# Straight women: which is more important — a man's face or his body? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 28, 2018, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401 "2018-08-28T11:48:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2018, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/61 "2018-09-03T16:33:49Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Nope. Later posters decided to discuss a book of faces or bodies but that was not in the OP and is frankly really weird. Guys don’t buy magazines or books of just bodies or faces. A more reasonable way to look at it as people watching on the beach or the park. No, the photos weren’t in the OP, but were introduced fairly early as a way to isolate physical attraction as the deciding factor as opposed to factors more likely to strongly influence attraction. If you are talking about men in the park or at the beach- I pretty much never see random attractive men out and about, not without some sort of interaction. The rare cases it happens- it’s usually the face, but it’s also more likely to occur in a conversation where the personality is also on display. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2018, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/62 "2018-09-03T16:45:46Z")
I guess I’m lucky then. I see physically attractive women all the time and I also get to enjoy the attractive personalities of ones I interact with. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2018, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/63 "2018-09-03T16:48:55Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > I guess I’m lucky then. I see physically attractive women all the time and I also get to enjoy the attractive personalities of ones I interact with. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. Or perhaps you are attracted to physical aspects more than I am. Interacting usually is what sparks that attraction for me. I’m not terribly visually oriented. Perhaps it is just that I don’t notice all the primary attractive people milling about, unless I interact with them. But personality is explicitly excluded in the OP. Hence the photo suggestion. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2018, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/64 "2018-09-03T17:10:09Z")
What do you mean “perhaps”? It’s basically what you said and I responded that I can enjoy both easily so I’m lucky. What has annoyed me in this thread is certain posters acting like they speak for all women. “Women don’t work that way” is generally just wrong. The first two responses were “if we’re just talking ogling…” which is exactly what the thread is about. ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2018, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/65 "2018-09-03T17:22:13Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > What do you mean “perhaps”? It’s basically what you said and I responded that I can enjoy both easily so I’m lucky. What has annoyed me in this thread is certain posters acting like they speak for all women. “Women don’t work that way” is generally just wrong. The first two responses were “if we’re just talking ogling…” which is exactly what the thread is about. I used perhaps because - are you lucky that you’re surrounded by attractive women, or because you can appreciate it? I was saying that it was"perhaps" your ability to appreciate it, and not, as I initially read it, that you were lucky that you had attractive women around you more frequently. My misreading of your intent, “perhaps.” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2018, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/66 "2018-09-03T23:01:18Z")
Oh, hadn’t thought about it that way but I’m not in the modeling industry or something though my business brings me into contact with higher than 60% women as clients or coworkers. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/67 "2018-09-04T02:25:55Z")
I’m another woman who can’t really answer this question. I keep trying to decide which I’d pick, and it seems so arbitrary. If I were “ogling”, I’d probably like some guy’s face and another guy’s body, but I can’t say that one or the other is more attractive. It’s a very weird compartmentalizing question. Oh, and I like short guys. I’ve never been attracted to taller than average guys. But it’s not the only thing I care about. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2018, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/68 "2018-09-04T19:26:39Z")
This question (and the difficulty in providing a one word answer) was bugging me. But I did manage to think of one thing that is an immediate turn-off for me in appearance – an overly muscled body. Just not attractive to me at all. Especially, if the arms and legs are so built up that the man can’t hold his arms against his body or walk without looking bowlegged. Yuck. ---
**Author:** ![TRC4941](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trc4941/32/6792_2.png) [@TRC4941](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TRC4941)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/69 "2018-09-05T18:14:15Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I’ve never seen so many posters fighting the hypothetical. I agree! ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/70 "2018-09-05T18:19:50Z")
> [@TRC4941](#): > > I agree! It’s not a hypothetical, it’s asking for an opinion of physical attractiveness. It’s not a hypothetical to ask which you like better, strawberries or apples. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/71 "2018-09-05T18:22:41Z")
It’s a matter of degree. If a guy has the face of Darkman, I don’t care how great a body he has. On the other hand, if he’s just homely in the face and has the body of an Adonis, that’s a different story. I’d have to answer that on a case by case basis. ---
**Author:** ![TRC4941](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trc4941/32/6792_2.png) [@TRC4941](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TRC4941)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/72 "2018-09-05T18:26:53Z")
Obviously, there’s more than looks when finding a mate or a date. But…I have to say, that you first have to be physically attracted to someone. What’s wrong with a woman liking or preferring certain physical traits in a man? I think that’s an instinct in humans and other animals. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/73 "2018-09-05T18:27:37Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Nope. Later posters decided to discuss a book of faces or bodies but that was not in the OP and is frankly really weird. Guys don’t buy magazines or books of just bodies or faces. A more reasonable way to look at it as people watching on the beach or the park. People watching includes how someone moves or holds themselves; it’s not just looks. My family’s other branch is known in their village as “the poised ones” because they may be short or tall, they may be thin or fat, but they always have perfect posture and always behave like they have perfect right to be wherever; as one person told me “even the old, hunchbacked ones walk perfectly straight :D”. In person, those people are more attractive than others who look similar to them in pictures. I had a coworker who was incredibly gorgeous in person but damn, in two years of working with him we couldn’t get a picture where he didn’t look like the biggest dork on Earth. No matter how much you posed him, no matter how many pictures you took, he never looked half as good in pictures as he did in person. We eventually figured out it had to do with his complete inability to be still: in person he looked active, in pictures he looked halfway out of here. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/74 "2018-09-05T19:34:20Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > The false premise being that women rate men in the same ways men rate women, or at least, in the ways men can put in the same boxes that they use. > > **We just don’t.** That’s why the question is so “frustrating” for men. What interests women is generally the inner man or at least, the gestalt of the whole person. Not quantifiable. The hell you say. I’m a hetero woman and it took me about 10 seconds to ponder and answer the very simple, straight forward question posed by the OP. Nobody asked what anyone looks for in a man, or what his most important attribute is. I feel like people are falling all over themselves trying not to look crass and shallow. There’s nothing wrong or complex about the question. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/75 "2018-09-05T19:43:06Z")
I think there is a “cultural conditioning” influence to many of the answers in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/76 "2018-09-05T22:17:31Z")
> [@Ambivalid](#): > > I think there is a “cultural conditioning” influence to many of the answers in this thread. Cultural conditioning influences every answer in every thread. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2018, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401/77 "2018-09-05T22:21:01Z")
> [@Weedy](#): > > Cultural conditioning influences every answer in every thread. True. But given the context in which my comment was made I think my point can be discerned. Or maybe not. Idk. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/straight-women-which-is-more-important-a-mans-face-or-his-body/820401.md?page=3)