Do looks matter? Spoiler: Yes, looks do matter. A lot. On both sides of the gender spectrum.
This is a popular topic of debate. Some people in the pickup artist / dating coach world have sold the idea that looks don’t really matter. The reason is because this a great way to sell the idea that anybody can become a Don Juan with ten “perfect 10” girlfriends in their apartment harem.
Or, they may claim that looks matter for women due to male evolutionary triggers, but they don’t matter for men so much as women are predisposed to status over geometric perfection. This is mostly hogwash.
As I’ll discuss later, the “Fourth Factor” alleviates a lot of these problems and provides an option, but to say that looks don’t actually matter is not true, at all.
Anybody with real-world experience will tell you that physical attraction means a lot to both genders. Who always hooks up in nightclubs effortlessly? At a country western bar, it’s the 6’4 rugged looking cowboy. On Wall Street, it’s the 6’4 guy in the Armani suit who looks like Don Draper. You get my point.
When I was in college I had this friend (I’ll call him Brad) who looked “perfect”—6’1, beautiful, symmetrical and chiseled face, 6 pack abs, and he worked as a male model. In a big fraternity-obsessed Pac-10 college, having the “master race” look was very sought after (sadly, I can’t remember seeing a single African American or Asian in any of the fraternities or sororities on campus, but I digress).
Brad lived in sexual abundance, at least for a while. Every top fraternity wanted him as their representative, and every status-obsessed chick on campus wanted to bed him. There was no point in time that Brad did not have sexual options. Whether a Tuesday or a Friday, it was a simple matter of making a phone-call or stepping outside his campus apartment. He’d get laid by breathing.
Despite being a straight-A student, Brad eventually dropped out of college. I think one of the reasons is because he got increasingly paranoid. “She’s just after my pants,” he would suspiciously remark about the girl across from us who was staring at him. He was right.
One time, some gorgeous cheerleader in our class asked Brad why he was hanging out with the likes of me, because I was so far beneath him in terms of physical appearance and campus status. “Go fuck yourself,” was his heroic response.
Brad was always a cool guy, but I have no doubt both male and female obsession with him is one of the things that scared him away from university life. He retreated to California to start a business, and I never really heard from him since. But knowing him was a great lesson about a guy who wasn’t even happy with what most would consider an incredible gift. He was also proof that looks matter, a lot. Beautiful men typically have as many options as beautiful women.
Good News and Bad News
Brad was an extreme example—a top 1% of good looking guys who was showered with so much female attention it drove him partially insane. Unfortunately for us less-attractive guys, it should also be noted the top 10%, 15% and 50% also have significantly higher sex-lives than the bottom 50% who suffer physical imperfections; whether skinniness, overweightness, shortness, bald hair, bad skin, a non-symmetrical face, or a host of other attributes. So, if looks do matter, then the bad news is that a lot of us must be fucked.
Great, I’m Now Self Conscious for Life!
While you can do your best to work out, fix your style, and even purchase some elevator shoes, if there are certain genetic anomalies you cannot fix—then nothing is going to make it go away short of severe plastic surgery, which I do not recommend.
Obviously, other attraction factors make a difference—namely status and money. If a pudgy guy who looks like Porky the Pig drives up to a Las Vegas club in a Bentley, he’s going to get more ass by materialistic girls than a toilet seat at a Beverly Hills shopping mall.
In addition, a swarthy, fat, balding, sweaty, stinking little hairy dude who’s a known movie director is going to be dating hot actresses. This is because of the status effect, which is also an aphrodisiac for many women. In fact, he doesn’t even have to be a movie director, he could just be the boss of a bunch of girls in a setting as unglamorous as a street-side diner, and he’s going to get some action because women are hardwired to feel attraction toward people in positions of power or authority, no matter how minor it may be.
This is why most men, in the timeless pursuit of tail, seek after money and status to get with more ladies. In fact, this could very likely be a driving force behind many of the world’s economic powers, as men use this factor to motivate themselves to rise to the top, becoming corporate leaders or military warlords.
Trying to get laid could be responsible for everything from Alexander the Great’s world conquest to the greatest, most terrible modern day regimes and corporate superpowers!
So Status and Money Also Matter, but I Don’t Have Those Either… Life Sucks.
Before you start to freak out, I’m going to propose something else—being in that lower 50 percentile of men who are not attractive can be a blessing in disguise. Furthermore, if you’re not handsome, you’re poor and you have no status to speak of, there’s still something else you can practice that can actually nullify the need for any of these three factors, and still provide a degree of success:
The Charisma Factor
The “good news” I alluded to earlier is that a fourth factor has been discovered that enhances not only your attractive qualities, but also your general social and career success. It’s an ill-defined phenomenon known as charisma.
Charisma includes how you feel about yourself on the inside, and how well you can project that positive energy out to people around you. It also includes your non-verbal presence and subconscious motivation as you interact with people (your “vibe”).
My observation is that charisma can range from 0 up to 10, and those rare souls with “10” charisma—who have worked hard on themselves to achieve it—are unstoppable in business and dating. What’s great about this is that money and status are byproducts of charisma, but your success will no longer be dependent on those factors because the charisma will not go away if the finite resources of money and power suddenly disappear (which can, and will, happen).
Charisma, and adopting virtuous personality traits, is something you can always rely on. It also helps you to achieve success in virtually any endeavor you take on. It’s the ultimate insurance policy in life.
The reason those men who are in the bottom rung of the looks, money and status department are at an advantage is because their bad luck forces them to adopt charisma as the alternative to achieve their goals. They have a higher chance of becoming well-rounded, smooth and successful than good looking guys who feel it’s not necessary to do that inner-work.
(So, if you’re a good looking guy reading this, it IS necessary to do that inner work. Looks won’t last forever, and they won’t make you a cool person that people want to do business with.)
Ladies: The Double Standard
Charisma works great for men, but women must be out of luck, right? I mean, either a girl’s pretty or she isn’t. A fat awkward girl is always going to be fat and awkward and not sex worthy.
This is a terrible double standard which is actually mythological, and I feel it’s barely alleviated by so-called feminist movements that focus more on gender superiority, or carefully disguised rage, versus self-development.
I’ve discovered the fairly rare phenomenon of meeting physically unattractive women who beam charisma, and finding myself oddly attracted to them. This is rare because most women become reinforced by a self-fulfilling cycle of self-hatred, and they project this when they talk to men. A very small percentage actually bust out of this cycle and achieve some type of—I’m not sure—spiritual enlightenment I suppose.
And once they do, the tables really turn. Guys start to think of them as sexy, and even start to fantasize about them, and while they may not have the objective standards of Venusian sculpted beauty, they have that special mojo that is infectious. These types of ladies can swoop a social circle and get the guys of their dreams.
I call these rare types of women “fPUAs” (female pickup artists). I just wish there was more of them. If you are a female pickup artist, or you know of one, please e-mail me so I can feature you on one of my upcoming podcasts.
Learning the Fourth Factor
Whether you’re a guy or a girl, learning charisma is what the “attraction / seduction community” is all about (rather, what it SHOULD be about. Most of the time, it’s about other less-than-noble pursuits, but I digress).
It can be a long process to arrive at the point you want to be at. Most guys go through a very long dry spell that sometimes lasts years—even decades—until things finally start to “click”. But when it does click; it translates to massive change, inner-empowerment, and a LOT of career and girl options.
This is what I call a “Developed Man”. It’s also a great motivation to continue forward, even past dry spells, social unpopularity, or any other external indicator of success, as the end payoff is worth the journey to get there.
Moral of the Story
At the end of the day, there’s a question about numbers: does the guy with 10 charisma get laid as much as Brad, who I talked about at the beginning of the article? The answer is… probably not.
That’s right, even the fourth factor alone will not provide you as much success as a guy with genetic gifts. But the question is: why would you want to emulate him? Brad wasn’t happy. He’d put his dick in that 500th girl, and then have an existential crisis about the meaning of human interaction and whether he was appreciated beyond his looks.
Meanwhile, the very internally (and externally) beautiful, high-quality women who could bring the most light to his life probably stayed away from him because they sensed all that inner conflict, which damaged his vibe.
So what do you really want? If you want Brad-level sexual options, you might be fighting an impossible to win battle.
However, if you want at least some sexual options which include the highest quality women in the world—the socially intelligent ladies who sniff out spiritual compatibility and seek guys with a great vibe, then you’re in luck—because charisma is the key to your success in this regard. It’s an advantage even the hottest guys may not have. Like always attracts like, and the more charismatic and well-rounded you are, the more like-minded people you’ll attract.
And, it’s not impossible to get close to Brad-level sexual desirability as you gain status and popularity as a byproduct of your charisma. But, once you have those options, you probably won’t care that much because by the time you’re at that level, you won’t need female approval anymore to make you happy.
In essence, obtaining the qualities of a “Developed Man” means a permanent sense of empowerment that transcends the three deteriorating factors of money, status and looks.
And by working on yourself in this way, you’re also making the world a better place. So, why not?
