One of the most disheartening things women experience is the constant reminder that men are visual creatures and care more about looks than anything else. The cosmetics market in the U.S. alone generates $60 billion a year in revenue, offering products that promise to take women from ordinary looking to exquisitely beautiful. That’s what hope is worth.
Men reinforce the fears by rating women according to their looks. Perhaps they find it useful among themselves to distinguish among the 4s, 7s and 10s. Unfortunately, these rankings are often shared in a very dehumanizing way. Even the most beautiful women object to being viewed strictly through this lens, as if their entire worth resided in their exterior physical presentation.
There is a lot of evidence that people tend to mate with others of similar physical attractiveness. That’s encouraging; we have every reason to expect a successful match with someone on the same rung of the looks ladder. A recent NYXs article, For Couples, Time Can Upend the Laws of Attraction highlights recent research that investigates the superficiality of these matches.
It seems logical for people with high mate value to insist on comparable partners, and there’s some evidence that they do. By observing singles pursuing one another at online dating sites and in speed-dating experiments, researchers have found that people tend to end up with those of similar mate value.
That pattern also occurs in married couples: Attractive, well-educated, high-earning people tend to marry people like themselves.
But researchers at UT-Austin found something very interesting when they studied college students’ perceptions of attractiveness:
At the start of the semester, the students pretty much agreed on who in their class was most desirable. But when they were asked again three months later, after spending a semester in a small class together, their judgments varied widely on who was hot and who was not.
It’s important to note that people can become more attractive over time, but they can also become less attractive. Good looks + bad personality = ↓. Not hot + great personality = ↑. This splitting of opinion over time is a good thing for the market:
These changes in attitudes, Dr. Eastwick noted, should mean that there are fewer losers in the mating game, because everyone isn’t vying for the same Mr. or Ms. Right. “As the consensus about who is attractive declines, competition should decline, because the person I think is especially desirable might not be the person you think is especially desirable,” he said.
You may recall that OKCupid data shows that the women who get the most messages are the quirkiest ones. They’re women whose personalities come through in their profile photos. They get a wider variety of ratings, but the guys who dig them follow through.
The UT professors next hooked up with Eli Finkel of Northwestern University to further explore the effect of diverging personal preference. Their study, Leveling the Playing Field: Longer Acquaintance Predicts Reduced Assortative Mating on Attractiveness found that sure enough – there was a larger discrepancy in looks in couples who had known one another longer and been friends first:
A study of 167 couples [of all ages] included measures of how long partners had known each other before dating and whether they had been friends before dating, as well as coders’ ratings of physical attractiveness. As predicted, couples revealed stronger evidence of assortative mating to the extent that they knew each other for a short time and were not friends before initiating a romantic relationship.
The couples were videotaped talking about their relationships, and then they were rated objectively for attractiveness by a panel of judges.
If they’d begun going out within a month of meeting, then they tended to be equally attractive physically. But if they’d been acquaintances for a long time, or if they’d been friends before becoming lovers, then someone hot was more liable to end up with someone not so hot.
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Anthropologist Helen Fisher found in a survey that 33 percent of men and 43 percent of women answered yes when asked if they had ever fallen in love with someone they did not initially find attractive. Dr. Fisher terms this process “slow love,” and says it is becoming more common as people take longer to marry.
“Everyone is terrified that online dating is reducing mate value to just a few superficial things like beauty — whether you swipe left or right on Tinder,” she said in an interview. “But that’s just the start of the process. Once you meet someone and get to know them, their mate value keeps changing.”
(By the way, Fisher is a big proponent of Tinder and other similar apps. She says we should think about dating apps as “introducing apps” instead.)
Here are the Big Three reasons people become more attractive over time:
- Great conversations
- Common interests
- Came to appreciate his/her sense of humor
Notice that this phenomenon applies to both sexes – men’s visual priorities notwithstanding. As someone who snagged a great guy over time rather than “at first sight,” I can personally attest to the power of personality and compatibility in bringing someone around. I believe that if you radiate the confidence that you are worthy and attractive, then others will perceive you that way as well.
Putting your best foot forward physically is good strategy. But hour for hour, and dollar for dollar, I’d invest in self-development of the internal kind every time.
Do interesting stuff.
Read interesting stuff.
Think interesting stuff.
Say interesting stuff.
You will find that the ROI (return on investment) is significant. That’s what will bring at least some of the boys to your yard.
