Sure it is! Cosmetics are an enormous industry for this reason. For men, it's more about having a proper haircut, facial hair that suits your bone structure (which is kind of men's makeup), clothes that fit, and good posture.
If you don't believe me, consult with some of your more attractive friends, and have yourself a makeover day to try it out. You can look like a million bucks for the cost of a haircut and a new outfit. Even if you're out of shape, you can present yourself just fine.
If you're feeling really brave, doll yourself up as nicely as you can, and consult a forum (not HN) on your appearance. Reddit has a few communities that do this sort of thing. You can dial yourself in to what most people would considered "beautiful" pretty quickly if you want to do it.
For all the midlife crises, it doesn't really help someone who's not already confident/sexy/rich, though. It's an expensive accessory, like a watch. Makeup is a fair analogy, in that men like to impress other men with their cars and (most) women don't bother being made-up everyday for men.
There are a lot of products and techniques that help people look more beautiful. However, at its core beauty relates to both age and heath and as such it's less superficial than is generally portrayed.
Taking this back to buying experiences. IMO, there is basic expenses like buying gas or shampoo which don’t cheapen things. But the further extremes you go like plastic surgery or renting out a hotel not just a room you’re inherently worse off.
There's bias for good looks. And cosmetic/health industry spends billions of dollars on marketing to re-enforce and further strengthen the bias. So is it any surprise people would want to game it to get a better chance of success.
I really wish men and women could body swap for a day so we could better empathize with each other. Most men don’t really see that the world tells women “the most important thing you can be is pretty”. Whatever else you might have accomplished in life really pales in comparison to your looks. It’s just the way it is. This holds especially true outside the Bay Area bubble. Many of my wonderful male friends are just astonished at how much time and energy and money that I spend to be beautiful. I don’t think they understand how much society judges me on my looks. How it forces me to constantly compare myself to other women. How awful those moments are when I feel that I don’t have it. How women are acutely aware of and expected to “fix” our physical “shortcomings”: the hair on our face and legs and armpits and bikini lines and backs, our even-slightly-blemished skin (how dare we have pores), our thick ankles, our fleshy arms and stomach, our facial features (everything from thin lips to nose shape can be “fixed”), our hair color and texture, cuticles and unpainted nails on both hands and feet, callused feet, moles, under eye darkness and bags and wrinkles, thigh cellulite, breast shape, flabby arms, creased forehead and cheeks, short or saggy neck, unlifted lashes, low cheekbones, eyebrow shape, jaw and neck definition, etc etc. and especially, any signs of aging. We don’t ever become “silver foxes” or look “distinguished”- aging is the enemy.
In today’s world, the scrutiny of men’s appearance will never even come close to the microscope that women live under. Truly. An ugly man can make it way further in life than an ugly woman.
And worse, women are brought up to really care what others think of them, and to make everyone else comfortable at their own expense. So you can’t just “stop caring what people say”. That would really screw you over in this world.
I imagine that beauty is for women what money is for men. It’s our currency and often what makes us valuable to the group of the shallow “others” in this society.
Attractiveness overall seems a more valued trait in women, though, to a rather catastrophic degree. I think men should be allowed to use makeup, and I think the small amounts that would help others wouldn't notice, but, overall, I don't think the fact that women are supposed to constantly worry about their makeup or their hair or their fashion so disproportionately is an advantage. I got the impression that men don't wear makeup mostly because it doesn't really matter. That's a lot of time better spent doing almost literally anything else.
Given that the whole point of the post you're responding to seems to be precisely that cosmetics do in fact take you quite far, and substance isn't, in his experience, as important as he was led to believe... I rather doubt simply asserting that looks don't matter is going to change his opinion.
> I don't see what's wrong with wanting hair or looking attractive either.
Neither do I. My point was made in earnest. Women are judged negatively for dressing up and actually making an effort in looking attractive. Men aren't judged negatively.
If we start selling makeup for men and encourage a society to use it, it will equalize the notion of "vanity" - using economics and generating desired behaviour in form of externalities is a favourite armchair hobby of mine.
My partner works in the make-up and skin care industry. She thinks the majority of men simply don't care about their skin, because wrinkles and Crow's feet are sexy on men (her words). I wish you the best of luck.
Firstly, the article doesn't talk about confirmation bias. The fact remains that if you think you're pretty, but you're actually ugly, all of the effects that come from being perceived as ugly will still come into play, which the article goes into to great detail about.
Yes, feeling confident about yourself is helpful, but as the article said, "the increased confidence of attractive workers only explained 15% to 20% of the beauty premium."
The fact that women basically have to spend hours dealing with makeup only reinforces the OP's post. I don't see how that's a response to what he said.
If you look at the picture, the overall facial structure plays a great role in the transformation. Thinning of the face is not just about losing weight/fat. There is bone structure at play and there are other bodily tissues at play that you can't just remove with exercise.
Look. Your response seriously comes off as one of those banal "If you think you're ugly you are ugly. It's all about self-confidence. You can improve yourself if only you wore better clothes and better grooming and went to the gym." Etc etc. etc. Completely uninsightful and nothing the parent doesn't already know.
> As a male, I'll never understand how cosmetics are so entrenched in the lives of females.
really? same reason people like nice clothes. looking "better" is a competitive advantage to help you get the "best" mate. makeup is a means to that end.
I think this goes beyond status afforded to you by wealth and education. If you look at beauty standards for both men and women, they are converging around one or two achievable looks via make-up/filters/diet/exercise. Sure, we could all end up with the same credentials, but what’s everyone’s plan when we all also look the same?
The biggest point that nobody talks about is the following:
Sadly it's about physical attractiveness (or visual super-stimulus). There is a gap between average man vs woman attractiveness that has massively increased since the 80s.
Why? The natural gap is low but culturally and increasingly, women wear more and more sexier clothes while men do not.
Moreover makeup has evolved and most "ugly" woman can appear sexy if they master the art of makeup, which again men culturally cannot.
Regarding the first point I do believe men should wear sexier clothes to reduce the gap, even if that imply the need to shave. But it's hard to change the accepted man aesthetics (e.g some people find Crop tops gays)
Regarding makeup I mostly don't believe men will use it before many decades or at best a subset of makeup.
So the gap will be reduced but still is and will remain high until a long time. Moreover it is increasing nowadays as tiktok and other social trends make heavy "doll" makeup mainstream.
I imagine legalizing a safe (controlled) intake of testosterone could help men reduce the gap.
What's considered aesthetically pleasing continually evolves over time. There are underlying trends in physical beauty that resemble what we see in fashion, art, music, etc. Humans also have a quite a lot of control over much of their appearance with hair styling, makeup, and (increasingly) cosmetic surgery. This, combined with the ageism inherent to modeling, adds up to fairly sustained demand.
If you don't believe me, consult with some of your more attractive friends, and have yourself a makeover day to try it out. You can look like a million bucks for the cost of a haircut and a new outfit. Even if you're out of shape, you can present yourself just fine.
If you're feeling really brave, doll yourself up as nicely as you can, and consult a forum (not HN) on your appearance. Reddit has a few communities that do this sort of thing. You can dial yourself in to what most people would considered "beautiful" pretty quickly if you want to do it.
reply