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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3397 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 2, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Something I’ve been pondering lately, is the seemingly paradoxical fact that women tend to find balding men quite unattractive while simultaneously finding greying very attractive.

Both are associated with aging and both are largely genetic, I believe, although balding more so, which might be part of the explanation.

The best I’ve been able to come up with, is that balding, since it is associated (and probably caused by) high levels of DHT, it can be an indicator of aggressiveness to the point where it is detrimental to the woman. Not that every balding man is aggressive, but I don’t think it is a coincidence, that some men will shave their head to seem more tough.

Women generally like other traits associated with higher levels of testosterone, but only up to a certain point, e.g. a study (which I can no longer seem to locate) found that especially large traps are found to be less attractive. These along with the deltoids have more androgen receptors, which makes them more susceptible to growth when testosterone is high.

These muscle groups are also good indicators of steroid use. The almost spherical shoulders some bodybuilders have are not achieved by hard work alone.

On the other hand, greying can happen from stress. I don’t think the exact mechanism is known, but I have a theory, that it is caused by the body’s ability to absorb micro nutrients being diminished during stress and the hair follicles not receiving enough of especially zinc and copper (pure speculation on my part). A man with greying hair has endured and survived stressful situations and his ability to do so is attractive.

It just seems strange, that two things that are somewhat closely related are perceived so differently. Also strange how the pattern with which they present are opposite with balding happening on top of the head and greying on the sides.

Edit: I belive this was the study I was thinking of:

Men’s Bodily Attractiveness: Muscles as Fitness Indicators. Notice the womens very low size preference of the trapezius in figure 1.

Men’s Bodily Attractiveness: Muscles as Fitness Indicators. Notice the womens very low size preference of the trapezius in figure 1.

This chart is useless without the supplementary material they used. I actually downloaded it and yes, the arrow points at Goldberg-like upper traps, not mid and lower traps that fill out your back nicely.

Losing one's hair for any reason other than male aging is definitely a sign of poor health in humans. Starving people lose their hair, poisoned people (chemo) lose their hair, deathly ill people lose their hair. The set "naturally bald people" is a little less healthy than the set "people with a full head of natural hair" because it contains those outliers. Idk which would have been the more common core example of baldness when humanity was evolving? When starvation is a definite possibility, then maybe losing one's hair because of anorexia is more common or more important than losing it because of genetics?

Alternatively it's a thing that differentially impacts individuals, based on facial features that make hairstyles more or less attractive, and there just aren't many men whose faces look good without hair, and vanishingly few who are flattered by hair on the sides only. Consider that most women look better with long hair, but a few look really good with pixie cuts. I can tell you I got a buzz cut a few summers ago, thought it would be easy, holy shit I look bad without hair.

To address the bald vs shaved question: it's one of intentionality and fashion. Making a deliberate decision is nearly always seen as more attractive than the default. Dressing down when everyone else is wearing a formal uniform is considered attractive, as is dressing up when everyone else looks sloppy. The guy who shaved his head made an affirmative choice, the guy who maintains two long tufts of hair is just letting nature do him like that.

Finally, bald guys don't really do that badly. They'd all do better with hair, but plenty get laid.

Something I’ve been pondering lately, is the seemingly paradoxical fact that women tend to find balding men quite unattractive while simultaneously finding greying very attractive.

There’s no real paradoxical fact here. I reject the premise that women find greying very attractive, especially young women. It’s more the case that women, even young women sometimes, can find men quite attractive in spite of greying.

Sure, girls and young women can have daddy issues—and middle-aged women can find silver foxes more palatable than they do young men. Daddy issues or not, it's interesting, amusing, and perhaps disturbing how many young women will automatically call you "daddy" in bed these days, without any prompting.

For the most part, young women prefer older men, but just by few years, albeit they’re far more flexible on that than they are on things like height and status. If you’re famous, an authority figure like her coach/teacher/professor, her boss at any job ranging from fastfood to PMC, or just tall/handsome, a girl/woman who’s supposedly “not into older guys” might suddenly find herself into an older guy. As opposed to men of all ages who generally prefer the youngest women possible all else equal, their datapoints pressed-up against the y-axis like barbarians sieging the wall.

What’s potentially more paradoxical is that women find a full-head of hair on men attractive—and there’s a large contingent that finds bald men attractive—but the in-between, the no-man's land of material balding such as this is universally despised by women. This is often rationalized as such men being too insecure to just shave it all off, thus being a repellant to women for Not Being Confident and Not Being Themselves.

However, this could easily be rationalized differently in a universe similar to ours, that such balding men are brave rebels, who proudly hang onto their few threads and are more secure in Being Themselves than the cowardly men who shaved it all off at the first sign of trouble. I posit that, in our universe, such balding men get pattern matched to suburban dads, basement dwellers, and anything in between and around the potentially radioactive zone. Such men are portrayed as boring, lame, and low-status in pop-culture and mainstream media; girl’s and women’s attraction are highly guided by social cues, so balding men get the shaft.

Obviously, as always, there is substantial Be Attractive, Don’t Be Attractive involved. There can also be some Russell Conjugation: You’re bald/balding, but Jason Statham rocks the shaved head.

These muscle groups are also good indicators of steroid use. The almost spherical shoulders some bodybuilders have are not achieved by hard work alone.

Can we please write like everyone is reading and we want them to be included, especially those from vulnerable/marginalised communities such as bodybuilding? If you talk to a Person of Bodybuilding, they’ll be happy to tell you that results like cannonball delts come not from steroids, but from eating clen, trening hard, constantly testing your limits, anavar giving up.

My personal belief is that traps are underrated rather than overrated for men looking to increase their attractiveness. As you mentioned, traps along with deltoids are androgenic signals, dominance traits that girls love. Traps are a noticeable distinguisher between lifters and DYELs, even when clothed. They’re like omnipresent evidence that you’re jacked. And men spend the majority of their time around women while clothed (presumably). As a man with solid traps or a woman accustomed to dating (a) men (man) with solid traps, men lacking in traps can look sort of weird, as if there’s a weird gap between their head and shoulders, their necks long like a giraffe or sauropod’s (“three-horns never play with long-necks” — Cera, a body-shamer before her time).

In that linked study, it’s important to note that it was conducted using just survey questions, with a stylized drawing of a man to identify muscles: “’How do you find the [MUSCLE] most attractive?’ using a Likert-type scale (7 = highly muscled to 1 = not muscled at all).” So no (experimentally manipulated) photos involved, no skin in the game (unlike online dating studies). On a funny side note, both male and female self-perceived attractiveness were positively correlated with the import placed upon male muscle size in general (Figure 6) and the correlation being… stronger… for women.

perhaps disturbing how many young women will automatically call you "daddy" in bed these days, without any prompting

It's always awkward having to stop in the middle and say "Sweetie, I don't know how to tell you this... but you're adopted"

Woody Allen/Errol Musk-maxxing, pretty based. There's even a TvTropes article on this, which includes an example of an Eva Green film where the (more extreme than usual) circumstances were reversed.

There’s no real paradoxical fact here. I reject the premise that women find greying very attractive, especially young women. It’s more the case that women, even young women sometimes, can find men quite attractive in spite of greying.

I might be overestimating how attractive women find it. It is mostly based on the response I have received, even from women in their early to mid twenties.

traps along with deltoids are androgenic signals, dominance traits that girls love.

They could love some dominance traits and not others. I think women generally select for a partner that has the visual cues signaling a capacity for violence, but simultaneously isn't overly aggressive. Some traits might signal too much aggression.

men lacking in traps can look kind of weird

Counterpoint: Large traps creates the illusion of narrower shoulders, women put a lot more emphasis on broad shoulders, so the larger traps makes the body seem less attractive overall.

it’s important to note that it was conducted using just survey questions, with a stylized drawing of a man to identify muscles

Good point. They do call it a preliminary study calling for more research.

They could love some dominance traits and not others. I think women generally select for a partner that has the visual cues signaling a capacity for violence, but simultaneously isn't overly aggressive. Some traits might signal too much aggression.

Maybe, maybe not, but we're already in just-so story territory over here. And overly could be doing a lot of work, where overly could vary tremendously depending on the particular woman and the point-in-time within her lifecycle. Undoubtedly there are some women who might get scared off by any muscularity beyond DYEL-status, but men must cast a wide-net if they want any semblance of consistent success, so counting on finding The One who loves you for your DYEL-physique and who you are may not be a prudent strategy.

Counterpoint: Large traps creates the illusion of narrower shoulders, women put a lot more emphasis on broad shoulders, so the larger traps makes the body seem less attractive overall.

I suppose that's theoretically possible, that large traps can function like a wide waist in distracting from the V-taper. However, that's like a zero'th world problem for almost all men, a bridge that they'd have to cross if and when they get there. In practice, I would say from casual empiricism, trap and shoulder development are positively correlated among male gym-goers. I basically see almost no men with what I would say are over-trained traps, or shoulders for that matter, relative to the rest of their physique. However, I regularly see those with what I would say are over-trained biceps and/or triceps relative to their physique.

Chicks are accustomed to squeezing arms to subconsciously or consciously feel-up bicep and tricep formidability, but traps are often a pleasant surprise for them upon squeezing: "wait... wtf kind of muscle is this?! teehee.”

Before you over think it, research suggests that women are far more diverse in their preferences in men than the obverse.

Men tend to be very consistent in their ratings of female attractiveness, with most men concurring in terms of what they like.

I believe the going hypothesis is something to with reducing intrasexual competition for mates for women, since they won't end up coveting each other's husbands all the time.

So you have women liking all sorts of niche and inane shit. Some of them like muscular dudes, some like dad bods, some of them are a fan of androgyny or twinks.

So you might have a small vocal minority gushing about silver foxes while the majority of women are merely meh in that regard.

Before you over think it, research suggests that women are far more diverse in their preferences in men than the obverse.

If I squint a bit I could see how this could be true in a vacuum, hence the concept of niche-maxxing for men on the red/purple/blackpill interwebs. However, in practice, female mate choice-copying leads to women wanting the same men, whether via OLD, social media, or meat-space social circle.

If I had to reconcile the two, I'd say that mate choice-copying works primarily when someone is already predisposed to like that kind of person to some degree.

So, sensitive theater kid gets a girlfriend and that bumps up his value the most for other women who have a degree of preference for theater kids.

research suggests that women are far more diverse in their preferences in men than the obverse.

????

This couldn't possibly align more poorly with all my experience.

There are men who are into cheerleaders, and homely nerds, and fit yoga/gym addicts, and obese landwhales, and MILFs and GILFs, and amputees, and big boobs and small boobs, and every race creed class and color... a quick perusal of any porn site will confirm this. Show me any woman on planet earth and I will find you a man who fetishizes exactly that type of woman.

Not to say that there isn't also a diversity in women's preferences. But suggesting that they exceed the diversity of men's preferences seems nonsensical on the face of it.

I linked the article, so you'll have to take it up with them haha

It doesn't seem so implausible to me, if I had to model it, it would look like women being more uncorrelated with each other, such that say, for any given man only 50% of women agree on his attractiveness. The other 50% have diverse interests.

On the other hand, perhaps 90% of men find the same cluster of women attractive, while the remainder are hog wild and will jerk it to anything that's not a platonic ideal (and maybe even that).

I don't think the study even bothered to test such an insane diversity in sexual preferences, but a few thousand people into midgets and amputees doesn't really disqualify the general idea.

I'm not particularly invested in this, but it at least doesn't seem glaringly incorrect to me!

Edit:

To clarify further, I envision women being into like 50% muscular classically handsome dudes, 30% twinks, 10% KPOP stars and so on. They don't splinter into millions of sub groups with vanishingly small fractions of the total.

On the other hand, 90% of men will fuck any woman who isn't morbidly obese (depending on how many beers they drink first), they might be guys who prefer ass over tits (or cultured thigh men like me), but they're not that picky at the end of the day. And then the rest are a fractal mess of everything else, shemales, midgets, ball busting and whatever nonsense can tingle the overactive horny receptors men are blessed with.

So you can with a straight face say that men are more consistent while simultaneously having far more varied tastes in the corners.

There’s a few different ways of looking at it.

We know that a certain X% of top males end up getting the majority of female sexual partners. So in actuality, women’s mate choices converge a good deal.

Physical attractiveness also matters less to women than it does to men. Social status is more relevant to women. Ask them about the axis they actually care about - “who’s more attractive, this rich CEO or this poor McDonald’s worker” - and their preferences will start converging very quickly.

Finally for what it’s worth, /r/bbw has 760k subscribers to /r/nsfw’s 4mil subscribers. Not an absurd difference.

While I broadly agree, I think it's an error to simply compare /r/bbw to a single subreddit.

There are at least dozens of large subs catering to the "vanilla" taste in female nudes, and a couple more ones for the chubby chasers too.

So the end comparison might be 1 million of the big lads to 20 million of the normal degenerates 🙏

But many of those subscribers are the same people.

More comments

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090626153511.htm

I'm not saying that men are a homogeneous bunch who like only one body type in women, of course there are ass men and boob guys.

What the research showed was that they were significantly less heterogenous than women.

I'll see if I can rustle up the study later.

Edit: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090626153511.htm

Young man with gray hair: cool, possibly interesting/different to the usual

Older man with gray hair: not so insecure or vain that he dyes it, more likely to be comfortable in himself

I think balding is mostly ugly to younger women since most women are primarily attracted to men around their age and balding is often a sign of aging in men. I don’t think it’s universally unattractive in older men from the perspective of older women, but preferences vary.

Conveys better grooming and attention to detail.

Bald is a choice. Balding is not

Symmetry is virtually always more attractive to everyone.

Just-so: partial baldness may have medical reasons other than androgenetic alopecia, like ringworm of the scalp, which indicate weak immune function. This isn't exactly an accurate method (male baldness ≈always has a patch stage) but we have no reason to assume high resolution of those innate priors.

That said, I have no idea whether women even had preference for fully bald men in the ancestral environment.

As a straight guy I just think it looks way better and more aesthetic. I don't think there's a gene somewhere that says fully bald > partially bald or that we need a direct evolutionary explanation for everything.

That's a good question. I can't think of a good reason.

I don't know if this is simply a just-so story so nobody should weight it too much, but the way I see it:

Good hair is a strong signal of sexual fitness, and baldness is selected against even if it's a largely benign condition. Baldness also typically occurs at ages well before greying, even though most men who go bald end up reproducing before it's an issue so the selection pressure isn't particularly strong.

I don't think women like fully grey hair, but salt and pepper in an otherwise attractive man is mildly attractive. I don't think a young man can simply dye his hair grey and get anything out of it. Nor do I think that a middle aged man will significantly benefit from it either unless he's already hot.

The way I see it, baldness is strictly negative, whereas greying is neutral to very mildly positive, until you're an old greybeard.

Now, on a slight tangent I think one of the best things a male doctor can do is go bald or graying, it immediately makes patients more comfortable since they associate age with experience and performance.

This is not the case, and no end of studies have shown that younger doctors in their 30s-40s are better clinicians than their older counterparts who are ossified in their ways and not as abreast of new updates

This is a moderate to small yet highly robust finding.

Wiki tells me I have an 80% chance of going bald eventually since my dad is, but for now I have a nice head of hair and likely will till I can lockdown some poor unfortunate women through false advertising haha, but if I do grey early-ish I won't really complain. Far easier to hide than balding is of course!

Good hair is a strong signal of sexual fitness, and baldness is selected against even if it's a largely benign condition.

But the question is why, though? I could be wrong, I don't think there is any evidence for bald men to have poorer health or being generally less capable compared to their unbald counterparts.

I don't think women like fully grey hair, but salt and pepper in an otherwise attractive man is mildly attractive. I don't think a young man can simply dye his hair grey and get anything out of it. Nor do I think that a middle aged man will significantly benefit from it either unless he's already hot.

I think you are right, that fully grey is probably not very attractive. And it might be the case that greying will make an already attractive man more attractive, but do nothing for a less attractive man.

This is not the case, and no end of studies have shown that younger doctors in their 30s-40s are better clinicians than their older counterparts who are ossified in their ways and not as abreast of new updates.

I think this will be true for almost any field, but in the case of clinicians, the confidence a patient has in their doctor is probably hard to account for, but could have a nonnegligible effect. Placebo and all that.

but if I do grey early-ish I won't really complain

I got my first grey hairs at age 20. I thought I would be fully grey before 30 and felt quite down over it for a while. I'm now in my early thirties and haven't gone fully grey, and since I'm blonde it hasn't been very noticeable. It is now at a point where people see it and comment on it, but considering I have multiple friends of the same age, who are balding, I feel lucky, that I have a full head of hair. And comments from women have been compliments, which is what prompted me to wonder about this.

Edit:

I am wrong. There does seem to be evidence that vertex balding is associated with higher risk of CHD and prostate cancer.

Hair is definitely a secondary sexual characteristic that acts as a signal of fitness.

Maintaining hair isn't the most metabolically expensive thing in the world, but it probably does cost something. Poor health often results in hair loss or weak, dry and frizzy hair. Acute or chronic stress can cause hair follicles to stop working and shed their hair, the medical term is telogen effluvium.

Perhaps baldness can be confused with hair loss from poor health and stress as well?

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