Yes it exists and think it's incredibly important for people to be aware of the power of their own physicality and not to abuse it.
I think the fact that most people would not seriously consider short guys as a marginalized group is proof itself of how marginalized it is. It’s hard not to be resigned to it. The biological marker that associates height with (physical and mental) fitness is just too strong.
At the end of the day, we are all blessed to have an opportunity on this mortal realm and we all have to move on and live life, but sometimes I wish that more people had the same empathy that you’re showing.
Certainly the shift to remote work and remote interviews has helped though.
My shoulder doctor is short but a godsend for diagnosing and fixing my shoulders worn out from bad swimming habits.
I don't quite get the "physical fitness" thing b/c someone who is short can be in excellent shape. On measures of sheer mass and strength such as football, bench press or reach (e.g., basketball) perhaps they don't score as high. But for example, the short guys can usually run your ass off, come back and laugh at you while you can barely breathe. So there are sports where they excel.
We had a short guy in high school who could play basketball like Bob Cousy: he could beat the opposing team almost by himself! He was unbelievable. But his dad wanted him to help run his service station so we just had him for a few games.
Honestly, it seems that men get more of their problems from social aspects of their fathers than they do from their physical aspects (e.g.,physique).
I think society thinks its important to socialize men in particular to "listen to authority without complaining" and this not-so-subtly tells certain men that if people don't treat you with respect then its your problem, not theirs.
One thing I hate about the contemporary American political landscape is that its all in on the false dichotomy between personal responsibility and a well conceived society. Both things can coexist and in fact require one another.
In fact, even though republicans love to talk about "personal responsibility," in a free market it is one of the least required things: the market tells you what to do with yourself on pain of penury. Its really in a society where conventions like social welfware can be abused where people's personal responsibility, character and civic virtues really matter.
I've been successful in my career (I think) because I've (often) used my physical presence and all the advantages it gives me to give the floor to quieter voices, marginalized opinions and I really feel like my teams have been great teams because of that. When you enable great people, great things happen. I was looking forward to that just being the norm.
However, at this company I found myself marginalized and discriminated against. I think because of my age, maybe because of my social class or maybe because of all the accidental advantages I have. I don't know and I don't really care.
Anyway I left them.
So it can swing both ways, just enjoy the ride. Good luck.
I am certain it is a net positive without trying to abuse it, but I've been thinking about it a lot since graduating. Everyone just treats me really well and places a lot of completely unwarranted trust in me.
I've had a situation where I was asking a tall/attractive/charismatic acquaintance for technical advice and he stoped me and said something like "Why are you asking me for advice, you are way more experienced than I am". It's not that I shouldn't have talked with him about the technical matter, just that it was funny that I slid so naturally into the 'underling' role.
In reality I think people working remote haven’t worse off.
While I think height does play a role, as a slightly below average height male I’ve personally never had an issue dominating / being defaulted to after brief interactions.
While this trend / tendency does exist and imo is extremely strong genetically (looking to the “alpha”), a few words can shake that tendency in most rooms.
I think being better groomed, fit, etc probably plays an overall larger role in terms of projecting competence.
Being confident and speaking with conviction in statements likely outweighs everything
I just wonder where we were today without those favorable attributes?
If you showed me two photographs of people and asked me which looks more "intelligent", which looks more "wise", which looks more "honest", which looks more "friendly", which looks more "approachable", or dozens of questions like that, I could have a go at answering the question. But if you asked me which looks more "attractive" I would have no idea how to answer.
Would I understand the question if it were phrased differently, or is the concept itself something that I have for some reason never acquired?
Does anyone else have this problem, or is it really just me?
(Sorry if this is a little bit off-topic: of course the original question doesn't use the word "attractive".)
You can see who other people are attractive (either famous or around you), and infer from there.
OK, that makes sense. Perhaps I can't apply the second criterion because I'm too uninterested in who other people want to have sex with: see my reply to rchaud.
But I seem to have a problem with the first criterion, too. Lack of imagination, perhaps? I can't/don't think about having sex with someone unless I've already done it or have come quite close? Or perhaps I'm just non-visual? (I'm a bit face-blind.) So if you were to show me a selection of women of child-bearing age with no obvious signs of ill-health and ask me which I'd most like to have sex with then my reply would be either (1) none of them, because none of them is my wife, dur, or (2), in a different era or parallel universe, all of them, in any order, and then I can perhaps tell you which I prefer, because, as far as I'm concerned, a large proportion of the female population tie for first place when it comes to looks. (Though only a tiny proportion of them have a really nice voice: I'd probably find it a lot easier to pick a favourite voice from a set of recordings.)
So I hope I'm never a subject in a psychology experiment that requires me to rate how "attractive" people are from a picture. In most cases I just can't do it.
Everyone else is using 'attractive' here to mean "attractive according to the beauty standards of the dominant culture in which I live".
OK, that makes sense, and if that's what they mean, perhaps it explains my problem: I've never taken sufficient interest in other people's ideas about beauty. I can take a casual interest in what other people look like, and I can care about what other people think about some specific questions, but what other people think about what other people look like is a bridge too far for me!
What about someone who is disfigured and someone who is not?
Attractiveness describes the perception of success (friendships, health, career etc) based on physical appearance and the likelihood of passing these traits to offspring.
Being good looking, tall and physically fit is the biggest privilege in life. You don't need to be Jeff Bezos rich, if you look good you can pick and choose partners as and when you wish. You can live out some of your craziest fantasies because women/men will do things which they wouldn't do in normal circumstances. Married people will cheat because they want a taste of you, people will be extremely inviting to you even they don't know you, people will give you the benefit of trust, they will be extra friendly, at Christmas parties people will seek conversations with you which will increase your social score at work and help with promotions because popular people are more likely to get given extra opportunities and responsibilities and so forth. In short, if you are good looking you will be able to experience things in life which so many people will never even dream of. Things that you'd think only happen to filthy rich people or in movies will all of a sudden happen to you even when you didn't look for it. Doors just open and you will be able to either say yes or no to those chances in life.
I am not saying it is good, as mentioned, we try to be better than this, but the facts speak against it.
This was posted on HN a while ago and I really enjoyed this read:
https://medium.com/@sfard/the-greatest-privilege-we-hardly-t...
However, "being physically fit" is under your control (for the vast majority of people) and you can tip the scales quite a bit on "being good looking" if you make the effort.
Very, very few people are incapable of doing the above on software engineer salaries. People that make a lot less and have less free time manage to do it, you can too. Height and bone structure are about the only two "attractiveness" things not within your control, so control them. I am not conventionally attractive, I wasn't popular in high school, I had a beer belly in my 20's and rarely had dates. Eventually I got my head out of my ass and started eating right, started working out, spent a little bit of money on my clothes and just all around gave a damn. The difference was staggering, both personally and professionally. It's amazing the different a good haircut, a fresh shave (or maintained beard), and a reasonable body fat percentage can make.
Being male can sometimes be dispiriting in that you have to constantly justify your worth, but the silver lining is that there are multiple avenues through which you can do so. By contrast, the world is cruel and unforgiving towards women who do not or no longer meet the beauty standard and there's only so much that can be done.
In any case, adopting the 'blackpill' mindset isn't helpful in the slightest, even in a scenario where it accurately describes reality, which isn't the case. All that you describe exists in some form but it's not nearly as dramatic or immutable. Nor are other privileges all that impotent and fair either. There's never been a better era to be born smart in a developed country, for instance.
It is good up to a point. Much of your list consists of sexual behaviors. So being good looking also implies that you will have sex earlier with more people who have STDs and pass these STDs on to others possibly for the remainder of your life, try risky behaviors earlier, fall under the sexual tutelage of mentors, elders, peers etc.
Being good looking can especially be a curse for women. Most of the very attractive women I've questioned revealed they were molested or assaulted at early ages. Many were severely damaged mentally (from depression to full-blown schizophrenia).
However, there are obviously many possible arguments on subtle cause/effects with correlated characteristics etc.
I provide no references, but plenty exist if you search.
( Sardinians are the shortest population in Europe,and Lithuanians one of the tallest )
People who take care of themselves tend to have their life together. Correlation vs causation and all that.
Works well in careers where interacting with people might be more important than proficiency at the job.
It was sad and I learned a lot about human nature from witnessing it.
It feels deceptive, because nothing about your inherent skills or personal qualities have changed. But short of changing your body, face or racial background (none of which should impact a career negatively to begin with), changing your wardrobe probably has the highest and quickest ROI.
Obesity can be tackled with diet and exercise, and if off-the-rack clothing doesn't fit well, one can get bespoke shirts made by a tailor. A person who presents themselves as not being able to manage this task is treated accordingly.
Note that this isn't related to some congenital trait, it's all about the choices the person makes for themselves.
> Here the authors find that inferences of power from photos of the faces of the managing partners of America’s top 100 law firms significantly corresponded to their success as leaders, as measured by the amounts of profits that their firms earned. More interesting, this relationship was also observed when judgments were made based on photos of the leaders taken from their undergraduate yearbooks, before they began their careers or entered law school. Facial cues to success may therefore be consistent across much of the lifespan (approximately 20–50 years).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258189428_Judgments...
There is also - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect - which is different from the above but obviously related.
It's already shown that facial attractiveness can predict athletic prowess:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1474704918801369
So it's likely that people's abilities can influence their appearance. There was a lot of evolutionary pressure to develop abilities to judge people based on appearance, so we would expect humans to be really good at it.
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/33197/1/Ru...
Presentation has a lot of power. We're all shallower than we'd like.
You can game this with little effort. Dress well, maintain a good haircut and pretend to be confident.
Smell is a very primal sense, pretty much linked to our "you are in danger" response.
Are you stating that all scents are fear inducing?
A Russian accent will not be treated as generously in the English-speaking world, after years of bad-guy one-liners being the reference point. Same goes if you have a Middle Eastern accent, or an Indian accent.
Here are a couple of seed links for further investigation (I have no clue about their quality):
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pretty+privileg...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esiOI4tF2uo&ab_channel=zoeun...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esiOI4tF2uo&ab_channel=zoeun...
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I have some ideas, anecdotes and personal experiences on the topic (as I'm traveling a lot as a digital nomad and I tend to talk to people wherever/whenever since I solo travel).
I'm sorry that I can't make this comment razor sharp (also in brevity, it's tough to do). The reason I'm sorry for that is because I know that this is a sensitive topic and I might step on some toes. I don't intend to, but it might be a bit inevitable. Some people might think that speaking from personal experience is not enough. And yes, it's definitely biased, but I am noticing I am learning a lot more about European/western society (as a Dutch person even) than I was in the past 10 years simply because I talk to a lot of people.
I'm currently traveling a lot and in daily life I see a huge difference to how people treat you when attractive. In The Netherlands I'm at best average in attractiveness (I've asked for brutal feedback from multiple people, and I'm averaging 6 out of 10). However, in other countries I'm seen as slightly more attractive because I'm about 190 cm, which is 6.23 feet/inches (whatever you Americans use). Dutch people are one of the tallest if not the tallest in the world. So I'm more common there. Already in Germany, I'm seen as more attractive due to my "language skills" (Dutch people speak better English than Germans, on average, I definitely do; combined with some conversational German/Italian and some basic French). And I do notice the difference. And I'm beginning to get a hunch that in Southern Europe I'm even seen as more attractive since they're a lot shorter on average.
All of this is based on how I interact with women. I've noticed that men don't really act that differently around me. I've been in Lisbon and Berlin recently and met all kinds of people. But yea, I'm seeing my own "pretty privilege" (however marginal) in the dating market. People treat me differently whereas I stay the same.
And I'm definitely hearing stories of how very stereotypically attractive women are getting whatever they want (even if they don't want it). I'm also hearing how stereotypically attractive women are more prone to having experienced sexual violence. So if you think they have it easy: I'm not going to compare, I'm not going to judge. I know too little, but what I do see is that less stereotypical attractive women seem to talk less about having experienced sexual violence (again, I might be biased, my sample might be biased, something else might be off - it's just my personal experience and it does beg the question to formulate a hypothesis and investigate if one would be an academic feminist/psychologist, provided there is no research on it).
But looks influence stuff in daily life so hard that it must have a strong effect in corporate culture as well. This is especially the case since men are the assertive sex when it comes to the mating game, and men are holding more economic/political power than women.
Humans are not robots. We can't keep our emotions fully hidden or suppressed. Biases will leak out, whether we're aware of them or not. So logically speaking, yes, it will have some effect. A more interesting question would be more: how much of an effect? Will it have more of an effect for women? If you have a female boss/male subordinate will it have more of an effect (if the male is attractive)? There are a lot of variables here that might influence the strength of the effect.
With that said, I've also experienced how much pure "inner beauty" can do, from both my side and other men/women. It can do a whole lot, especially when presented with positivity and optimism. My experience is that a lot of charisma can be trained. Like, I don't think I'll ever be wildly charismatic. But compared to my untrained self, I'm an order to two order of magnitudes better, and it has definitely helped me to make my inner world more relatable to other people. Knowing how you present yourself in a: 1 on 1 conversation, group conversation and presentation... It's important and has little to do with personality and looks (other than that the personality and looks need to be incorporated with how to present yourself, but in all look/personality variations - communication skills in being relatable and pleasant to be around with is a skill - even the most hardcore pessimist can be relatable and pleasant to be around with by using his/her pessimism as very creative playful humor, for example).
>But compared to my untrained self, I'm an order to two order of magnitudes better, and it has definitely helped me to make my inner world more relatable to other people. Knowing how you present yourself in a: 1 on 1 conversation, group conversation and presentation... It's important and has little to do with personality and looks
Do you think people would care as much about your inner world if you weren't tall?
A lot right? I have been rejected at least thousands of times. You get desensitized and go after what you want.
Before I got any date, it was first 3 years of pure rejection. Some people don’t have the heart and courage to carry on. But when you get through that period, not much is stopping you.
And I don’t think that would matter much, except for the first 5 minutes. I was highly fantastical in my speech when I showed my inner world. People mentioned I should try writing fiction.
Thank you for an interesting self-assessment. While you're closer to the the average reported height there, I would think that height, as a desirable trait tops out at around 6'7" (~200cm) as back problems or bumping into doorframes becomes more likely.
And given what you've said about yourself, what height, build, and features are considered attractive in the Netherlands? Any notable differences between the men and women there in traits they find desirable whether stated or actual? What about along the along the lines of age groups and marital status (i.e. single, in a relationship, married, divorced)?
Who would be a common example of the "societally attractive" 10/10 in the Netherlands?
What emotional traits are considered desirable(e.g. stoic, relaxed, agressive, etc.)?
How "loose" are the people in Amsterdam? Popular culture stateside exaggerates it out to be a libertine utopia with an unlimited supply of sex drugs, but from what I've read through first- and second-hand accounts, many of them tend to be "shy" (at least relative to Americans) or "friendly, but reserved".
It may be worth asking what the quality of the assumption that we don't have control over our appearance is. Consider someone who just doesn't take care of themselves, and what beliefs and choices their consequent appearance is the effect of. There is a contra- effect as well, where in some environments, being physically repulsive is a signal of power. Government and academia spring to mind.
In tech we have a natural suspicion of shiny looking sales and marketing people, but when you examine that closely, it's because they live and die based on the actual revealed desires of others, where in tech power is independent of desire, and power comes from outsmarting, defeating, and overpowering others intellectually or politically. There is a conflict addiction among "nerds," where we have to tilt at machines and objects instead of people to get our adrenal hit because other people don't really tolerate that aggressive need from others very enthusiastically. Since we prevail based on intellectual domination, we don't index on physical appearance as much, but people who prevail based on actual desire necessarily do.
In the thousands of co-workers I can remember, I would say the main strategy of people who prevail in discussions, but who have neglected their physical appearance - is disagreeableness. It either originates from some quirk that causes them to miss social cues, or it was learned behaviour where they realized they didn't need to make themselves appealing if they were persistent. There is also a cliche about PhD's being like this, where a great number have been trained to be weirdly combative based on their recieved authority, while lacking the normal signifiers of success like basic physical fitness, collegiality, benevolence, charisma, wit, charm, and ultimately other people just attribute their uncanny ignobility to their institution.
We have tons of data from social media sites, chat apps, and online forums where it would be plausible to rank text-based charisma (pure ideas) and physical attractiveness as judged by an algorithm, and we could find out empirically whether there is a strong correlation, but I don't think we need to. Appearance is an evolutionary strategy, and I would say, yes it is very influential because we listen to people based on it because it's a signal of how invested they likely are in certain values.
With the self-awareness that one is sometimes the blade, sometimes the whetstone, I think there’s a place-for and value-in all types.
The "nerd aggressiveness" as you call it, is on full display for non-nerds as well, it's just more subtle due to the nature of the skills employed.
You're looking at it the other way around. You wouldn't get fired for being 'ugly', but you could be treated less well than your co-workers, or not be offered a pathway to a higher-level job with better compensation.
This is wishful thinking.
I made an effort to improve in those areas and I feel the results.
Simple things like people looking away if you look back at them, abusive bosses shouting at my colleagues but never at me, or reining in a couple of misbehaving 8 year olds with a determined look.
Of course the effect is subjective and varied, but oftentimes I've found that people that claim a decision being down to appearance to be those that blame their computer when their code doesn't run :)
Perhaps some fields demand this like marketing where certain sorts of marketing are hard to quantify/value objectively so you need to show confidence so that the department keeps its funding!
People who are by their own admission lack confidence will not enter situations where the probability of rejection is high. Confident people will enter a greater number of these situations, and will continue to enter them even if they were rejected previously.
While at FAANG I actually started to wear makeup to mask the dark circles I naturally have under my eyes - for better or for worse I also have an expensive skincare routine now.
Undeniably I look weird - I really worry about this going into the future.
How Earlobes Can Signify Leadership Potential (https://hbr.org/2011/11/how-earlobes-can-signify-leadership-...)
There are definite obvious advantages in certain physical characteristics.
But it’s trivial to overshadow those with either
a. being really good at what you do
b. Being socially approachable
c. Deft at playing the political game
I do not foresee a future where an American political party nominates a 5ft3in (1.6m) man as a Presidential, or even Senate candidate. Similar for playing professional level sports, or lead actor in movies.
These are biases. They can be overriden by the experiences of people in a community quite easily, but towards unfamiliar people these biases can be quite strong.
Dating pretty people in New York quickly illustrated how dull most "pretty" women are. The one thing I'll never understand is how shaving my head actually increased my perceived attractiveness with women - admittedly I'm a weird somewhat unattractive person.
If you have a commonly accepted name (like "John"), your life will not be hard nor easy. If your name is a mixup of your parents name or something just invented on the spot, you'll life will be harder. You may ease it up by adding a nickname.
If your name is not a common one, but accepted in previous generations (like "Anastasius" or "Manfred", "Vincent", etc.) it'll be seen as a bold choice by your parents and impact positively your life.
BUT…
Amongst the vast majority of the most capable, successful, and broadly well-respected people I have worked with, their status has had little to do with their beauty. I am thinking of folks that are not “attractive” in any conventional sense, yet their wits and competence and heart makes them so.
In certain professions, the effect of beauty is outsized. I hardly need name these; look for shallow aesthetes and cameras. In technical professions that value actual competence, I have found that it doesn’t matter (much.)
I've witnessed very competent and attractive female colleagues get discredited for their appearance, every comment implying that they fucked their way up to their position, or being unable to be close friends with any male coworker for the same reason.
But all in all dressing appropriately to your body, being clean and well groomed is a positive for everyone.
I've actually become a little obsessed with this idea (stopping shy of being unhealthy).
To the point where I lost 25 lbs (through diet and exercise over 6 months), wear nicer cloths (even on Zoom meetings), and whiten my teeth. And it may be a placebo effect. It may just be increased confidence. But I think I've seen results from it.
I'm lucky I have a starting point that was already good (but not great) by US societal standards (I'm average height, male, was only slightly overweight, in good health, and my body responds well to exercise for someone almost hitting 40). But some people may not be lucky.
Edit: For context, I'm a technical founder (CxO). I think the effect may be more limited if you are, say, a junior software developer where technical and soft skills may be enough to differentiate you and run you up the ladder. But at the very competitive higher levels it often boils down to who they board/execs/principals/investors like more. And looks, unfortunately, play a role.
You will not have debates in an organisation. You will have popularity contests. Sometimes those are judged on the merit of what you say, but usually they are judged on how much what you say appeals to the other listeners.
It will be interesting how much of a shift we'll see with more work from home. Do the same effects carry over in calls and async communication? Will "more video calls" mean attractiveness plays a larger role? Will doing voice calls weaken that (or focus it on the voice alone)?
I have firsthand experience on this since I grew up with a brother who is objectively hot, and of course hotter than me. And Im not talking 'yea hot' im talking 'way better looking than models' hot, we literally couldn't go anywhere without a girl approaching one way or another, and thats crazy to say about a guy.
Since a young age i realized our social interactions always tended to gravitate towards him, and understood as I was already seeing, he was going to get better opportunities, and would have to work way less for the same objectives. What I did was I started taking advantage of it. p.e, when we were younger i used to bring him to work with me wherever I was working, cause I knew the reactions he provoked on people. So whenever we worked at the same place I never got fired bc usually the manager was either in love with him if it was a girl, or wanted to be friends with him if it was a guy. I admit it was funny seeing the same reactions on people every single time they met him, and their behavioral changes towards me, and thats just a small example.
What im saying is life is mostly unfair. The best we can do is work with the cards we're dealt towards the best we can do.
I think a lot of people are using studies like this to justify some shortcomings in their life when you can easily look around the people you know and see hugely varied outcomes regardless of looks. And good looks can be a career trap too, especially if you actively rely on them.
And one more thing: by far one of the most important physical appearance factors is youth. Which goes away for the best looking. And it also clearly shows the importance of other factors as we don't have a world full of 22 year old CEOs.
Long answer : people with better physical appearance are generally more successful, leaving all other conditions similar.
Bottomline: part of career growth planning should focus on improving physical appearance. Join gym, eat right, get timely haircut etc.
You should focus on the things you can influence easily, i.e. clothes (including shoes), grooming, manners, ...
Similar to the statistical correlation with tallness (though again whether that's a matter of taller than average people doing well because they are taller or because physical height is correlated with better diet/socio-economic group as a child etc).
This stuff is always so blurry because of confounding factors and inability to control for other factors.
A lot of studies shows that indeed good looking people does have better odds in the traditional success game.
