% fewer callbacks than the same resume with less attractive photo attached in one particular study). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1705244 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1705244
deleted 5y ago
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busyant 5y ago
> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing I used to work with an ex-military guy (extremely bright, hard working, excellent leader, etc. etc.). He was about 64 inches (1.63 meters) tall, balding, and not the handsomest fella. He told me point blank: "I was never going to become a general or achieve any other extremely high rank simply because I didn't have 'the look' or physical stature of a general."
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Photos have been a big part of promotions in the US armed forces. There has been pushback in recent years, iirc the marines abandoned photos last year, but you still have to "look the part" and attach headshots to many promotion applications. I've seen people pay actual money ($$$) for professional photographers to get an edge over their peers. Compare Canada where, beyond not having photos, even gender-based pronouns have been removed from performance reports in order that reviewers not risk gender bias.
  - epivosism 5y ago
    How do descriptions of physical attributes work? Possibly by just giving the candidate's percentile rank by sex? That would be gender-blind but also ignores the fact that absolute scale actually matters in war sometimes - running speed, ability to lift and load heavy tank shells for a few hours etc. One might argue that actual physical strength doesn't matter much. One way to check this claim would be to look at recently granted medals for valor, and see how many of them are related to absolute (not relative) physical prowess.
    - CydeWeys 5y ago
      Physical attributes are not particularly important wrt promotions in the military; you just need to pass that baseline fitness bar to not be flunked out on medical. Indeed, the higher up you go, the more your job becomes about leading and the less it becomes about individual feats of strength. I think you're thinking about the military a little bit wrong here -- this isn't the Roman era (when centurions led from the front and had to be legitimate physical badasses). Being higher up in the military nowadays is a lot more akin to being a paper pusher director at a company.
      - sandworm101 5y ago
        >> baseline fitness bar to not be flunked out on medical. Medical and fitness are different things. Lots of people can pass the fitness tests but still flunk out for medical reasons. Diabetics. People who get cancer. Failing eyesight. Sever allergies. It is very possible to ace the fitness tests while still failing the medical.
mikepurvis 5y ago
I think Alexandra Botez manages this kind of thing well— obviously she's young and attractive, and there's a certain amount of goofing around that goes on (her younger sister is a co-host), but overall the channel is pretty tightly focused on chess games, commentary, etc. And she's certainly a very serious player herself and has specifically spoken out on sexism issues in tournaments and the larger chess community, eg: https://www.insider.com/how-chess-was-more-sexist-than-its-portrayal-queens-gambit-2020-12 https://www.insider.com/how-chess-was-more-sexist-than-its-p...
- Claudus 5y ago
  There is certainly sexism built into the rating system, as woman titles require 200 less Elo points to achieve. https://www.chess.com/article/view/how-to-become-a-chess-grandmaster#rating https://www.chess.com/article/view/how-to-become-a-chess-gra...
  - argc 5y ago
    If the titles required the same Elo to achieve then there wouldn't be a point to have separate titles. The female-only titles are useful to encourage women to compete imo.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    They're different titles though. Grandmaster (GM) != Woman Grandmaster (WGM). Judit Polgár, for example, peaked at an Elo of over 2,700, so she easily qualified for Grandmaster (requirement of 2,500). Similarly, a Brigadier General is not the same rank as a General, despite some commonality in word choice between the two ranks.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      Well OK, but it doesn’t explain why there’s a WGM. There isn’t a “woman sergeant” position, and we’d definitely take offense at a company defining separate “senior engineer” and “woman senior engineer” positions.. so why accept the condescension of WGM?
xenocratus 5y ago
> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming You mean like this? https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/715141 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/715141

colmvp 5y ago

> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming. That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people. I also notice that with Company Profile page, where who they show is not really indicative of who comprises the company.

alasdair_ 5y ago
>That's life in general. Even at my company when choosing photos of people to profile to for recruitment posts on LinkedIn, it's pretty clear they lean towards attractive people. There have been several studies on this. Apparently being an attractive woman is a net negative when it comes to being hired by other women (6% fewer callbacks than the same resume with less attractive photo attached in one particular study). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1705244 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1705244

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

busyant 5y ago

> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing I used to work with an ex-military guy (extremely bright, hard working, excellent leader, etc. etc.). He was about 64 inches (1.63 meters) tall, balding, and not the handsomest fella. He told me point blank: "I was never going to become a general or achieve any other extremely high rank simply because I didn't have 'the look' or physical stature of a general."

sandworm101 5y ago
Photos have been a big part of promotions in the US armed forces. There has been pushback in recent years, iirc the marines abandoned photos last year, but you still have to "look the part" and attach headshots to many promotion applications. I've seen people pay actual money ($$$) for professional photographers to get an edge over their peers. Compare Canada where, beyond not having photos, even gender-based pronouns have been removed from performance reports in order that reviewers not risk gender bias.
- epivosism 5y ago
  How do descriptions of physical attributes work? Possibly by just giving the candidate's percentile rank by sex? That would be gender-blind but also ignores the fact that absolute scale actually matters in war sometimes - running speed, ability to lift and load heavy tank shells for a few hours etc. One might argue that actual physical strength doesn't matter much. One way to check this claim would be to look at recently granted medals for valor, and see how many of them are related to absolute (not relative) physical prowess.
  - CydeWeys 5y ago
    Physical attributes are not particularly important wrt promotions in the military; you just need to pass that baseline fitness bar to not be flunked out on medical. Indeed, the higher up you go, the more your job becomes about leading and the less it becomes about individual feats of strength. I think you're thinking about the military a little bit wrong here -- this isn't the Roman era (when centurions led from the front and had to be legitimate physical badasses). Being higher up in the military nowadays is a lot more akin to being a paper pusher director at a company.
    - sandworm101 5y ago
      >> baseline fitness bar to not be flunked out on medical. Medical and fitness are different things. Lots of people can pass the fitness tests but still flunk out for medical reasons. Diabetics. People who get cancer. Failing eyesight. Sever allergies. It is very possible to ace the fitness tests while still failing the medical.

mikepurvis 5y ago

I think Alexandra Botez manages this kind of thing well— obviously she's young and attractive, and there's a certain amount of goofing around that goes on (her younger sister is a co-host), but overall the channel is pretty tightly focused on chess games, commentary, etc. And she's certainly a very serious player herself and has specifically spoken out on sexism issues in tournaments and the larger chess community, eg: https://www.insider.com/how-chess-was-more-sexist-than-its-portrayal-queens-gambit-2020-12 https://www.insider.com/how-chess-was-more-sexist-than-its-p...

Claudus 5y ago
There is certainly sexism built into the rating system, as woman titles require 200 less Elo points to achieve. https://www.chess.com/article/view/how-to-become-a-chess-grandmaster#rating https://www.chess.com/article/view/how-to-become-a-chess-gra...
- argc 5y ago
  If the titles required the same Elo to achieve then there wouldn't be a point to have separate titles. The female-only titles are useful to encourage women to compete imo.
- CydeWeys 5y ago
  They're different titles though. Grandmaster (GM) != Woman Grandmaster (WGM). Judit Polgár, for example, peaked at an Elo of over 2,700, so she easily qualified for Grandmaster (requirement of 2,500). Similarly, a Brigadier General is not the same rank as a General, despite some commonality in word choice between the two ranks.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    Well OK, but it doesn’t explain why there’s a WGM. There isn’t a “woman sergeant” position, and we’d definitely take offense at a company defining separate “senior engineer” and “woman senior engineer” positions.. so why accept the condescension of WGM?

xenocratus 5y ago

> Physical attractiveness is also never a bad thing in the world of streaming You mean like this? https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/715141 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/715141