Let’s Take Looksmaxxing Seriously

[Valach]

11 minutes ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

I wasn’t going to revive this thread, but I sense a lot of self-deception going on here.

Let’s just think about this simply. Attractiveness is an important metric for romantic and social outcomes, right? With some honesty we’ll agree on the former, and the latter has great evidence in the form of the halo effect. So if we care about improving any aspects of our life, looks should be one of them. This is simple logic.

You guys don’t realize that your ego is tricking you into thinking the looksmaxxers are the deluded ones, while it’s actually you tricking yourselves!
 

We would be tricking ourselfs if we did not have anything proof from real life experiences confirming that it does not matter that much (at least for men).

[AtmanIsBrahman]

6 minutes ago, Valach said:

We would be tricking ourselfs if we did not have anything proof from real life experiences confirming that it does not matter that much (at least for men).

Ah yes, so a short, ugly person will have the same results as a good-looking tall person running the same game. I don’t deny that game works, but it’s absurd to say looks “don’t matter that much.” Plus you conveniently ignored my point about social outcomes. This isn’t just about dating. 

[Valach]

22 minutes ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

Ah yes, so a short, ugly person will have the same results as a good-looking tall person running the same game. I don’t deny that game works, but it’s absurd to say looks “don’t matter that much.” Plus you conveniently ignored my point about social outcomes. This isn’t just about dating. 

If all the other aspects are same, yes, the good looking guy will have better results. But that rarely happens. The points of the statement about looks not mattering as much is that it is just way more rewarding for a guy to focus on developing his personality, his inner game etc. than to focus on looks.

I did not ignore anything. I just do not really know what you mean by the social outcomes, could you expand?

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Deriving a substantial portion of your identity from anything outside yourself is a good recipe for low self esteem. And looksmaxxing can easily slide down this path. It can (and does, often) play into the powerlessness one can feel in a chaotic, uncertain, unpredictable external world (largely the state of society) - and attempts to find a mechanism of control to alleviate the anxiety (excessive preening and weird metrics for attractiveness). It can also be another form of obsessive status hierarchy one can try to master when they do not have any other value skillset.

There is nuance in what users are saying here; no one is saying looks don't matter. 

The critique is toward looksmaxxing as a psychological framework, not the act of improving ones appearance.