This post investigates the sources of variance in men’s estimations of women’s attractiveness ratings on OKCupid, as reported in the following post.
The OKCupid Blog: The Mathematics of Beauty (January 10, 2011)
This particular data report from OKCupid is, like all the others, very engrossing. A man could spend all day browsing the Dataclysm posts with intrigue.
The Data
Apparently, there were three sets of data collected on thousands of users.
- Men’s ratings of a woman’s overall attractiveness on a 1-5 scale.
- Men’s personal opinions of whether he finds a particular woman attractive.
- The message count of the women studied as an indicator of interest.
Data crunching came up with the following correlations.
- Most all men had a near agreement, on a 1-5 scale, of the overall attractiveness of all women.
- Concerning the second data set, the women fell into two different categories: (2a) those for which the men’s personal opinions were homogenous, and (2b) others for which men widely disagreed.
- In comparing women among the same lateral attractiveness ratings (1), when men’s opinions of a particular woman (2b) were diverse, the message count (3) was much higher, compared to those women with uniform ratings (2a), who often had a message count that was below average.
Rudders Analysis
The main gist of Rudder’s report covers the variance in the number of messages received by above-average attractiveness women with the same hotness rating, with all other variables controlled for age, class, race, etc. Through this discrepancy, Rudder found that men’s opinions of some women’s attractiveness resembles a bell curve skewed toward hotness, whereas, the opinions of other women’s attractiveness was sharply split, with a lot of men rating her ‘hot’, and a lot of other men holding the opinion that she’s a dud, and relatively few ratings falling in between.
There was another interesting finding. Among comparisons of women having equivalent ratings of attractiveness (e.g. those women who were all rated as a 7/10, or what not), those women with a wider variance in the men’s opinions received a significantly larger proportion of messages compared to those women who made a consistent impression on all men.
Rudder describes this anomaly like this. [Eds. note: Emphasis his. You’ll have to go to the site to see the photos and graphs.]
“As you can see, though the average attractiveness for the two women above is very close, their vote patterns differ. On the left you have consensus, and on the right you have split opinion.”
“To put a fine point on it:”
- “Ms. Left is, in an absolute sense, considered slightly more attractive”
- “Ms. Right was also given the lowest rating 142% more often”
- “yet Ms. Right gets 3× as many messages”
From a socio-political standpoint, I want to point out that Rudder has his descriptions reversed. Ms. Right, who smells as if she frequents night clubs on occasion, is actually Ms. Liberal Left, and Ms. Left, who appears rather pure and wholesome, is Miss Traditional Right.
“When we began pairing other people of similar looks and profiles, but different message outcomes, this pattern presented itself again and again. The less-messaged woman was usually considered consistently attractive, while the more-messaged woman often created variation in male opinion.”
After some more data crunching, Rudder stated that,
“…a woman gets a better response from men as men become less consistent in their opinions of her.”
He finally came to the following boneheaded (or perhaps facetious) conclusions.
- “The more men as a group disagree about a woman’s looks, the more they end up liking her.”
- “Guys tend to ignore girls who are merely cute.”
- “In fact, having some men think she’s ugly actually works in woman’s favor.”
- “If someone doesn’t think you’re hot, the next best thing for them to think is that you’re ugly.”
Rudder offered a fair attempt to explain this difference using game theory, which entailed that competition plays a role in men’s decisions on which woman to message. But Rudder missed a gravitating point in his study in answering the question of why there is a bell curve for some women’s perceived attractiveness, while there is a flagrant split in some others. So here we apply a little Red Pill praxeology to help explain this phenomenon that is well documented by OKCupid.
Red Pill Analysis
I’ll proffer that there is a little more going on to these attraction ratings and message frequencies than merely aesthetic beauty. It is obvious from the photos, that those women with a homogenous rating present a very traditional manifestation of beauty – that is, more natural. All guys feel the same about that, (that is, quite positive), take it for what it is, and rate her accordingly. But for those hot thots with the banana split ratings, they are displaying other cues rather unrelated to her beauty, and more related to her DTF probability. Most noticeably, the photos of the women with split ratings have an ostensible cold lusty gaze, reminiscent of a seductive prostitute, and are likewise showing a few slut tells. Guys who rate the latter type of women very high, are guys going for women who are likely to put out. They perceive the possibility of a pooze pumping good time, and get to work on that opportunity ASAP through the venue of messaging. On the other hand, guys who are more marriage minded, more serious, or more ‘moral’, get turned off by these slits, and thus tally up those abysmal ratings on the lower end. Also, guys who are more serious, are also likely to be more choosy, and are therefore less likely to vomit out pickup lines to any woman whose photo gives them a stiffie. The few guys who rate these hoes as anything in between, probably don’t know what they’re looking at.
Your Marred Beauty Will Catch Men’s Eyes, Reward Your Attention Whoring With Messages, and Get You Laid!
[Eds. note: For non-native English speakers, that headline is sarcasm.]
To his credit, Rudder does warn women that hiding their flaws is a bad move (e.g. by posting cropped, close-up, or decade-old photos), because this tends to repel men after they find out the truth. But I feel he takes the argument a little too far in the opposite direction – encouraging women to flaunt their flaws as unique identifying features.
I can agree that it’s a bad idea to feel ashamed of ones flaws, and that people should accept themselves for who they are, but actually celebrating one’s flaws to the point of playing them up for attention, and perhaps even creating more flaws for this purpose is a bit beyond me. It’s almost like a self-destructive person proudly begging for compassion. This is first indicated in the headline of the article,
“How you can use your flaws to your advantage”
which drops a hint about where this is all going. Finally, in the conclusions, Rudder offers the advertised advice to the OKCupid peeps.
“Well, fundamentally, it’s hard to change your overall attractiveness (the big single number we were talking about at the beginning). However, the variance you create is under your control, and it’s simple to maximize:”
So he is saying (in so many words) that the key to get more messages, and attention, is to make yourself different! (Sounds like a snowflake mantra.) He then posts two photos of tatted up dykes, with facial piercings, and short/dyed hair (are her eyebrows dyed too?!?), saying, [Emphasis mine.]
“As you’ve probably already noticed, women with tattoos and piercings seem to have an intuitive grasp of this principle. They show off what makes them different, and who cares if some people don’t like it. And they get lots of attention from men.”
There’s that word, ‘different’. I saw that coming. The truth is, men find women who are lacking unusual or distinctive features to be more attractive.
We know what kind of attention Rudder is talking about. I would say, most guys who are on OKCupid are looking to hooker up a lot more than they’re looking for a wife. Tattoos and the cosmetic clad clownface are sure to spell that out for them. I don’t believe women like this deserve any ‘sympathy’ for their flaws, because they have no sense of shame to begin with. If I found a woman like that on OKCupid, my first message would be one of the following,
- “How long since you got out of rehab?”
- “You’re really dedicated! Skipped parole to surf OKCupid!”
- “Nice of your Dad to bail you out.”
I won’t say it’s impossible to find a nice, respectful, Traditional, marriage-worthy girl with huge tit tats, lip piercings and Alice Cooper style mascara, but don’t bet your marital lifetime happiness on it.
Conclusions
What Rudder, and most of society as a whole, fail to realize, is that people, including women, who display self-respect, draw respect from others, including men. Whereas, women who dress like a doxie are inviting others to regard them as a sex object.
I will reiterate. If women dress like hoes, then they are going to get the intense lusty attention and the fast action of the horny male. But if women step up their personal standards of class, beauty and attractiveness, and adopt the appearance of a cultured lady, then men will be more likely to give them the respect and consideration that they crave. If a woman stayed natural, dressed like Audrey Hepburn, and displayed some refinement in both her mind and her manners, then men would also ‘man up to the challenge’ as well. Women displaying sophistication are more likely to attract higher quality, commitment-minded men. Whereas, those men who are simply seeking a pump-and-dump would think twice before choosing her, and message the easy hoebags instead, as the men of OKCupid have demonstrated.
I’d like to know, how many women went out and got a tattoo after reading Rudder’s post, thinking that it would move them up the SMV ladder with men? That’s a sad misrepresentation of the truth behind the data.
