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.
Another way of incorporating this is with the classic "Never trust a man in a suit"
We know that we give extra weight to the arguments of good looking individuals. Guys in suits generally look better than guys in sweatpants. Therefore, if a guy in a suit tells you something, it's not really as good of an idea as you think it is. He's also not as competent or hard working as you think he is.
To combat this, you should try harder to find faults in the well dressed. Hence, never trust a man in a suit.
I agree wholeheartedly. Unfortunately we're in a country (assuming US) where everyone wants handouts and an even playing field, regardless of their lifestyle choices. People demand their offices install ramps for mobility scooters when they're morbidly obese and it's discriminatory not to oblige, but try arguing your work should open later because you drink too much every night. Overeating and copious alcohol consumption are one and the same, IMO.
It's also easy for others to assume everything they don't have was given to others or comes naturally. Out of shape people give me hell all the time for being in excellent physical condition, but they don't know about the 10 miles of running every day and 6 hours of training I put into wrestling for most of my life, or that I run and lift weights daily and watch what I eat. To them, they're not willing to work on their body to have what others have, but are willing to bitch about it. Granted some people are just born unattractive, but it's amazing what a little focus on your appearance can do to change how you look and are perceived. We can extrapolate unattractiveness out a little bit and look at appearance as well. Would you be fired from an office job for dressing like a bum, smelling like body odor, and looking disheveled all the time? Most likely. Is that discrimination? I would argue it's not.
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.
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.
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 . It examines what would happen if everyone could choose to disable their natural reaction to beauty, and how that relates to morality.
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.
"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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Okay, having just followed the link in your profile and looking at your picture, dude, trust me you're not ugly. I actually honestly think you're a handsome guy, judging purely by appearances.
But anyway. You know, I've noticed that people who fixate on appearances tend to be irrationally harsh. You'd be surprised how big a part confidence and charisma plays in the overall attraction people feel for one another. You don't need to spend any dollar on surgery, just work on your confidence, be cheerful, and learn to carry yourself well.
The question to ask is this:
How much does beauty correlate with strength, health, intelligence, conscientiousness, honesty etc.
If the correlation is high, then maybe judging others on beauty is something that can be justified under time and resource constraints everything else being the same...
Here the data were less clear, but several reviews of the literature have concluded that there is indeed a small, positive relationship between beauty and brains... In the U.K., for example, attractive children have an additional 12.4 points of IQ, on average. The relationship held even when he controlled for family background, race, and body size. From this, Kanazawa concluded that the famous halo effect is not a cognitive illusion, as so many academics had assumed, but rather an accurate reading of the world: We assume that beautiful people are smart, he argues, because they are.
All of that may be true in various degress but damn... your biggest problems are/were clearly psychological. Keep practicing the art of not-giving-a-fuck and you'll keep getting better.
(From OP's About Page:)
>The self hatred I had for myself, brought on by body dysmorphia, worsened so much that I refused to interact with anyone other than my roomate, never went anywhere without a hat, and only went grocery shopping at 4 AM (when there was the least amount of people at Walmart) because I was horrified that people would see my face and be disgusted by me.
>Evolution wise, this is because people like in others, what they wish they had for themselves.
That's doubtful. This is actually a far more general effect than the association between attractiveness and other positive attributes, known as the "affect heuristic". This is a shortcut that people automatically use to make judgments about things based on their overall impression of those things. It is responsible for a ton of glitches in people's perception.
For example, if you tell people that a nuclear reactor is particularly safe (in terms of meltdowns), they will tend to assume that it also generates less waste.
Look, so long as you have a full head of hair, the world and in particular women will consider you to be at least decent looking. My hair started to fall out when I was 22 and by 26 I was seriously balding. To make matters worse, I started to go grey and by 28 or so I was fully "distinguished" (aka old) looking.
So yeah, actually looking young goes a long way. Do not take your good fortune for granted. Like you said, you can change the other stuff you don't like.
Another aspect of the absurdity of how negatively we treat plastic surgery is how common and acceptable cosmetic braces are in America. The vast majority of teens getting braces isn't because they medically needed them, it's just to make their teeth more attractive.
/r/malefashionadvice might help you out some. I've been lurking there for a while, and for so many people it's not that they're ugly -- they're just used to wearing ill-fitting clothes that do not suit their body and face type.
Damn dude, you're handsome. For real. Looking at your picture in the link you provide on your profile, you look absolutely fine. I'm not one of those people who is lying to you.
First of all you're feeding into your confirmation bias just like the article points out - if you think you're ugly, you're going to believe you're ugly and feed into that negative self image.
Second of all, and most importantly, there is much that can be done with regards to improving appearances. If you don't believe me - just search for "models with and without makeup" on Google. The fact is that even the stereotypically "beautiful" people put lots of effort into improving their appearance, and you can too. I mean, just looking at the picture from the article (http://media.tumblr.com/160024ee41f63d0a19636697b1f929fc/tum...), the person looks essentially the same, except 3 major things change throughout the "hot or not" ratings:
- thinning of the face
- hair color / condition
- skin tone / makeup
The 1-3.4 has duller hair, fatter face and almost no evidence of makeup in comparison to the 9-9.5 face. And the 9.5-10 actually looks paler than the 9-9.5 face, but that appears to be from enhanced lighting (model "glow") giving her a more professional look, not to mention obvious evidence of eye makeup from the blue around her eyes (in addition to the blue eye color) which doesn't exist on any of the other faces. So just like you mentioned about putting your best picture on your profile, there are clearly ways to make yourself significantly more attractive:
- Achieve a healthy weight (increased muscle mass, decreased fat)
- Dress in clothes that flatter you (form-fitting, colors that contrast and enhance skin tone)
- Spend a (healthy) amount of time in the sun to create appealing skin tone
- Put time and effort into grooming (healthy hair in a stylish haircut, no unkempt facial hair, clean and trimmed nails, treatment of pimples/blemishes and other assorted skin care)
Yes, it requires effort. Yes, it seems vain and pointless. And yes, deformaties and dramatic asymmetries cannot be masked by effort of appearance. But attraction and appearance are a game of our society and more often than not, attractiveness is something you're more in control of than most people realize; and people are too lazy / stubborn to accept that reality and work on it. Many people can't be bothered to wear quality clothes or hit the gym 3 times a week, and then blame society why they're deemed "ugly." But the fact is most people are pretty "average" in looks but some don't appear that way because they put in effort into their appearance, and it works!
As much as you're trying to convince yourself you're ugly, you're not (seriously), and you are more in control of raising your attractiveness than you claim. You can't tell me that you'd get less/the same amount of attention if you added 20 lbs of muscle to your frame, lost the facial hair and surfer haircut, and wore a well-fitting navy suit and white dress shirt. Effort put in will yield results.
Thanks for sharing your story both here and in your website, and I agree with much of what you say, particularly your 3 points.
As the article points out, judging people based on beauty is deeply ingrained in human nature, but I think we can all agree that it's a bad part of our human nature. It's also in our human nature to want to rape, steal, murder, etc. to get what we want, but we create laws and social structures to prevent those things and I'd like to think that we as a species are always trying to transcend these primitive urges and become a more sophisticated Vulcan-like human race that is "above" such things
Accordingly, I'm always perplexed as to why judging people based on their looks is still so widely accepted and tolerated in society. Companies aren't allowed to advertise a product by saying "So good you'd rape/kill/steal from your neighbor to get one" and yet they're allowed to promote the idea that becoming more beautiful makes you a better person. I think it's absurd and I think/hope that people 100 years from now will look back on our society and shake their heads in shame and/or amusement at all the shallow advertisements we allow on TV.
I refuse to accept that "That's just the way human beings are, man. We gotta reproduce." Forgive me for thinking that we could do much better as a society.
That's why I abhor companies like Zynga whose entire business model revolves around tapping into people's most basic, primitive instincts and making money off of it. I love video games with beautiful graphics, an epic story, and great gameplay, but Zynga games have none of those things. They are the equivalent of a crack dealer getting people hooked on low-quality games which add nothing to people's lives, and just because they grow quickly in a new space does not mean they should be lauded for doing so.
Last point - I don't like the argument that because babies and children also recognize similar standards of beauty that we should just accept that there's nothing we can do about it. Children also want to eat candy at every meal, steal stuff they want, and shit anywhere. Children need responsible adults to teach them that all those things are not good for themselves and society. And yet we fail to do the same for both children and adults when it comes to looks, which never fails to sadden me.
</rant>
EDIT to add:
pg recently tweeted "Will ownership turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before they had the infrastructure to manage sharing properly?"
I'd like to pose the same question - Will makeup and cosmetic surgery turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before society got its shit together and collectively realized that we shouldn't be promoting beauty as a virtue?
" 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.
>>>“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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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."
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?
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.
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.
Good looks during young age remove the incentive to communicate well, so when the looks inevitably expire one might end up not as well-adjusted as their average-looking peers.
[+] [-] rthomas6|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rprospero|13 years ago|reply
We know that we give extra weight to the arguments of good looking individuals. Guys in suits generally look better than guys in sweatpants. Therefore, if a guy in a suit tells you something, it's not really as good of an idea as you think it is. He's also not as competent or hard working as you think he is.
To combat this, you should try harder to find faults in the well dressed. Hence, never trust a man in a suit.
[+] [-] scarmig|13 years ago|reply
Maybe devote your political activities to pushing for a height tax...
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14976
But yeah, from an economically utilitarian perspective, you could solve this by differentially taxing the attractive.
[+] [-] bherms|13 years ago|reply
It's also easy for others to assume everything they don't have was given to others or comes naturally. Out of shape people give me hell all the time for being in excellent physical condition, but they don't know about the 10 miles of running every day and 6 hours of training I put into wrestling for most of my life, or that I run and lift weights daily and watch what I eat. To them, they're not willing to work on their body to have what others have, but are willing to bitch about it. Granted some people are just born unattractive, but it's amazing what a little focus on your appearance can do to change how you look and are perceived. We can extrapolate unattractiveness out a little bit and look at appearance as well. Would you be fired from an office job for dressing like a bum, smelling like body odor, and looking disheveled all the time? Most likely. Is that discrimination? I would argue it's not.
[+] [-] jameshsi|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cousin_it|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edanm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RivieraKid|13 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] vacri|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Evbn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|13 years ago|reply
By four, she's already internalized that attractive people are good and unattractive (by local standards) are bad. Scary.
[+] [-] yathern|13 years ago|reply
There are many defining visual characteristics that are anthropomorphically indicators of "good" or "bad" people, that don't necessarily have to do with attractiveness.
[+] [-] ChrisNorstrom|13 years ago|reply
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 Are they shallow for looking better?
[+] [-] clicks|13 years ago|reply
Okay, having just followed the link in your profile and looking at your picture, dude, trust me you're not ugly. I actually honestly think you're a handsome guy, judging purely by appearances.
But anyway. You know, I've noticed that people who fixate on appearances tend to be irrationally harsh. You'd be surprised how big a part confidence and charisma plays in the overall attraction people feel for one another. You don't need to spend any dollar on surgery, just work on your confidence, be cheerful, and learn to carry yourself well.
[+] [-] cscurmudgeon|13 years ago|reply
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2...
Here the data were less clear, but several reviews of the literature have concluded that there is indeed a small, positive relationship between beauty and brains... In the U.K., for example, attractive children have an additional 12.4 points of IQ, on average. The relationship held even when he controlled for family background, race, and body size. From this, Kanazawa concluded that the famous halo effect is not a cognitive illusion, as so many academics had assumed, but rather an accurate reading of the world: We assume that beautiful people are smart, he argues, because they are.
[+] [-] JakeLC|13 years ago|reply
(From OP's About Page:) >The self hatred I had for myself, brought on by body dysmorphia, worsened so much that I refused to interact with anyone other than my roomate, never went anywhere without a hat, and only went grocery shopping at 4 AM (when there was the least amount of people at Walmart) because I was horrified that people would see my face and be disgusted by me.
[+] [-] mistercow|13 years ago|reply
That's doubtful. This is actually a far more general effect than the association between attractiveness and other positive attributes, known as the "affect heuristic". This is a shortcut that people automatically use to make judgments about things based on their overall impression of those things. It is responsible for a ton of glitches in people's perception.
For example, if you tell people that a nuclear reactor is particularly safe (in terms of meltdowns), they will tend to assume that it also generates less waste.
[+] [-] cgh|13 years ago|reply
So yeah, actually looking young goes a long way. Do not take your good fortune for granted. Like you said, you can change the other stuff you don't like.
[+] [-] mynewwork|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warfangle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlasev|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acconrad|13 years ago|reply
Second of all, and most importantly, there is much that can be done with regards to improving appearances. If you don't believe me - just search for "models with and without makeup" on Google. The fact is that even the stereotypically "beautiful" people put lots of effort into improving their appearance, and you can too. I mean, just looking at the picture from the article (http://media.tumblr.com/160024ee41f63d0a19636697b1f929fc/tum...), the person looks essentially the same, except 3 major things change throughout the "hot or not" ratings:
- thinning of the face
- hair color / condition
- skin tone / makeup
The 1-3.4 has duller hair, fatter face and almost no evidence of makeup in comparison to the 9-9.5 face. And the 9.5-10 actually looks paler than the 9-9.5 face, but that appears to be from enhanced lighting (model "glow") giving her a more professional look, not to mention obvious evidence of eye makeup from the blue around her eyes (in addition to the blue eye color) which doesn't exist on any of the other faces. So just like you mentioned about putting your best picture on your profile, there are clearly ways to make yourself significantly more attractive:
- Achieve a healthy weight (increased muscle mass, decreased fat)
- Dress in clothes that flatter you (form-fitting, colors that contrast and enhance skin tone)
- Spend a (healthy) amount of time in the sun to create appealing skin tone
- Put time and effort into grooming (healthy hair in a stylish haircut, no unkempt facial hair, clean and trimmed nails, treatment of pimples/blemishes and other assorted skin care)
Yes, it requires effort. Yes, it seems vain and pointless. And yes, deformaties and dramatic asymmetries cannot be masked by effort of appearance. But attraction and appearance are a game of our society and more often than not, attractiveness is something you're more in control of than most people realize; and people are too lazy / stubborn to accept that reality and work on it. Many people can't be bothered to wear quality clothes or hit the gym 3 times a week, and then blame society why they're deemed "ugly." But the fact is most people are pretty "average" in looks but some don't appear that way because they put in effort into their appearance, and it works!
As much as you're trying to convince yourself you're ugly, you're not (seriously), and you are more in control of raising your attractiveness than you claim. You can't tell me that you'd get less/the same amount of attention if you added 20 lbs of muscle to your frame, lost the facial hair and surfer haircut, and wore a well-fitting navy suit and white dress shirt. Effort put in will yield results.
[+] [-] emiljbs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pshin45|13 years ago|reply
As the article points out, judging people based on beauty is deeply ingrained in human nature, but I think we can all agree that it's a bad part of our human nature. It's also in our human nature to want to rape, steal, murder, etc. to get what we want, but we create laws and social structures to prevent those things and I'd like to think that we as a species are always trying to transcend these primitive urges and become a more sophisticated Vulcan-like human race that is "above" such things
Accordingly, I'm always perplexed as to why judging people based on their looks is still so widely accepted and tolerated in society. Companies aren't allowed to advertise a product by saying "So good you'd rape/kill/steal from your neighbor to get one" and yet they're allowed to promote the idea that becoming more beautiful makes you a better person. I think it's absurd and I think/hope that people 100 years from now will look back on our society and shake their heads in shame and/or amusement at all the shallow advertisements we allow on TV.
I refuse to accept that "That's just the way human beings are, man. We gotta reproduce." Forgive me for thinking that we could do much better as a society.
That's why I abhor companies like Zynga whose entire business model revolves around tapping into people's most basic, primitive instincts and making money off of it. I love video games with beautiful graphics, an epic story, and great gameplay, but Zynga games have none of those things. They are the equivalent of a crack dealer getting people hooked on low-quality games which add nothing to people's lives, and just because they grow quickly in a new space does not mean they should be lauded for doing so.
Last point - I don't like the argument that because babies and children also recognize similar standards of beauty that we should just accept that there's nothing we can do about it. Children also want to eat candy at every meal, steal stuff they want, and shit anywhere. Children need responsible adults to teach them that all those things are not good for themselves and society. And yet we fail to do the same for both children and adults when it comes to looks, which never fails to sadden me.
</rant>
EDIT to add:
pg recently tweeted "Will ownership turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before they had the infrastructure to manage sharing properly?"
I'd like to pose the same question - Will makeup and cosmetic surgery turn out to be largely a hack people resorted to before society got its shit together and collectively realized that we shouldn't be promoting beauty as a virtue?
[+] [-] crag|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
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_...
It says in there that it's usually around 30-40% subjective.
[+] [-] mikecane|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashwinaj|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielpal|13 years ago|reply
Screenshot: https://twitter.com/danielpalacio/status/327525758065070080/...
There's no way to close it. Is this something that Tumblr adds?
[+] [-] chipsy|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
I'd imagine that this is true for females, but that males would benefit from being above average in some ways (i.e. height).
[+] [-] papaver|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kudzu_Bob|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etvmueller|13 years ago|reply
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|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bitwize|13 years ago|reply
So, Katy Perry exists in this alternate universe as well?
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[+] [-] nazgulnarsil|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] svachalek|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] incision|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] DenisM|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] vaindouchebag|13 years ago|reply
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