The Problem with Being Handsome or Interesting to Women
Image credit: In the library, Georg Reimer. Public domain.
Attraction based primarily on looks is superficial and misleading, whether it’s the man finding the woman beautiful or the woman finding the man handsome. It’s hard to appreciate how true this is unless you’ve been on the receiving end of the attraction, which isn’t often the case for most men. Women are not nearly as visually oriented in this regard as men, and they have much higher standards for what they consider overwhelmingly physically attractive (or at least attractive enough to send them into a state of active romantic desire without any other qualifying factors). Thus, typically only a small minority of men will experience this kind of reaction from women regularly.
However, beauty standards differ from culture to culture. What is plain and unremarkable in one place is noteworthy in another and unignorable in another. I’ve lived in parts of the world where, quite by surprise, I found myself turning the heads of local women as I walked down public streets. I was an anomaly in their local environment. They compared me to white American movie stars, which, of course, I bore little actual resemblance to beyond gender and skin color. This was a new experience for me, as I am generally not considered much more overtly handsome than the average male in most societies.
Though this type of attention was flattering and exhilarating at first, I quickly came to see how superficial it was. Sure, it had its uses. I was given special treatment in many situations, and it was relatively easy to find women to take on dates or even sleep with. I suppose this is the typical “hot girl” treatment that women who put inordinate amounts of attention into their looks are used to receiving (which explains why they put so much attention there in the first place). It's like playing the social game on easy mode. Strangers are eager to talk to you, help your out with anything, and go out of their way to make your life as easy as possible, like you are a minor celebrity everywhere you go. It explains why so many women are terrified of losing their looks as they get older and this privilege along with them, coming down to Earth with the rest of us and having to earn respect through some other merit than by just existing and exuding an attractive social aura.
An instant favorable reaction from virile young women sounds like a dream come true to many men. Romantic and sexual attention from women is the highest, often most unattainable goal for them. Legions of books and videos are dedicated to learning to overcome this obstacle and earn even smidgens of attention from beautiful women and coerce them into letting lonely young men experience their bodies.
But after a while, the cheeky attention women would give me as what they perceived as an extraordinarily handsome man in their local environment became more irritating than convenient. Once the novelty wore off, I just wanted to be talked to like a person again without any special emotional overlay from women about the excited way they should respond to me. Outside of special circumstances where it was useful to make women swoon, I missed just being treated like a goddamn human being and have interesting conversations on an equal playing field. From this perspective, it’s easy to infer the social priorities of women who regularly put lots of attention into their looks but who aren’t actively looking for sexual partners.
A common complaint among superficially attractive women is that men only pay superficial attention to them. They might want to impress them long enough to take them out to dinner or take them to bed, but that has no relation to developing any type of meaningful interpersonal interaction. Not all attention is equal. You can’t bond with someone over how pretty or sexy they look.
A similar type of superficial attention is paid to men by women, not typically because the men look good, but because women find them interesting or exciting. An interesting man grabs the attention of a woman just as quickly and superficially as a sexy woman grabs the attention of a man.
It’s not hard to understand why. Women are not nearly as free as men to lead exciting, risky lives, to go on adventures that challenge and develop them. They are, by their nature and as a consequence of our present state of social development, more vulnerable to most threats than men. So, they often live vicariously through the men they bond with. A restricted woman is attracted to a free man because he makes her dull life interesting by bringing a bit of his freedom to it.
On the surface, this sounds much better than being attracted to someone simply because they look good. But it is still a faulty basis for a meaningful romantic relationship. The dull woman is looking to fill a lack of entertainment in her life with a man, just as the bitter and beautyless man is looking to fill a void in his. She sees him as an amusement, not a person to bond with. When a man primarily wants to keep a woman around because she is beautiful or sexy, it is because he needs an object to stimulate him or get his rocks off to. He does not treat her as a living, conscious vessel.
Too many times, I found myself in faulty relationships with women who were drawn to me because they found me more interesting than any other man in their lives. They used me to make themselves more interesting. The real nature of our relationship only became apparent when I tried to move things to a more intimate level of interaction and found they lacked the capacity or desire for anything more than the current role I was playing for them.
The irony is that I do not cultivate the appearance of an interesting man for the purpose of wooing women or tricking them into being romantically interested in me. There are certainly many men who do this. “Be mysterious and interesting” is among the most common pieces of advice given by professional pickup artists who train hopeless men in the art of convincing women to date or sleep with them. They know its power. They are equivalent to women who overload on makeup, clothes, and accessories that are meant to make them look sexually enticing to men. Both are playing manipulation games for personal gain at the expense of another person’s disappointed expectations.
Intrigue, like beauty, is not a bad quality in and of itself. There’s a reason both are so attractive to different sexes. They play essential roles in our lives and are products of the natural biological division of labor between the sexes. In an ideal social environment, women would be celebrated for being beautiful just as men would celebrated for being interesting. The essential difference between that hypothetical world and ours is the element of social manipulation. Women who cultivate beauty for the sake of manipulating men are perpetuating harm on them in the long run, just as are men who cultivate intrigue for the purpose of manipulating women.
The conundrum, then, is how a naturally sexy or beautiful woman and a naturally interesting man can display these qualities without attracting the wrong kind of attention from the opposite sex. We must recognize these qualities for what they are: ways to get our attention. They are great incentivizers and conversation starters. They cannot be a basis for sustained, meaningful interaction between men and women. You have to go past them together. You have to love someone who would keep your interest even if they lost their looks or their ability to go on interesting adventures. You love them, ultimately, for their character, which is not subject to the changes of the body or social settings. When you love someone, you love them under all possible conditions through which they might one day express themselves, not just the ideal ones they’ve tailored for your present entertainment.