Some time ago Chris asked,
On previous discussion it has been noted that men consider a woman’s body more important than her face for sexual arousal and/or attraction. A woman can appeal to men in different ways. What do women find arousing in men? A muscular body at 7 percent body fat. etc…?
I have been asked variations of this question quite a few times. Probably about half of my clients discussed body fat and musculature with me. The more I thought about this issue, and reflected on my own experience, the less important I perceived your body to be, at least in contrast to the message that is being pushed by the fitness industry. But let’s take one step back.
First, in an ideal world, you have the perfect body, height, and face. Yet, that is likely not the case. Furthermore, you can’t change your height significantly even though you an give yourself a visual boost by having good posture and using inlays for your shoes. Your face is largely fixed as well. Some cosmetic procedures can have a dramatic effect, such as fixing a crooked nose or getting chin implants. Most men shy away from such drastic measures, though. However, they can still change their facial appearance by losing (or gaining) weight or experimenting with various beard styles.
The reason why there is such a big focus on the body in the minds of men is that it is malleable. Sure, it can take a lot of effort, but you can by and large have the body you want. If you look malnourished, you can eat more. If you’re obese, you can lose weight, if you lack muscle mass, you can work out. Of course, the roided-out appearance of your favorite fitness YouTuber is out of reach with natural means, but you can still get very good results without illegal and potentially harmful supplements.
The big problem with focusing too much on your body, though, is that you will normally not be able to effectively use it for pickup. This does not apply if you live in a beach town and have great weather almost the entire year. Going to the beach with your shirt off is arguably the only widely socially acceptable way to use your physical appearance directly for picking up women. My six-pack abs, when I still had them, were only ever effective when I was able to show them. I did that by taking my shirt off in techno clubs. This works, but even in degenerate Berlin I could only really do this at Berghain. At other clubs, I was able to get maybe half an hour, if I was lucky, before a bouncer showed up, telling me that I can either put my shirt back on again or leave.
If you have your clothes on, your slender and toned body may even look weak. The biggest surprise for me was when I made an active effort to bulk up. My body fat shot up to around 15%, but with a sweatshirt on, I looked like an entirely different person and genuinely physically intimidating. This was never the case when I was slender. Most interestingly, I could sense that people reacted differently to me. This was also when I briefly got back into pickup. In terms of positive reactions, I did about as well as I had done years before, if not better. I was certainly a lot more effective, but that I chalk down to simply excessive experience in picking up women.
I think there is a sweet spot with regards to body fat, and it is nowhere as low as your fitness gurus may tell you. If you want to effectively use your body in pickup and can’t walk around half-naked, you will be a lot better off with a few extra percent of body fat, provided you still look athletic and not simply doughy. As I wrote above, compared to your face and height, your body is the most malleable, so you should certainly work on it.
With regards to the importance of height, face, and body for pickup, I’d say that height reigns supreme as it is such a primal signal. Tall guys are natural leaders and shorter guys naturally submit to them. I think I mentioned the anecdote of a former boss of mine who enjoyed a far higher status in the company yet whenever I bumped into him in the hallway, he’d yield because I was a lot taller than him. This commonly led to some awkwardness because I tended to also yield to him because he was my superior in the organization.
I would say that if you had the choice between a pretty face and an imposing body, you’ll be better off with the latter. I’ve worked with several guys who did not have pretty faces but who were able to, with my help, style themselves in such a way that they were able to fit the “badboy” persona, which made their level of success with women skyrocket. The point here is that your body can compensate for an only average face and you can do very well regardless.
A pretty face alone I consider almost worthless. It is only effective in combination with an imposing body or good height. Sure, feel free to bring up Tom Cruise. Yet, even that guy in his prime certainly had a hard time competing against men who would literally overshadow him. A short man with an attractive face is invisible in a crowd of people. Also, I don’t think that an attractive face alone is arousing to women. The kind of good-looking guys women swoon over normally have a great face in combination with a great physique. Also, if the face was of paramount importance, the “badboy” stereotype would not exist at all. In fact, I think a good argument could be made that a face that is too aesthetically pleasing is not masculine. I’d have to think about this a bit more, though. It seems to be true for many of the men the mainstream media glorifies. For instance, I don’t think that Leonardo DiCaprio has a masculine face at all. Note that I’m not saying that he’s not attractive. However, I don’t think a guy with such a face can get the same visceral reaction that, say, a guy like Lisbon who has the face of a killer could (how are you doing, bud?). The latter does not have an attractive face, yet I’m convinced he could get the juices flowing more than Leonardo DiCaprio with his status and hundreds of millions in the bank. Note that we are talking about primal attraction here and not about resource extraction.
A tall guy with an imposing body will make people move out of the way whereas a soybody [This was a typo. I wanted to write “soyboy” but this is better!] with a pretty face won’t. I think this is also a key component of having “presence” as some people call it. The uplifting conclusion is that the least changeable part of the face-body-height triad, i.e. the face, is the least important. Furthermore, you don’t need to go to extremes in the gym either. You’ll probably do a lot better if you put on a bit of extra fat, assuming that you remain in a healthy body fat range, instead of trying to get a better definition of your abs, which would necessitate a significant drop in body fat. In order to maximize female arousal, your body is the most important part. Having the face of a killer would certainly help, though.
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I largely agree with this.
I will say that, while a muscular body might not help you much, having a skinny or fat body will definitely hurt you. Being too out of shape is a type of “anti-game” as you have termed it in other posts.
You need to look and feel strong. I remember once I was on a date with this solid 9, an absolute knockout Ukrainian girl with big tits and a great ass. It was going so-so until I felt her up in an elevator and she put her hand under my shirt. At the time, I didn’t have great muscle definition, but I was strong, and underneath the top layer of fat on my stomach one could feel that my abs were very large and hard. “Oh, wow, you’re not so skinny after all,” she said, and was visibly turned on.
Later that night she blew me while I fingered her in my car, and I’ve always thought that the feel she copped had something to do with it. Of course, that’s probably just my vanity, and she probably made up her mind to blow me in the first five minutes of the date.
Depends fully on your game niche and age.
I’d been killing it in the hipster-artsy circles when I was 21-25 as a skinny and quasi-intellectual pretty boy. I grew over this niche very soon after that, and it actually became more difficult in my late twenties when I had finally gained visible muscle and graduated into the ‘basic’ (and hotter) girl territory.
If I’d been a musclehead in my teens and early twenties (which was impossible due to my genetics), I am sure I would also get my share of poon, yet in a different niche. Once you switch from the college bubble to the working world, the situation deteriorates in every case, at least from my game buddies all of us felt the hit.
Is this a good way of approaching workout and pickup?
If you’re going to the beach, Then aesthetic workouts.if not, still aesthetic workouts but maybe don’t get so carried away with the cardio and eat a shitload?
That would be good practical advice, however, don’t overeat. You will look more imposing with a bit of extra body fat. However, this doesn’t work if you look doughy.
Thanks for the reply. Gaining weight is a bit of a chore with me. Super fast metabolism. So I’m not too worried about becoming doughy.
Agree that height is the supreme attraction indicator, but I have to disagree with this:
“Also, I don’t think that an attractive face alone is arousing to women. ”
I have heard girls commenting on guys’ face. One that stands out is this:
“I can’t forget his face/”
Said to me by a female friend who commented on my male friend.
It could well be that this was the politically correct version of her feelings. She wouldn’t publicly say that she can’t stop thinking about his monster dick or his godlike body, after all.
That is an interesting twist. Thanks
You know when I look back on what triggers my attraction to women, I notice that a nice face makes me want to date as a girlfriend, but a killer body arouses all kinds of carnal desires.
Do women work this way at all?
“I don’t think that Leonardo DiCaprio has a masculine face at all. Note that I’m not saying that he’s not attractive.”
Don’t you think men faces can be divided into category:
In Vietnam, we have at least 3 categories:
Manly face (đàn ông)
Pretty boy face (công tử)
Childlike face (trẻ con).
You can attract tons of women by having a pretty boy face.
What’s your take on this, Sleazy?
That’s an interesting distinction. In the West, adult men do not have a childlike face, so this doesn’t work. If all Vietnamese men fall into one of those three categories, then the equivalent of the childlike face for the West would be the average/nondescript face, i.e. a face that doesn’t stand out and is thus not memorable.
“A tall guy with an imposing body will make people move out of the way whereas a soybody [This was a typo. I wanted to write “soyboy” but this is better!] with a pretty face won’t. ”
This is, while generally true, no longer hold true for men who have been into fighting and have almost no fear of confronting other males. One of my Kazakh friend, who was only 5’7, had no problems getting into the face of any tall guy. In fact, I had seen that he never backed down from any taller guy. Note that this guy beat up 10 Uyghur guys in Xinjiang.
Such is the power of martial virtues.
I can see some truth to that. Having an aura of confidence makes it up, at least to a certain extent. As I mentioned elsewhere, I stared down muggers a couple of times (when no firearms were involved) in my life, stood my ground and showed myself willing to fight. They backed down.
Back when I did martial arts, our trainer once told us not to mind the bodybuilder and iron pumping types so much. Most dont know how to fight, and with some martial arts training you can quickly take them down if you know how and where to punch and kick them.
However, beware the short or skinny type who looks confident and does not back off… chances are above average that this guys has some fighting experience or training.
Interesting article.
I was thinking about something similar myself lately.
I think where you live in the world impacts things as well. I live in Canada and I would say Canadian women are very similar to American women as they’re very materialistic and shallow. Since the average height for men in Canada is only like 5’9, I think you’re that height or over, a good looking face will get you much further. Just my opinion, but I think the 5’10 guy with 9/10 face will do significantly better than the 6’3 guy with a 6/7 face, in North America, at least.
I was thinking the same about Leo before. When Leo was younger, and Brad Pitt as well, they both looked like girls, practically. Yet, like 99% of the female population would be dripping wet over them. Sometimes I wonder if women are more turned on by the “pretty boy” face than a super masculine one.
My perception is that Brad Pitt had a lot more roles that stressed his masculine appearance. He is not hypermasculine but compared to DiCaprio he comes across as very masculine.
So who is hypermasculine, Sleazy? Is it Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Also, I forgot to add the fourth category of faces: Asshole face. Look at Colin Farell. He is handsome and edgy, though his facial structure is not that hyper-masculine.
The thing with Western guys is that they can grow facial hairs, thus making them even more masculine. Leo was more masculine as he aged.
Very interesting topic. I’ve actually thought about my looks a lot lately. I mean do women actually want to “be with me” or do they want to be with me for one night? I don’t look like a serial killer. More like a gangster. I guess the closest comparison in film would be Crazy Joe Gallo from The Irishman. Fuck it…… whatever. I’m just going to give up on LTRs. I’m just going to accept that my looks make pussies wet but scares them at the same time.
Also, a lot of guys that are very masculine can be the most sensitive. Some female writers have actually tapped into this. We are very misunderstood, rare, and lonely motherfuckers.
You are that square-jawed guy from Portugal, if I recall correctly? I believe that several guys, Aaron included, advised you to go for the gangster look. Man, I would ki** to have your skull shape.
If ‘normal’ girls are scared by your looks, that is rather good, because these are the looks that will attract legit hotties… it’s true they don’t offer much of character or intelligence, but you should decide why you are in this game for…
That’s Lisbon – the chadcel from Portugal.
This term is just perfect. I love how everyone tells Lison that he could be a slayer, just based on the stories he shares of drunk club girls making out with him and his pictures. Yet, he prefers to listen to “FaceandLMS” who told him he can’t get laid and that it’s over. It’s quite bizarre. He has so much potential, yet he squanders it all.
Chadcel. Oh my god. Love it.
“I’m just going to give up on LTRs.”
How are your finances?
It’s generally pretty easy to convert fast encounters into relationships if you wanted to, btw. Have you been experiencing getting laid and then being ghosted afterwards, or are you just not having any luck period? I’m guessing the latter. Not trying to knock you, but I’ve found once you lay down some good D then she usually comes back for more and gets attached. I’ve given up on LTRs for a completely different reason, though your reasoning seems faulty.
It just seems like the girls that flirt with me are always slutty, taken etc.
https://ibb.co/T4KhtrK
https://ibb.co/CztR9Lv
Aleays drunk bud
You remind me of Jean Reno, my favorite French actor LOL
If i am hypermasculine, why i dont have sucess on tínder? Why everywhere i go women look at me with dirty looks of disgust?
Why faceandlms said im 4/10?
Ifni have visceral stuff why i didn’t have free sex?
“If i am hypermasculine, why i dont have sucess on tínder? Why everywhere i go women look at me with dirty looks of disgust?”
You have to be photogenic to be successful in online dating. I am a virgin so take that with a grain of salt. Guys like you should go to nightclubs. Guys like me will probably do well by attending university or go to bookstores. We each have certain scenes that we can do well.
“Why faceandlms said im 4/10?”
As Sleazy wrote, a handsome face alone won’t get you far. How tall are you? 6 ft? Your nose is a bit too big, but you have a drowsy eyes and lots of facial hairs. Think about it, you keep posing questions like “If I am not that handsome, why can’t I…”, yet little have you paused and acknowledge that “If I look like a killer, many club girls made out with me.”
You only selectively remember failures, not success. Your success is the dream of many guys, including short guys.
“Ifni have visceral stuff why i didn’t have free sex?”
You should work with Sleazy. He will give you suggestion on escalation. I am in the process of finding a temporary job in these crazy days. Once I get accepted, I will book a consultation with him as well.
Didn’t you say that you were willing to be a cuck in your Tinder profile? You would be better off saying that you were out on parole for murder and that your interests include rough sex, cocaine, and guns.
We have told you this before, but for the sake of new readers I will repeat:
1) Tinder – forger about it, Tinder is not representative of anything. In order to be succesful in tinder you must not only be hot but also have good photos, and be photogenic. You are not a 1%er in terms of looks (neither am I) so we will get very few matches if at all. I myself have not much problems picking up girls in real life, but I barely get any matches as well. Alek Novy posted about a similar experience, when he put photos of him at his best and still got close to nowhere. So again, do not take Tinder as a benchmark for anything.
2) that being said, in real life you probable have something with your attitude that scares girls away. No matter how hot you are, you can still drive people away by being stupid or obnoxious. I know it happened to me a lot when I was younger. The scowl we se on most of your photos does not help. I told you to book a session with Aaron to have him meet you in person, have you done that? I heard nothing about it.
@Old Anon
Good idea.
Yeah im mentally ill, i need a rehab from alcohol.
I don’t know how much you trust scientific studies but t-nation (https://www.t-nation.com/living/tip-70-percent-of-your-sexiness-comes-from-this) did a rundown of a study that showed that the “rated strength of a male body”(how strong you look) accounted for 70% of a male’s attractiveness. Sounds pretty interesting if true.
This sounds plausible. I view such studies with skepticism, though, as the sample size is normally not nearly big enough to make generalizable claims. This doesn’t mean that the results are wrong, obviously.
Well I will add another category: Hair.
I am neither tall nor (any longer) thin. But I am very blonde and white. That gets you 0.000 in North America but in Latin America it seems to be all that counts. What everyone wants is clear eyes and blonde hair. It’s like a hard dividing line.
As a blond latin american (my ancestors are german), I can attest that this is true.
In the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile, Uruguay) it does not work so well because there are a lot of descendants of northern europeans here. Although blond is not common, it is not rare either, and most people are white.
On the other hand, in the tropical areas, where people on average are more dark skinned…. Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Northern Brazil, Central America, I get orders of magnitude more success.
I had a german descended female friend who went to study to southeast Asia… i cannot remember which country now, it may have been singapore. She was not really hot, I would say average girl, but she was pale as ice and guys would practically worship her.
I’d add race to the mix of factors as well.
Another point is that while you can change your face with plastic surgery (think jawline implants) you cannot change your height. I say that height is the most important, and least changable, factor. In a similar anecdote to yours, I remember walking through a gym locker room past a man whose physique was extremely impressive (and I had no doubt he could easily beat the shit out of me) and yet since I was a good 6 inches taller I felt as if he were yielding to me.
I remember a FB post of a girl who had her picture taken with the actor Taylor Lautner. She and her friends were shocked and disgusted with the fact that he was only 5’9”. This is a guy whose entire acting career consisted of him showing off his impressive physique coupled with his pretty face.
Leonardo DiCaprio do have a masculine face.
why do i think that? the guy has among the highest FWHR in Hollywood which is a measure of masculinity
that is used in studies i was in the same camp in the past,but studied a bit about masculinity and it is systemic and very easily measurable by the face.
fwhr , chin ,jaw line.
i changed my opinion after alek novy started to talk about compact mid faces.
guess who also have high fwhr face in hollywood? tom cruise.
how about lisbon? hard to to say because his pics are to close to camera which distorts the mid face.
also i think you can be highly masculine the face and aesthetically pleasing i just think it is worthless without the masculinity in the bones.
Funny enough, I think a woman’s height will impact the importance of a man’s height/lack thereof as well.
I was thinking about this lately and I find shorter women tend to be more “choosy” over a man’s height than a taller woman. For example, you’ll often see shorter women (5’4 and under) with silly write-ups on their online dating profiles demanding a guy be at least 6 feet in order to message them.
Taller women, however, 5’10 and up, tend to be less “discriminative” about a man’s height. I find this especially true when a woman is over 6 feet. You’ll often see them with shorter men, sometimes significantly shorter.
I was thinking lately that about 5’10 is likely the “crossroads” for height in the dating world. If you’re a man then 5’10 is generally at least “tall enough.” Yeah, of course, some women may think it’s too short but if you’re 5’10 and have the “rest of the stuff” in place, your height is likely not holding you back. I think with women, however, once they’re over 5’10, it’s a big disadvantage for them.
This is also the experience of Alek Novy
Aaron,
“…your body can compensate for an only average face and you can do very well regardless”
“A pretty face alone I consider almost worthless. It is only effective in combination with an imposing body or good height.”
“I don’t think that an attractive face alone is arousing to women.”
“The face, is the least important.”
On this issue, I’m still perplexed. I have meet women and strippers who seemed to place a high premium on the face. For example, I met this one stripper. According to her, she won’t hook up with strip club customer (play for pay) unless he has a decent face despite having a muscular or well tone-body (let’s think of men’s health magazine). She told me that she has rejected a lot of customer who made big financial offers. I have also meet other women who were non-strippers who seem to gravitate to men who were good looking despite their shortcomings.
Second, would there be a difference between women who are in their 20’s who desire an aesthetic pleasing face relative to women who are in their 30’s plus? Or is this a matter or short-term vs long term mating preference?
Lastly, are women who are highly attractive more likely to be harsher when evaluating men’s looks than average looking women?
I’d say if a stripper is making so much money that she turns down customers based on superficialities, she is an exception that proves the rule. Also, there is the slight possibility that she told you this as part of her “game”. I know that you’re an attractive dude, so it sounds plausible to me that she’d flatter you for having the face of a Chad, regardless of whether it is true or not that she rejects buff guys who offer a lot of money to bang her.
I think this is more about short-term vs long-term mating preference than age. For long-term dating prospects, women are willing to accept men who are not as attractive as the Chads who pumped-and-dumped them. This is often by necessity because she’ll have learned that the kind of male 8, 9, or 10 she can get for a hook-up is not willing to settle down with her. There was a great rant by a supposed conservative female commentator called Tomi Lahren on this very topic: she goes on a massive anti-male rant because hot guys quickly move on after blowing their load.
The most unpleasant women I’ve met were average to below average in looks. More attractive women tend to generally be nicer, in my experience.
For me this was the first sign that something is wrong with PUA stories.
All of their stories were about how nasty and bitchy “hot women” were… But that didn’t make sense.
The kind of interactions they were describing are things you’d see with the 5 in a ton of makeup and tight skirt.
And then puas started recording videos, and this was confirmed.
In my experience, chunky big boned girls, with above average faces, have the absolute worst personalities.
https://youtu.be/420LtdfGSt8
I think Aaron need to re-write this post after watching this video
You should be better off by not consuming this kind of videos. You will become much more depressed.
Do you guys think it’s better for a pretty-boy type face to embrace it and appeal to the niche of women who prefer an aesthetically pleasing yet less masculine face? Or grow out beard and whatnot to look more masculine? I go back and forth.
Depends on what your goals and character are. If you feel that you belong and doing better in a niche rewarding pretty-bois, then you should go for the ambivalent yet more aesthetically pleasing look. If you want to be a part of the ‘general’ crowd and try to bang the basic bit**es, then you should go for a masculine look.
I guess you can’t be somewhere in between to try to maximise success in either of the niches, or both of them at the same time. Specialisation will still be required.
Just observe what works better for you in real life and go for that.
You’re right about the looking imposing with muscles thing – but for online dating surely it’s the opposite? Visible abs are a big differentiator when most women swipe left on almost everyone. All the ‘black pill’ posts of male models on tinder have slender, toned but ripped guys getting hundreds of matches, even if in the real world you can’t really show off your abs.
Yes, online game is one area where clearly visible abs are advantageous. My article focused on real-life interactions, though.