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So what do we find attractive? Stand up tall, smile, and tell a good story or joke. Shine and be happy to own such a wonderful spirit in a wonderful body. We aren't as visual as the media makes us out to be once we are past 19 years old. ... I've come to the conclusion that women pay far more attention to how other women look and dress, makeup, and look good to impress each other. The guy just thinks you are beautiful and wants to know you because you are, by the shear nature of your body and person, a beautiful and attractive being.

Lovely.

But unfortunately the evidence doesn't really support you. Taking hiring as a proxy for success, numerous studies have shown that more attractive people find it easier to get hired. [1] is fairly old, but a reasonable overview of the research.

I'm male (and over 30) and I've found I've been much more successful at a wider range of things since I started paying attention to what I looked like and what I wore.

[1] http://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/orsp_shahani-denning_spring03.pdf

Is it irrational to hire attractive people?

Clearly attractiveness is in parts a choice, how you dress, how you comport yourself, how healthy your body appears etc. Those choices signal positive qualities. For example dressing in a way that is perceived as attractive could signal social intelligence (being able to read society's unwritten rules about the semantics of clothes), having a body that appears healthy shows the ability to defer gratification, future orientation etc. All of which are qualities that may be helpful in various kinds of jobs.

We're talking about business here. The woman who didn't get the funding doesn't want you to find her attractive, she wants you to think she looks like a competent business person. This is how the doubt starts to arise around how we present ourselves.

You only have to receive so much unwanted sexual attention in business settings, and so much skepticism towards your abilities as a professional, before you start to realize how difficult it is to find a balance between well groomed and dressed, but not too attractive, but not too unattractive either because you look less credible if you're slobbish, but also you should look a bit cool and casual and start-upy, not too stuffy and businessy, and so on.

To compact the issue, as we're talking about women in tech here, we likely aren't spending hours on end in front of the mirror as everyone here is hyperbolizing. Finding the perfect outfit to land funding is a lot less fun for us than you seem to think.

I don't like posts like this. "Beautiful in your own way" doesn't cut it. Instead of telling women that men don't care about those things (which, for most men, is false), be honest about it and encourage them to find a way to circumvent that problem altogether. Trying to impress men with your looks in order to get places is an uphill battle that should be avoided altogether, but let's not be naive and pretend it doesn't exist.

Younger people are generally more attractive than older people, all else being equal. This is okay to say. It's not sexist. Don't encourage people, whatever their gender, to compete in that arena with people younger than them as if they're on equal footing. Tell them to accept that and find a way to get the attention they deserve without desperately driving down their self-esteem.

> Younger people are generally more attractive than older people, all else being equal. This is okay to say. It's not sexist.

It's not sexist.

It's just plain wrong.

> I'm a guy, and I find it disturbing how much weight some women put into their looks.

Some men also put lots of emphasis and thought into their looks. Why specify women, and why does it matter that you're a guy? Why are we even talking about what you and your friends like in women? Why steer it towards "men" vs "women" stereotypes?

> Some men also put lots of emphasis and thought into their looks.

A significantly greater percentage of women care about their looks than men.

Statistics? Study? Any proof to back that up?

Sorry, I never seen a guy spend over an hour putting on makeup in front of the mirror.

The point is not "specifying women" so much as specifying how many women think and responding to the very line written in the article. It was a post of support for what I think are words of wisdom.

I'm guessing you read the article, who's subject so happened to be about women, therefore, I don't see you can take my post as an attack when it was clearly complimentary to the spirit of the post.

Why talk about what my friends and I think? Why the hell not? Maybe people's perceptions are screwed up and it helps to set the record straight.

Don't you realize there's a catch-22 here? Women are expected to be well-dressed, made up, and smiling and at the same time people like you criticize women for vanity.

> I love this line. I'm a guy, and I find it disturbing how much weight some women put into their looks.

To be fair the trend seems to be for men to also take as much care about their looks, leveling a bit the field.

Some of my coworkers might take half an hour or more every morning to properly groom and prepare. Some took it as time they spent caring about themself, and the time in front of the mirror is less than the 2 hours you might spend in front of the TV at some other time. 'Wasting' time on looks seems to ignore that looks is not just some chore that is pushed on you by the society, looking good can be a hobby in itself.

I can understand the desire to not be stereotyped for being male as caring overly about looks, but the paragraph you quote from doesn't suggest this. The VCs or angels being met with don't have to be male. The suggestion is that caring about looks is low on the scale of factors that determine the success or failure of business decisions.

This article is very good—and probably takes particular care—to not frame any concerns in the context of how men consider women, only how women (and men) consider themselves.

Yes, this was the point I was attempting to hit. I interpreted her statement as misguided self-judgement based on poor perceptions. I was hoping to match the nuance, but I guess I didn't do as well.

I find it disturbing how much weight some women put into their looks

I can imagine a situation where the roles were reversed and you said "I find it disturbing how much weight some men put on their cars". These are neither good nor bad things (plumage-competing like this is baked into our DNA) but take it for what it is.