16 ms·

Being Really, Really, Ridiculously Good Looking

116 points by guimarin 13y ago

mikecane 13y ago
>>>“In one study, men who saw a new-car ad that included a seductive young woman model rated the car as faster, more appealing, more expensive-looking, and better designed than did men who viewed the same ad without the model. Yet when asked later, the men refused to believe that the presence of the young woman had influenced their judgments.” I've been wondering why in China launches of products are usually accompanied by young good-looking women holding the product. EDIT to add: I also find it to be a very annoying practice.
- Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
  Pascal: “Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, for they would understand at first sight, and are not used to seek for principles. And others, on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from principles, do not at all understand matters of feeling, seeking principles, and being unable to see at a glance.”
  - mikecane 13y ago
    If you're using that to defend exploiting women, forget it.
    - Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
      Men's hormonal buttons are being pushed by images of hot women in order to empty their wallets, and you think it's the women who are being exploited. That's rich.
      - mikecane 13y ago
        Argue with Gloria Steinem, who was once a Playboy bunny. http://www.gloriasteinem.com/updates/2011/8/22/i-was-a-playboy-bunny.html http://www.gloriasteinem.com/updates/2011/8/22/i-was-a-playb...
        Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
        Gloria Steinem's career arc has been from B-girl to intellectual pickpocket.
    - beachstartup 13y ago
      if you're paying the women, but taking the mens' money, who exactly is being exploited here?
      - illuminate 13y ago
        Why only one?
cousin_it 13y ago
Everyone concerned with this problem might be interested in reading Ted Chiang's excellent science fiction story "Liking What You see": http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/liking.html http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/liking.html . It examines what would happen if everyone could choose to disable their natural reaction to beauty, and how that relates to morality.
- edanm 13y ago
  Huge upvote to this. It's a really excellent story. In fact, Ted Chiang's short story collection is some of the best Science Fiction I've read in years. That story specifically is a great one (not the best), and I think of it every time this kind of article crops up.
etvmueller 13y ago
Imagine a world where professional sports teams recruit the least talented players, and companies seek out the bottom of the class engineers, while everyone cheers how outstandingly ugly the models are because advertisers only want the most ugly to represent them, above the noise of the least gifted warbler singing on the radio. There are many ways to be outstanding, why should the pursuit of the outstanding in some areas be any less socially acceptable than in other areas?
- scarmig 13y ago
  Because a job where you sit in front of a computer all day doesn't require you to not have acne or be taller than 5'2 (if you're a guy) or whatever. I'm sure there's some model with epicycles and epicycles of logic explaining how having prettier programmers (or whatever) make all the programmers they see over the water cooler more productive. But there'd have to be actual evidence of that.
  - Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
    A reporter once asked the Italian giallo director Dario Argento why so many beautiful girls are murdered in his movies. He replied that the dictates of the giallo require that one or more persons die, and that the audience would rather watch beautiful girls being killed than ugly ones.
  - etvmueller 13y ago
    With regard to the theory that attractive workers make other workers more productive, I do not know if that is true and I am not arguing it. And I also would not argue that sitting in front of a computer all day requires you to have acne or be less than 5'2". If you had to hire one of two people, both equally qualified except that one was much more physically attractive, which would you hire ( in a vacuum where there is no legal oversight )? We are encouraged to accommodate differences to such a degree that I am concerned that we reflexively penalize representatives of the ideal, in favor of representatives of ever greater divergence from the ideal, and to what purpose? If we cannot help being born who we are then some will just be more attractive than others. Rather than letting them coast through life on their looks, we should be encouraging them to develop their other abilities. Perfect facial symmetry for example may indicate a beautiful mind.
jameshsi 13y ago
What I find interesting as well is that being attractive is not all roses, and sometimes it can work against you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr Hedy Lamarr, credited with the US Patent for frequency hopping, was met with disbelief simply because people thought she was too beautiful to create such a profound intellectual contribution. Many actors/actresses find themselves unable to break out of certain roles that match their look and caricature. In day to day life, we make assumptions about a person's personality based on how they look. There's a lot of "work" we all need to do to break out of the societal mold that's shaping other people's perception of our personalities if left to first impressions.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Weirdly enough I did once have a woman find it difficult to believe I worked in IT because I was "too handsome for that". I've also seen comments on technical youtube videos that say stuff like "Dude has pale skin and a neckbeard, you know he's legit!" I wonder if this is one of the reasons we don't have more women in IT, if there is a public perception of IT people = Ugly. The last thing many women want is to be associated with ugly.
- jacalata 13y ago
  This (not Lamarr specifically) was briefly mentioned in the article - the 'attractiveness benefit' is actually not awarded to women in traditionally male fields.
danielpal 13y ago
Readability note: Theres a really annoying iFrame in top right (join Tumblr), fixed position that makes it impossible to read the blog and follows you. Screenshot: https://twitter.com/danielpalacio/status/327525758065070080/photo/1 https://twitter.com/danielpalacio/status/327525758065070080/... There's no way to close it. Is this something that Tumblr adds?
- rrouse 13y ago
  Yes. I haven't seen one that large though. It usually looks like this: http://www.minusmanhattan.com/ http://www.minusmanhattan.com/
- rohin 13y ago
  Rohin from Priceonomics here. Tumblr added this new button to our site this week I believe. We'll figure out some way to change / remove it; it's annoying.
- omarish 13y ago
  Yikes! Sorry, this is bad user experience. Update: Tumblr seems to load their own stylesheets for mobile devices. We'll find a fix for this.
rthomas6 13y ago
Until this perception of attractive people being more trustworthy, smarter, etc. changes (it's probably not going to change), how do we incorporate this information into our lives and careers? My opinion: lose weight. Or rather, reduce your body fat percentage. It's not as hard as people make it out to be. Look at the hot or not composite index. Notice the correlation? The numbers are inversely correlated with their body fat percentage. If you are wearing great new clothes, are clean, are groomed, and are 30+ pounds overweight, you're going to look less attractive (and therefore less successful and trustworthy) to most people than someone who is wearing average clothes and is in decent shape. And I'm not talking about see-your-abs shape, though of course that's even better. I mean just getting to a healthy weight. It seems to me it's one thing that a lot of people with desk jobs overlook or fail to take seriously, that can mean a huge increase in quality of life in a lot of different ways.
- scarmig 13y ago
  What if you're short? Maybe devote your political activities to pushing for a height tax... http://www.nber.org/papers/w14976 http://www.nber.org/papers/w14976 But yeah, from an economically utilitarian perspective, you could solve this by differentially taxing the attractive.
  - bherms 13y ago
    Harrison Bergeron, anyone?
    - scarmig 13y ago
      Great story, everyone should read it: http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
      - bherms 13y ago
        Also, film adaptation that was phenomenally well done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvqsv1pPSbg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvqsv1pPSbg
ashwinaj 13y ago
I'd like to see a study in other regions than North America. Does it apply elsewhere?
ChrisNorstrom 13y ago
Evolution wise, this is because people like in others, what they wish they had for themselves. Likewise, people hate in others what they dislike about themselves. We celebrate the beautiful because we wish we too could be beautiful. We mock the ugly/short/gay/fat/skinny/weak because those are qualities that we ourselves do not wish to have. If all of society punishes those with these traits, people with these traits will be less likely to reproduce and pass these traits on to future generations. Nature is as always, brutal. But because we humans have emotions we try to hide these discriminations and pretend we don't have them. I always thought it was interesting how women with self-image issues are comforted on talk shows and told "honey you are beautiful just the way you are!" in one episode then "oh my God you look so much better!" after they get a makeover in the next episode. Not to mention the irony of women in the crowd (who will spend hundreds of hours each year putting on makeup, doing hair, bleaching, & plucking) clapping to the tune of "you're beautiful just the way you are". My angry bitterness comes from the fact that my whole life I've been lied to. I was a cute kid but after puberty it all went downhill. I was the first to realize it. I was hoping the world around me would keep it's promise of treating me nicely because after all, "it's what's on the inside that counts". Yet, it was all a lie. I've had friends tell me I was ugly, I've had friends tell me they initially didn't want to be associated with me because I was ugly. I've had people in public say to me (as I'm walking by) "Damn dude, you're ugly". And if I choose to get cosmetic surgery some day, I'll have a whole new group of people calling me "shallow". Why? Because I want to look nice? God I'm just so sick of this bullshit. I don't hate myself, I hate the world that lied to me. People who say one thing, then do another. The same people who call plastic surgery recipients as "shallow" are the same ones who lie to themselves and refuse to acknowledge how important it can be to look nice and feel good about yourself. How happy the millions of people who get surgery every year feel when they have a nose straightened out or a wrinkle removed or hollow cheeks filled. People tend to believe lies that make them feel good rather than accepting truths that make them feel bad. I'm glad I live in 2013 when I can change the way I look so I can have a better life instead of lapping up all that "it's what's on the inside" bullshit so many people keep spreading so they can look empathetic and modest in front of others. My Point: I'd like 3 things to change in our society: 1) No more lying. No more "We're all beautiful" rhetoric. No everyone is not beautiful. That's bullshit. Let's be honest. A few people are beautiful, most are average, many can be unattractive, and some are apparently repulsive enough to instill feelings of negativity in others. Beauty can also be subjective so there's a bit of give here and there. 2) To be more understanding towards people who are unattractive by removing the stigma that comes with being unattractive. Aka don't treat us differently. Example: All my friends are outcasts, people rejected by others because they were unattractive, too fat, too skinny, too black (Nigerian descent). Despite me admitting that many of my friends are unattractive themselves, I was still their friend. I was never embarrassed to be their friend or be seen with them. 3) To not look down on people who want to better themselves through cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery is still looked down upon by many people. If you take a leave of absence for 2 weeks and come back with a different face your co-workers will respond negatively. To redefine oneself is what makes humans human. Stop judging cosmetic surgery by looking at extreme examples like Dolly Parton, Joan Rivers, and Michael Jackson. Those are extreme edge cases. Walk into any plastic surgeons offices and ask for their before/after books. Most surgery is meant to leave the patient looking natural not unrecognizable. For instance: http://www.drrichardjoseph.com/photos/jaw-surgery.php http://www.drrichardjoseph.com/photos/jaw-surgery.php Are they shallow for looking better?
papaver 13y ago
like the porno for pyros song goes, "cursed to be born beautiful, poor and female, there's none that suffered more." there are definitely advantages to be born beautiful but there are also several disadvantages. its too bad the article didn't dwell on the negative effects as well.
- Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
  Saying that it's tough being beautiful is one of those formulations along the lines of, "Oh, it's such a burden having all this wealth. How I envy the simple, carefree lives of the poor."
incision 13y ago
I'm surprised there's no mention downsides to being an attractive man. I think they certainly exist, but perhaps the net is positive?
- seanalltogether 13y ago
  As far as I'm aware being an attractive male doesn't hinder your chances in the STEM fields as it maybe would a female.
  - trustfundbaby 13y ago
    I think it can work against you, people might not take you seriously as an engineer if you're too goodlooking or well built.
    - Xcelerate 13y ago
      Don't know why you were downvoted. I've noticed this too. Someone who works out a lot (noticeably muscular) is stereotyped in academia or STEM professions.
      - seestheday 13y ago
        I can understand there being an issue for being overly muscular, but I also don't think that being overly muscular equals being good looking. This is probably a very common mistake that men make when pursuing better looks.
        Xcelerate 13y ago
        > I also don't think that being overly muscular equals being good looking I know. I didn't imply that.
    - seestheday 13y ago
      I'm a pretty good looking man by conventional standards. In my n=1 experience the benefits far outweigh any downside. I actually can't think about any downside. I know this sounds cocky, but I thought it might add to the discussion. Being good looking is fucking awesome. So is being smart. Both are a combination of genetics and hard work.
nazgulnarsil 13y ago
Is it just me or is the 7.5-7.9 the most attractive on that grid?
- svachalek 13y ago
  I thought that was interesting too. I think perhaps it's something to do with the nature of the averaging process, where a bunch of faces averaged look better than the individual faces up to the point of being "good" looking, but exceptionally good looking faces have more to lose than gain. For example, I've read that for women, the more contrast the better (which is why makeup works) and it's likely you lose a lot of that in the averaging process.
deleted 13y ago
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crag 13y ago
" America has no law preventing companies from using attractiveness as a hiring criteria, regardless of whether the job is exotic dancer, salesman, or software engineer. It’s pretty much okay from a legal standpoint to discriminate based on looks in America." My problem with this is beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So having laws preventing companies hiring based on looks is ridiculous. I mean, how would you know what anyone thought during the hiring process? I doubt anyone would say "you're ugly as shit so we aren't hiring you". Not to mention, what you consider "ugly" I might not.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  It's only subjective to a point. There are many things that are almost uniformly considered attractive by the majority of the population. There was an AMA from somebody who did research on this on reddit a while back. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1cstrm/i_did_research_on_facial_attractiveness_for_years/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1cstrm/i_did_research_... It says in there that it's usually around 30-40% subjective.
  - cadlin 13y ago
    I looked through that thread and what struck me was how small the body of research the guy draws from is. Maybe he is only citing a small sample of the research, but there seems to be a lot of conclusions drawn from very few studies. Especially on something as subjective and political as human attraction. The top answer in the reddit thread discusses this (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1689917/pdf/10380676.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1689917/pdf/1038...) study. It says that women prefer the odor of more attractive men. The conclusions from that study are based on the odors of 6(!) different men. And the t-shirt the men wore to capture the odor are washed, frozen, and then heated in a bottle. The women then smell the bottle and make their judgement. The study doesn't bother to explain why these actions don't change the odor of the t-shirt (which they might not, but that doesn't seem obvious to me). There are other problems with the study, but I'll stop there. I understand that all fields of science have to start somewhere, but this seems closer to phrenology than particle physics.
chipsy 13y ago
As the article establishes, beauty in the traditional sense mostly means "average." To some extent I think you can take more control over your appearance by searching for an identity that goes beyond traditional elements - taking an artistic approach to one's fashion, makeup, outlook, etc. Music subculture has done this numerous times since the 20th century, and more recently queer culture has been deconstructive of many of the traditional attitudes towards beauty. Those ideas are deliberately positioned against the mainstream, yet have an influence on it over time - you can get away with a far more outlandish appearance in a modern urban area now than 30 years ago. As well, we're going to keep adding corrective measures over time. So I see society heading towards a "meeting in the middle" in some respects - creating all permutations of attractiveness.
- jacoblyles 13y ago
  > beauty in the traditional sense mostly means "average." I'd imagine that this is true for females, but that males would benefit from being above average in some ways (i.e. height).
RivieraKid 13y ago
"America has no law preventing companies from using attractiveness as a hiring criteria, regardless of whether the job is exotic dancer, salesman, or software engineer. It’s pretty much okay from a legal standpoint to discriminate based on looks in America." This law wouldn't make much sense. We could as well make a law preventing companies from using intelligence as hiring criteria. Imagine a boring job in a factory, where having above average intelligence wouldn't make you more productive. Is it discriminating to hire someone only because the boss likes him because he's intelligent? And what about discrimination based on smell or sense of humour?
- Evbn 13y ago
  There was a police department that rejected people with high IQs, and the discrimination case went to a high court.
- vacri 13y ago
  A guy I knew did too well on his aptitude test to become a tram driver here in Melbourne. The problem as seen by the recruiters is that in being too bright, he's likely to get bored sooner and leave. Sure, he himself might absolutely love the job and stay for decades, but the recruiters are playing the numbers game here - tram drivers are not a keystone position - and they find that there's more churn with really bright people.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    That's a good point, and it's often quoted to explain the fact that Ph.D. graduates often make less money (or have higher unemployment rates) than professional degree holders in the same field. The assumption is that the Ph.D. holder will jump ship at the first offer of a job at his educational level, so he's less reliable as a long term employee.
JabavuAdams 13y ago
I recently realized that this is embedded in our language. My 4-year was confused by the phrase "good-looking". She assumed that it meant people who look like they're good. By four, she's already internalized that attractive people are good and unattractive (by local standards) are bad. Scary.
- yathern 13y ago
  To me it sounds like she hear the term "good-looking" and interpreted as someone who looks like they're good. Not internalizing some societal idea about attractive people. There are many defining visual characteristics that are anthropomorphically indicators of "good" or "bad" people, that don't necessarily have to do with attractiveness.
deleted 13y ago
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vaindouchebag 13y ago
I've made my career on the knowledge that if I get a new client lead and its a woman, if I have one face to face meeting, I know I've got the gig. For some reason a lot of my clients are fashion startups.

116 points by guimarin 13y ago

>>>“In one study, men who saw a new-car ad that included a seductive young woman model rated the car as faster, more appealing, more expensive-looking, and better designed than did men who viewed the same ad without the model. Yet when asked later, the men refused to believe that the presence of the young woman had influenced their judgments.” I've been wondering why in China launches of products are usually accompanied by young good-looking women holding the product. EDIT to add: I also find it to be a very annoying practice.

Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
Pascal: “Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, for they would understand at first sight, and are not used to seek for principles. And others, on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from principles, do not at all understand matters of feeling, seeking principles, and being unable to see at a glance.”
- mikecane 13y ago
  If you're using that to defend exploiting women, forget it.
  - Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
    Men's hormonal buttons are being pushed by images of hot women in order to empty their wallets, and you think it's the women who are being exploited. That's rich.
    - mikecane 13y ago
      Argue with Gloria Steinem, who was once a Playboy bunny. http://www.gloriasteinem.com/updates/2011/8/22/i-was-a-playboy-bunny.html http://www.gloriasteinem.com/updates/2011/8/22/i-was-a-playb...
      - Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
        Gloria Steinem's career arc has been from B-girl to intellectual pickpocket.
  - beachstartup 13y ago
    if you're paying the women, but taking the mens' money, who exactly is being exploited here?
    - illuminate 13y ago
      Why only one?

cousin_it 13y ago

Everyone concerned with this problem might be interested in reading Ted Chiang's excellent science fiction story "Liking What You see": http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/liking.html http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/liking.html . It examines what would happen if everyone could choose to disable their natural reaction to beauty, and how that relates to morality.

edanm 13y ago
Huge upvote to this. It's a really excellent story. In fact, Ted Chiang's short story collection is some of the best Science Fiction I've read in years. That story specifically is a great one (not the best), and I think of it every time this kind of article crops up.

etvmueller 13y ago

Imagine a world where professional sports teams recruit the least talented players, and companies seek out the bottom of the class engineers, while everyone cheers how outstandingly ugly the models are because advertisers only want the most ugly to represent them, above the noise of the least gifted warbler singing on the radio. There are many ways to be outstanding, why should the pursuit of the outstanding in some areas be any less socially acceptable than in other areas?

scarmig 13y ago
Because a job where you sit in front of a computer all day doesn't require you to not have acne or be taller than 5'2 (if you're a guy) or whatever. I'm sure there's some model with epicycles and epicycles of logic explaining how having prettier programmers (or whatever) make all the programmers they see over the water cooler more productive. But there'd have to be actual evidence of that.
- Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
  A reporter once asked the Italian giallo director Dario Argento why so many beautiful girls are murdered in his movies. He replied that the dictates of the giallo require that one or more persons die, and that the audience would rather watch beautiful girls being killed than ugly ones.
- etvmueller 13y ago
  With regard to the theory that attractive workers make other workers more productive, I do not know if that is true and I am not arguing it. And I also would not argue that sitting in front of a computer all day requires you to have acne or be less than 5'2". If you had to hire one of two people, both equally qualified except that one was much more physically attractive, which would you hire ( in a vacuum where there is no legal oversight )? We are encouraged to accommodate differences to such a degree that I am concerned that we reflexively penalize representatives of the ideal, in favor of representatives of ever greater divergence from the ideal, and to what purpose? If we cannot help being born who we are then some will just be more attractive than others. Rather than letting them coast through life on their looks, we should be encouraging them to develop their other abilities. Perfect facial symmetry for example may indicate a beautiful mind.

jameshsi 13y ago

What I find interesting as well is that being attractive is not all roses, and sometimes it can work against you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr Hedy Lamarr, credited with the US Patent for frequency hopping, was met with disbelief simply because people thought she was too beautiful to create such a profound intellectual contribution. Many actors/actresses find themselves unable to break out of certain roles that match their look and caricature. In day to day life, we make assumptions about a person's personality based on how they look. There's a lot of "work" we all need to do to break out of the societal mold that's shaping other people's perception of our personalities if left to first impressions.

jiggy2011 13y ago
Weirdly enough I did once have a woman find it difficult to believe I worked in IT because I was "too handsome for that". I've also seen comments on technical youtube videos that say stuff like "Dude has pale skin and a neckbeard, you know he's legit!" I wonder if this is one of the reasons we don't have more women in IT, if there is a public perception of IT people = Ugly. The last thing many women want is to be associated with ugly.
jacalata 13y ago
This (not Lamarr specifically) was briefly mentioned in the article - the 'attractiveness benefit' is actually not awarded to women in traditionally male fields.

danielpal 13y ago

Readability note: Theres a really annoying iFrame in top right (join Tumblr), fixed position that makes it impossible to read the blog and follows you. Screenshot: https://twitter.com/danielpalacio/status/327525758065070080/photo/1 https://twitter.com/danielpalacio/status/327525758065070080/... There's no way to close it. Is this something that Tumblr adds?

rrouse 13y ago
Yes. I haven't seen one that large though. It usually looks like this: http://www.minusmanhattan.com/ http://www.minusmanhattan.com/
rohin 13y ago
Rohin from Priceonomics here. Tumblr added this new button to our site this week I believe. We'll figure out some way to change / remove it; it's annoying.
omarish 13y ago
Yikes! Sorry, this is bad user experience. Update: Tumblr seems to load their own stylesheets for mobile devices. We'll find a fix for this.

rthomas6 13y ago

Until this perception of attractive people being more trustworthy, smarter, etc. changes (it's probably not going to change), how do we incorporate this information into our lives and careers? My opinion: lose weight. Or rather, reduce your body fat percentage. It's not as hard as people make it out to be. Look at the hot or not composite index. Notice the correlation? The numbers are inversely correlated with their body fat percentage. If you are wearing great new clothes, are clean, are groomed, and are 30+ pounds overweight, you're going to look less attractive (and therefore less successful and trustworthy) to most people than someone who is wearing average clothes and is in decent shape. And I'm not talking about see-your-abs shape, though of course that's even better. I mean just getting to a healthy weight. It seems to me it's one thing that a lot of people with desk jobs overlook or fail to take seriously, that can mean a huge increase in quality of life in a lot of different ways.

scarmig 13y ago
What if you're short? Maybe devote your political activities to pushing for a height tax... http://www.nber.org/papers/w14976 http://www.nber.org/papers/w14976 But yeah, from an economically utilitarian perspective, you could solve this by differentially taxing the attractive.
- bherms 13y ago
  Harrison Bergeron, anyone?
  - scarmig 13y ago
    Great story, everyone should read it: http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
    - bherms 13y ago
      Also, film adaptation that was phenomenally well done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvqsv1pPSbg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvqsv1pPSbg

ashwinaj 13y ago

I'd like to see a study in other regions than North America. Does it apply elsewhere?

ChrisNorstrom 13y ago

Evolution wise, this is because people like in others, what they wish they had for themselves. Likewise, people hate in others what they dislike about themselves. We celebrate the beautiful because we wish we too could be beautiful. We mock the ugly/short/gay/fat/skinny/weak because those are qualities that we ourselves do not wish to have. If all of society punishes those with these traits, people with these traits will be less likely to reproduce and pass these traits on to future generations. Nature is as always, brutal. But because we humans have emotions we try to hide these discriminations and pretend we don't have them. I always thought it was interesting how women with self-image issues are comforted on talk shows and told "honey you are beautiful just the way you are!" in one episode then "oh my God you look so much better!" after they get a makeover in the next episode. Not to mention the irony of women in the crowd (who will spend hundreds of hours each year putting on makeup, doing hair, bleaching, & plucking) clapping to the tune of "you're beautiful just the way you are". My angry bitterness comes from the fact that my whole life I've been lied to. I was a cute kid but after puberty it all went downhill. I was the first to realize it. I was hoping the world around me would keep it's promise of treating me nicely because after all, "it's what's on the inside that counts". Yet, it was all a lie. I've had friends tell me I was ugly, I've had friends tell me they initially didn't want to be associated with me because I was ugly. I've had people in public say to me (as I'm walking by) "Damn dude, you're ugly". And if I choose to get cosmetic surgery some day, I'll have a whole new group of people calling me "shallow". Why? Because I want to look nice? God I'm just so sick of this bullshit. I don't hate myself, I hate the world that lied to me. People who say one thing, then do another. The same people who call plastic surgery recipients as "shallow" are the same ones who lie to themselves and refuse to acknowledge how important it can be to look nice and feel good about yourself. How happy the millions of people who get surgery every year feel when they have a nose straightened out or a wrinkle removed or hollow cheeks filled. People tend to believe lies that make them feel good rather than accepting truths that make them feel bad. I'm glad I live in 2013 when I can change the way I look so I can have a better life instead of lapping up all that "it's what's on the inside" bullshit so many people keep spreading so they can look empathetic and modest in front of others. My Point: I'd like 3 things to change in our society: 1) No more lying. No more "We're all beautiful" rhetoric. No everyone is not beautiful. That's bullshit. Let's be honest. A few people are beautiful, most are average, many can be unattractive, and some are apparently repulsive enough to instill feelings of negativity in others. Beauty can also be subjective so there's a bit of give here and there. 2) To be more understanding towards people who are unattractive by removing the stigma that comes with being unattractive. Aka don't treat us differently. Example: All my friends are outcasts, people rejected by others because they were unattractive, too fat, too skinny, too black (Nigerian descent). Despite me admitting that many of my friends are unattractive themselves, I was still their friend. I was never embarrassed to be their friend or be seen with them. 3) To not look down on people who want to better themselves through cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery is still looked down upon by many people. If you take a leave of absence for 2 weeks and come back with a different face your co-workers will respond negatively. To redefine oneself is what makes humans human. Stop judging cosmetic surgery by looking at extreme examples like Dolly Parton, Joan Rivers, and Michael Jackson. Those are extreme edge cases. Walk into any plastic surgeons offices and ask for their before/after books. Most surgery is meant to leave the patient looking natural not unrecognizable. For instance: http://www.drrichardjoseph.com/photos/jaw-surgery.php http://www.drrichardjoseph.com/photos/jaw-surgery.php Are they shallow for looking better?

papaver 13y ago

like the porno for pyros song goes, "cursed to be born beautiful, poor and female, there's none that suffered more." there are definitely advantages to be born beautiful but there are also several disadvantages. its too bad the article didn't dwell on the negative effects as well.

Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
Saying that it's tough being beautiful is one of those formulations along the lines of, "Oh, it's such a burden having all this wealth. How I envy the simple, carefree lives of the poor."

incision 13y ago

I'm surprised there's no mention downsides to being an attractive man. I think they certainly exist, but perhaps the net is positive?

seanalltogether 13y ago
As far as I'm aware being an attractive male doesn't hinder your chances in the STEM fields as it maybe would a female.
- trustfundbaby 13y ago
  I think it can work against you, people might not take you seriously as an engineer if you're too goodlooking or well built.
  - Xcelerate 13y ago
    Don't know why you were downvoted. I've noticed this too. Someone who works out a lot (noticeably muscular) is stereotyped in academia or STEM professions.
    - seestheday 13y ago
      I can understand there being an issue for being overly muscular, but I also don't think that being overly muscular equals being good looking. This is probably a very common mistake that men make when pursuing better looks.
      - Xcelerate 13y ago
        > I also don't think that being overly muscular equals being good looking I know. I didn't imply that.
  - seestheday 13y ago
    I'm a pretty good looking man by conventional standards. In my n=1 experience the benefits far outweigh any downside. I actually can't think about any downside. I know this sounds cocky, but I thought it might add to the discussion. Being good looking is fucking awesome. So is being smart. Both are a combination of genetics and hard work.

nazgulnarsil 13y ago

Is it just me or is the 7.5-7.9 the most attractive on that grid?

svachalek 13y ago
I thought that was interesting too. I think perhaps it's something to do with the nature of the averaging process, where a bunch of faces averaged look better than the individual faces up to the point of being "good" looking, but exceptionally good looking faces have more to lose than gain. For example, I've read that for women, the more contrast the better (which is why makeup works) and it's likely you lose a lot of that in the averaging process.

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crag 13y ago

" America has no law preventing companies from using attractiveness as a hiring criteria, regardless of whether the job is exotic dancer, salesman, or software engineer. It’s pretty much okay from a legal standpoint to discriminate based on looks in America." My problem with this is beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So having laws preventing companies hiring based on looks is ridiculous. I mean, how would you know what anyone thought during the hiring process? I doubt anyone would say "you're ugly as shit so we aren't hiring you". Not to mention, what you consider "ugly" I might not.

jiggy2011 13y ago
It's only subjective to a point. There are many things that are almost uniformly considered attractive by the majority of the population. There was an AMA from somebody who did research on this on reddit a while back. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1cstrm/i_did_research_on_facial_attractiveness_for_years/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1cstrm/i_did_research_... It says in there that it's usually around 30-40% subjective.
- cadlin 13y ago
  I looked through that thread and what struck me was how small the body of research the guy draws from is. Maybe he is only citing a small sample of the research, but there seems to be a lot of conclusions drawn from very few studies. Especially on something as subjective and political as human attraction. The top answer in the reddit thread discusses this (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1689917/pdf/10380676.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1689917/pdf/1038...) study. It says that women prefer the odor of more attractive men. The conclusions from that study are based on the odors of 6(!) different men. And the t-shirt the men wore to capture the odor are washed, frozen, and then heated in a bottle. The women then smell the bottle and make their judgement. The study doesn't bother to explain why these actions don't change the odor of the t-shirt (which they might not, but that doesn't seem obvious to me). There are other problems with the study, but I'll stop there. I understand that all fields of science have to start somewhere, but this seems closer to phrenology than particle physics.

chipsy 13y ago

As the article establishes, beauty in the traditional sense mostly means "average." To some extent I think you can take more control over your appearance by searching for an identity that goes beyond traditional elements - taking an artistic approach to one's fashion, makeup, outlook, etc. Music subculture has done this numerous times since the 20th century, and more recently queer culture has been deconstructive of many of the traditional attitudes towards beauty. Those ideas are deliberately positioned against the mainstream, yet have an influence on it over time - you can get away with a far more outlandish appearance in a modern urban area now than 30 years ago. As well, we're going to keep adding corrective measures over time. So I see society heading towards a "meeting in the middle" in some respects - creating all permutations of attractiveness.

jacoblyles 13y ago
> beauty in the traditional sense mostly means "average." I'd imagine that this is true for females, but that males would benefit from being above average in some ways (i.e. height).

RivieraKid 13y ago

"America has no law preventing companies from using attractiveness as a hiring criteria, regardless of whether the job is exotic dancer, salesman, or software engineer. It’s pretty much okay from a legal standpoint to discriminate based on looks in America." This law wouldn't make much sense. We could as well make a law preventing companies from using intelligence as hiring criteria. Imagine a boring job in a factory, where having above average intelligence wouldn't make you more productive. Is it discriminating to hire someone only because the boss likes him because he's intelligent? And what about discrimination based on smell or sense of humour?

Evbn 13y ago
There was a police department that rejected people with high IQs, and the discrimination case went to a high court.
vacri 13y ago
A guy I knew did too well on his aptitude test to become a tram driver here in Melbourne. The problem as seen by the recruiters is that in being too bright, he's likely to get bored sooner and leave. Sure, he himself might absolutely love the job and stay for decades, but the recruiters are playing the numbers game here - tram drivers are not a keystone position - and they find that there's more churn with really bright people.
- lutusp 13y ago
  That's a good point, and it's often quoted to explain the fact that Ph.D. graduates often make less money (or have higher unemployment rates) than professional degree holders in the same field. The assumption is that the Ph.D. holder will jump ship at the first offer of a job at his educational level, so he's less reliable as a long term employee.

JabavuAdams 13y ago

I recently realized that this is embedded in our language. My 4-year was confused by the phrase "good-looking". She assumed that it meant people who look like they're good. By four, she's already internalized that attractive people are good and unattractive (by local standards) are bad. Scary.

yathern 13y ago
To me it sounds like she hear the term "good-looking" and interpreted as someone who looks like they're good. Not internalizing some societal idea about attractive people. There are many defining visual characteristics that are anthropomorphically indicators of "good" or "bad" people, that don't necessarily have to do with attractiveness.

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vaindouchebag 13y ago

I've made my career on the knowledge that if I get a new client lead and its a woman, if I have one face to face meeting, I know I've got the gig. For some reason a lot of my clients are fashion startups.