The problem with letting a woman know you care about looks

Post Reply New Topic

No its not. If 2 salespeople show up at a male purchasing managers door, one fat, 50 year old, balding male and the other a young, highly attractive woman and they are both doing cold sales, I'm willing to bet money on the woman having a higher chance at getting some of the managers time. The way a person's impression (looks + behavior) affects those around them have an impact on job performance in most people-related jobs. Looks are related to performance in quite a few cases.

It never occurred to me to do that. This post is probably the first time I even heard that I was supposed to.

Wise words. Something else that makes me laugh is women thinking a man is gay because he isn't attracted, how f*cking megalomaniacal do you have to be to think that.

You miss-read my post. The kicker in the conversation I cited wasn't the original, tacky, joke (which was pretty subtle, actually), but what followed when the women followed up on the joke to see how the man would react to her gaining weight after marriage. He made it quite clear that gaining weight would not be OK, and would negatively affect the relationship, even if he did try to pretend he would theoretically still love her. It is THAT statement that told her that he was interested in her for how she looked more than who she was, and this bothered her.

The comparison is totally valid, when you understand it.

Men can think and express what they want, and I've made that perfectly clear, but what they need to understand is that most women, in my personal experience, do not want to be with men who are overly focused on how they (the women) look. Women want to be loved for who they are, and want to know that their man will still be there if something awful happens to them. If the guy loves you for how you look, and makes that known to you, you realize he isn't likely to be there for you if something awful happened. When people realize that, they are likely to lose interest in the potential partner.

Honest or not, thinking that way will cost a guy in the dating world. He is likely to get dumped and not know why. Do with that information what you will, but don't misread it.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 01 Jun 2012, 3:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Ideally it works better if you compliment something which she is rarely complimented on. For instance, the "nice hair", "nice eyes", thing is outplayed to the extreme.

Ideally, you compliment me on something I am proud of or care about, and that I like in myself enough to believe is sincere.

I liked being complimented on my eyes, or smile, or intelligence.

I never liked being complimented on my bust.

And I was suspicious if a guy complimented me on my sense of humor, since I'm not generally known for being very funny. Or on my taste in clothes, since I wasn't very fashionable - although the occasional "I really like that outfit" was nice, that rang true enough to me. I think complimenting my nose would also ring untrue ...

Tricky territory, compliments. Required but so easy to go wrong with.

It's true. A lot of sales reps come through my department and they are always good looking- so good looking it's comical. They are always pretty women and handsome men and they always have impeccable clothes and the what must be 200$ haircuts. Sometimes after we've bought the product (assuming we do) it breaks and a tech must be sent out to fix it. The techs are always pretty ordinary looking guys and have less fashion sense than the sales reps from the same company. We joke to ourselves that although we are a pretty ordinary looking group, somewhere in our company there must be a department full of dazzling reps that are sent out to represent us. We have a game of trying to spot them in the company lobby- employees who look so much better than all the rest of the employees.

You can't build a relationship on that of course- not even a business relationship. Eventually the ordinary looking techs must come to fix the broken things. But it does make a stunning first impression. I am starting to think that sales is where people go when they are almost but not quite attractive enough to be a professional model. I suppose these people attach pictures to their resumes so that HR (even though mostly female staffed) can see that they are legitimately pretty enough for the sales job. For the tech job, skip the photo.

It depends, if its something you're regularly complimented on, especially if its in one of those cliché areas the sincerity comes into question. This is the case with both your eyes and smile. In order to compliment your intelligence it would require enough of a conversation for it to be judged appropriately by your suitor, otherwise it would be viewed as insincere, unless its something you expect to be so apparent that its obvious to compliment on. As for your bust, I'd have to see it to judge it.

What I would say is how I honestly and truly felt, without using any buzzwords that often commonly offend people.

Looks do matter. We all care about how our partner or potential partner looks. But it's not the main or most important factor.

Weight is not a problem, as long as it isn't really extreme, like either anorexic or 350 pounds.

lol, guys liked it, it was valid, but it isn't like I did anything for it, I was born with the genes, and the fact that I was naturally endowed was so obvious that complimenting me on it made me feel like, well, a sex object. I was never comfortable with the idea that a guy would see me as a play thing, it isn't like I dressed up the clevege, in fact I went out of my way to downplay it. To me, a smart guy would notice that I wasn't trying to use it to attract men and, thus, not mention it until our relationship had advanced to the "let's admire each other's bodies" stage.

It was super obvious from the time I was 12 that a lot of men were much more interested in my chest than in me, and I had no patience for that.. Imagine being in middle school and having adult men try to grope you! Totally freaked me out.

One of the nice things about getting older and having had my kids is knowing that no one cares about my chest anymore. Except my husband, of course.

If a well endowed woman is obviously throwing her clevege in your face, you can comment on it. But if she is not, hold that back.

Last edited by DW_a_mom on 02 Jun 2012, 12:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

As I implied, my policy on compliments is to surprise, in effect complimenting that which a woman isn't expecting or attempting to be complimented on. I also would never compliment a woman on her chest, behind, legs or other body part where it could be construed as sexual prior to it being appropriate. It goes towards being unpredictable.

On the same note, I've used the "pick up" line "Hi, you looked like you were looking for someone interesting to talk to, so I thought I'd come over seeing as I'm the most interesting man in the room" several times. because women just don't expect that.

I didn't misread it. Your point wasn't so clear to me. You didn't stipulate that he became serious and stopped joking. As far as I read it, he was still being tactless and making a joke about it.


If he honestly feels this way, I don't think he said anything wrong. She's lucky he didn't lie about it in order to keep in the running for potential mate, only to find out a marriage and 2.5 kids later how he really thinks about it, especially if she puts on any weight while pregnant.

There's a difference between someone who is absolutely clueless and has no idea that what they are saying is having a bad effect versus someone who has weighed their options and has made a conscious decision to pursue a specific preference despite how negative that preference is seen by "most women." It seems that most of the men on this thread that are being argumentative fall into the latter category, and trying to make them see the "error of their ways" is just causing them to dig their heels in even further.

I suppose the question is, what they anticipate will be the end result and how their actions contribute or detract from that. I mean, the physical always has an influence on attraction, however stating so is considered "rude" in some context if said in certain ways. Even a woman who intends to stay in shape after marriage is bound to take offense to the notion presented within the context, so therefore it makes no sense to state such opinions in the given context. It's illogical on a "cost-benefit" basis.

The first part you stated is correct. It does depend on their anticipated end result, but I disagree with saying that it's illogical for a certain group, and here's why.

I believe that while it is a very small percentage of the population, there are plenty of women out there that would concur with the men that have no qualms with stating such preferences. They're made for each other and the only way they are going to find each other is by stating such things out loud despite the negative backlash that society dishes. You, I, she, and he may dislike their preferences, but does that give us the right to tear their preferences into pieces?

If you're talking about someone who is oblivious and might want to be made aware so that they can consider changing their stance, giving them knowledge of how that stance is seen by most of society is great. Telling someone who has made an active choice in the matter that their choice is wrong is something else. Yeah, they are limiting their dating pool, but that's kind of what they are after to begin with. Someone with the mindset that they surely might break up with someone else who gains too much weight isn't looking for your average woman. They don't want most women. Therefore, their cost-benefit ratio is biased towards speaking their preference and alienating the women that they wouldn't go for in the first place. What they are doing is culling the dating pool down from "everyone" into something more manageable and with greater actual prospects that are more likely to be a dating match.

ZX_SpectrumDisorder linked this video for my reference the other day as something that was absolutely repulsive, so I think it's hilarious that I'm now going to use it to back up his own personal stance that he was taking earlier in this thread. The idea that saying something like, "If you gained a certain level of fat, I might not want to keep dating you," will probably cause most women to "turn their interest lights off." But, if the person is adamant about that being a deal breaker, they should state such preference first thing so as to cull the dating pool as quickly as possible. Why spend years dating people that you are likely to end up offending, and instead just offend them up front in order to move on to someone that might not be offended?

It's a joke, I'm female and sexism can work both ways.

exactly, just like racism and every other type of discrimination. It usually goes multiple ways