I know I do, and by quite a margin. This is my second attempt at writing this OP as the first one made me sound a bit of a pervert so I want to see if anyone experiences this phenomena in general and why it may be.
To be clear about what I am asking - I am not asking about whether people are more (physically) attractive in person or in a photo. What I am asking is this:
If you ranked photos of attractive persons {A,B,C,D,E} in that order would you expect the order when you actually saw them in person to remain the same? Again I stress this is physical and visual only cause obviously lots of other stuff will change their attractiveness.
For me this absoutely would not be the case. Indeed, using 5 ABCDEs I can think of the order would be CDBAE.
Some people are inexplicably photogenic and some people are inexplicably not photogenic. So, if that’s what your question is meant to convey, then I agree
Yes. Women I meet in real life are gorgeous as long as they aren’t butt ugly. Actresses and models have to be world class attractive for me to even find them appealing. I’m sure if I met her up close, that semi cute girl from that overrated sitcom would actually be pretty hot. But on TV, magazines, or the big screen, there’s a higher standard.
On the other hand, though, non-professional photos of regular women don’t seem to exhibit this problem for me.
There’s a difference for me 'cause I’m…I was gonna say a girl, but rather than generalize, I’ll just say part of the attraction of a guy is beyond looks. It’s a FEEL. Sometimes that DOES come off in a photo, but not that often. And oftentimes photos that HAVE captured that ‘thing’, whatever it is, are so posed that in real life it’s not there.
So yeah, real life > photos probably all the time, for me.
I am also a clear-cut case of real life > photo. It’s rare that even my photog husband can get a ‘good’ shot. Also, I look a LOT FATTER in photos than in real life. A LOT. And I don’t mean 10 pounds from the camera fat, I mean I look seriously, seriously chunky, when I really am not at all. Out of everyone I’ve dated, if they’d seen pics of me first, they would never have been interested. Real life, however…the tingle, the tingle! Just doesn’t translate very well.
The order can change dramatically. There are many characteristics and qualities that may not come across in a photo. And especially once you get to know a person, a photo can be useless.
With photos of people, 3D doesn’t always translate to 2D very well. We have binocular vision for a reason. Our brains can “see” a much different image than a camera can record. So photographic vs. real life observation of a person are not really the same.
Damn, I thought this was going to be about being attracted to photographs. The flatness, the paper-thin svelte body, shiny and smooth, fits in my pocket…
I thought about this while working this morning and came to the conclusion that the likely reason is I still look at photos as if I were ten years old or even younger, while the way I have looked at real human beings has changed as I aged. So if I look at a photo of a woman who is a foot shorter than me she looks a foot taller than me.
Personality plays a huge role in how attractive I find a woman. I have seen women in person who look incredibly hot and then as soon as they open their mouth I lose all interest. I have seen women with average looks that put themselves together well and have irresistible personalities. So I can imagine that my ranking based on photos would be different than my ranking after actually meeting them.
Two words: Esther Canadas(link to a photo of a model you are likely to know - face is all angles and lips and too-wideset eyes). There are many photos where she looks like an angular beauty - especially when she is wearing fashions that suit her look really well. But I have seen women like her IRL, and while they are distinctive for sure, they aren’t particularly attractive…
I think only one ex from my past looked good both in real life and in photos. (And she’s not really an ex, I suppose, as we parted on good terms and there’s still a lot of romantic tension there when we get together.) Gorgeous in real life, like a model in pictures.
One looked better in photos than real life; I thought she was attractive in real life, but photos brought out something more… she transformed from a boyish-looking waif into a poised model The rest? All attractive in real life, usually dumpy and awkward in pictures. If I hadn’t met them in real life first, and only saw candid pics on a dating site or something, I hate to admit that I probably wouldn’t have been interested.
