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However, they can come far by not blaming the other sex for their own self-deprecation, self-pity and insecurities.
Please don't stoop to victim blaming levels
Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
21–30 of 143 posts
Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
#22Being someone who was both conventionally unattractive and conventionally attractive (I had a digestive disorder for years that made me terrifyingly skinny and sickly looking), I can say that the difference is astronomical. Once I figured out what was wrong with me, fixed my diet and got in shape, the way people treated me in general shifted dramatically towards positive. Rather than starting from a unreceptive low w…
> Once I figured out what was wrong with me, fixed my diet and got in shape, the way people treated me in general shifted dramatically towards positive.
It’s called pretty privilege and it’s a real thing.
If you look it up on YouTube you’ll find plenty of good looking women describing what they got out of it, and it’s astonishing.
Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think anyone doubts that taller, more attractive men are more likely to be promoted or end up in positions of power. Most obvious example is presidents; average height for presidents is 6 feet.
Rishi Sunak is 5ft7…
Yes, and he is not a president.
Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
#24> physical attractiveness, assessed when individuals are around 15 years old This is weird for a bunch of reasons, the most objective being that appearance changes a lot around that age range. Seems like an odd experimental choice.
Anecdotally, it was at around 15 (maybe a little before) that me and my friends became more interested in physical fitness/doubled down on sports/etc. which led to more female attention. So yeah, maybe a little more of a bake-in period would have been good.
Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
#25At a first glance, attractiveness measurements seem unreliable.
> We study the effect of individuals’ attractiveness on intergenerational social mobility by using Add Health's interviewer-rated physical attractiveness. Information about physical attractiveness was collected during Wave I of the survey when all interviewers were asked to assess the physical attractiveness of respondents with answer options of (1) very unattractive, (2) unattractive, (3) about average, (4) attractive, and (5) very attractive.
Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
#26There's a saying (which could be specific to my country) about men approaching women. If you're handsome it's called flirting, if you're ugly it's sexual harassment. Joking aside, I do notice that successful men (again, maybe specific to my country) tend to be attractive and they usually have an attractive and smart partner. Successful but not attractive men can still have either attractive or smart partner (or both,…
>There's a saying (which could be specific to my country) about men approaching women. If you're handsome it's called flirting, if you're ugly it's sexual harassment.
There's a famous comic meme about your distinction that's regularly reposted on the internet: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/663/485/1f8...
But many women have commented that they find the "attractive" guy's compliments also unwanted.
Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
#27Interesting that the effect was stronger in males. It looks like the outcomes tracked were education, income, and occupation. I wonder if this is tracking the wrong things; e.g. women can marry into a higher wealth+prestige class without themselves needing to attain education, income, or a job.
Could be evidence of matriarchy. If women outnumber men in HR departments and at school, being pleasing to a woman's eye would be helpful in advancing through life more so than being pleasing to men.
Except there's no data for that. I do however recall stats that "physically attractive" men are generally treated favorably by other men and despite decades of feminist activism we still have men disproportionately (relative to the general population) represented in key decision makers (unless you consider "head of HR" equivalent to a C-level position). There's certainly a "look" to many high income career paths and being conventionally attractive (though not necessarily "pretty" - high earners in business rarely look like models) is a factor.
If the effect is stronger for men than for women this could also support the more established notion that there are more social expectations on women to "look the part", i.e. wear makeup and "the right clothing" (which covers a much wider gamut than what is expected from men, which depending on white collar career path is either a casual suit or t-shirt and jeans/khakis). Attractiveness alone is not a guarantee for higher status and may in some cases even have the opposite effect by drawing unwanted sexual attention from male superiors or coworkers.
Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could be evidence of matriarchy. If women outnumber men in HR departments and at school, being pleasing to a woman's eye would be helpful in advancing through life more so than being pleasing to men.
For quite a while I’ve been making an (admittedly fairly troll-ish) argument at my university’s philosophy classes that the whole “smash the patriarchy” movement might overlook that we actually live in a matriarchy, and this is just what it imperceptibly looks like. The argument was slightly more straightforward to make in the UK when we had a great-grandmother as head of state and a female head of government, howeve…
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Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
#29Re: Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got SO many downvotes on Reddit for suggesting that.
Much of reddit is incapable of generalized or abstract thought, especially when done in humor.
So you're saying that all reddit users are incapable of dealing with generalisations!? This has been debunked by science experts. It's called reading a book.