I think Panda’s point is well made. A burden that, IMHExperience, beautiful women have to bear is constantly having to deal with tools who pursue them, often inappropriately. Bosses, randoms, pick-up artists, stalkers, the lot. Beautiful women get to see the dark side of men that men rarely see. A CEO’s golfing mates will never see him drunk trying it on with his hot PA/intern.
The constant attention based solely on looks can be very confidence-sapping, to the point where many pretty women I have known professionally come across initially as surly, because they are defensive - they don’t want to act in any way that might be miscontrued.
While some people might find the attention confidence building, many beautiful women come to suspect that the attention is only superficial and they can’t be sure whether any feedback is honest. Like the rich guy who is flattered all the time to the point where he can’t be sure any woman who shows interest isn’t just after the bucks.
All that said, on balance, I guess life is better when you’re attractive, but the downside is considerable.
And then there are the people who have little to do with the gorgeous, because they think that the gorgeous are ‘too far out of their league’, or because they react badly to the defensive surliness or hard edge that the gorgeous project, or even because they know that the gorgeous get hit on incessantly and so they go the other way and have as little to do with them as possible. Either way, the gorgeousness distorts what could have been a perfectly-decent human interaction.
There are so many advantages to being anonymous and unremarkable.
I saw this stupid talk show once about the hardships of the beautiful. Models and actresses documenting the horrors of their daily lives for the benefit of the less telegenic. The unwanted attention, the jealousy, the constant struggle to be taken seriously in the workplace: all laid bare for the world to roll their eyes at. But when the host asked if any of them had ever wished – if only for a moment – to become less attractive, there was only silence.
It can get them noticed or hired, but it can also get them a lot of unwanted attention.
One time, after a company happy hour, a very attractive friend of mine in my last job was telling me about how the senior management used to hit on all the young 20 something women in the office. They would do stuff like offer to share a taxi with them (or course going to wherever the girl was going). As if on cue, this one D-bag director (same level as me) shows up and pulls out the very same bad pickup routine.
This is also what I have noticed for the women I know who are beautiful enough to get noticed. They may get some superficial bonuses from it, but they also have to deal with a lot of very inappropriate, creepy, and frightening behavior from men too.
I wouldn’t trade places with them. Yes, being unattractive may cause you to be overlooked or treated insensitively (I have had experiences where I felt like I was treated badly because of my looks), but I can’t think of any situation where fat or unattractive people are exposed to special dangers because of people’s reactions to their looks the way that the strikingly beautiful are.
I think in many situations, being “A bit above average” is better than being at the far extreme. I think a person who is a little brighter than the average person might fare better in life than someone who is a total intellectual egghead that might have a hard time relating to others. I also think that having enough wealth to cover your bills and have some modest fun with is probably happier than being extravagantly wealthy and being subject to people trying to manipulate you to get hand-outs, targeting you for theft, etc. So, if I had to pick, I’d rather be a 7/10 than a 10/10.
It’s kind of the old argument. Is it better to be exceptional but always having to deal with the social and other pressures, or just be mediocre and just have a nice simple life with your mediocre friends doing whatever it is they do?
Another factor is a matter of balance. If a person is exceptionally gifted in something, but doesn’t have sufficient gifts or skills in other areas of life to manage those gifts, they will probably be less happy than a person who is average at everything.
Examples range from polymath William James Sidis to porn star John Holmes (when’s the last time you heard THOSE two names in the same sentence?), and include countless musical and artistic geniuses.
So I would imagine a stunningly beautiful woman who didn’t have enough emotional intelligence to distance people properly might be victimized as some have described above. But good social skills might allow her to do much better in life (and be happier than) than average.
If it’s taken as a given that better looking people are rewarded more for less effort can it be concluded that taken as a whole better looking people are dumber?
Perhaps that’s truly where the lack of respect for beautiful women in careers originates, perhaps the above question is true, perhaps not, but people believe it anyway.
It cannot be concluded that better looking people are less intelligent. But if being both very good looking and very intelligent are highly improbable, it is even more improbable to be both good looking and intelligent. The reverse is also true: barring defect, it is highly improbable to be both extremely ugly and extremely intellectually deficient.
Actually, there’s a reasonable theory that attractiveness and intelligence go hand-in-hand:
[ol]
[li]Looks and smarts are both highly heritable.[/li][li]All else being equal, men prefer beautiful women, and women prefer successful men.[/li][li]Smarter men are more likely to be successful than dumber men.[/li][li]Therefore, smart men will tend to mate with beautiful women, and their children will be beautiful and smart.[/li][/ol]
I wish I could remember who came up with this.
Maybe not. But experience tells me that there are many unattractive, yet intelligent and successful men. And many attractive, slow-witted females. Some of them are even married. These aren’t even marginal cases. This theory is not clear on how their offspring would turn out, as it seems to assume at least average attractiveness for the males and average intelligence for the females.
