This week we will confront an unfortunate truth of online dating: no matter how much time you spend polishing your profile, honing your IM banter, and perfecting your message introductions, it’s your picture that matters most.
We’re going to look at how your photos affect both the messages you get and how successful your own outgoing messages are. We all know that beautiful people are more successful daters, but let’s quantify by exactly how much.
To illustrate the exact spectrum of looks we’re talking about here, and to put some human faces on our discussion, I want to introduce a few photos of real OkCupid users. Here are two women near the top of our range.
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And here are two rated in the middle.
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As for photos at the bottom of the curve, it didn’t feel right to write someone and say “can I use you to illustrate the concept of ugliness on my blog?” so you’ll just have to extrapolate.
The above featured users have graciously agreed to let me post their pictures, so please don’t make them regret it. Funnily enough, I had to write about a dozen beautiful female users before anyone would even get back to me. Life imitates blog!
Anyhow, I know attractiveness is far from a universal concept, but maybe keep these folks in mind as we go through the data.
We’ll start with a simple line chart. The information I’ll present in this post is not normalized because, as we’ll see, it’s interesting how men and women evaluate looks differently.
Our chart shows how men have rated women, on a scale from 0 to 5. The curve is symmetric and surprisingly charitable: a woman is as likely to be considered extremely ugly as extremely beautiful, and the majority of women have been rated about “medium.” The chart looks normalized, even though it’s just the unfiltered opinions of our male users.
Given the popular wisdom that Hollywood, the Internet, and Photoshop have created unrealistic expectations of how a woman should look, I found the fairness and, well, realism, of this gray arc kind of heartening.
Now let’s superimpose the distribution of actual messages guys have sent:
When it comes down to actually choosing targets, men choose the modelesque. Someone like roomtodance
2/3 of male messages go to the top 1/3 of women.
above gets nearly 5 times as many messages as a typical woman and 28 times as many messages as a woman at the low end of our curve. Site-wide, two-thirds of male messages go to the best-looking third of women. So basically, guys are fighting each other 2-for-1 for the absolute best-rated females, while plenty of potentially charming, even cute, girls go unwritten.
The medical term for this is male pattern madness.
The female equivalent of the above chart shows a different bias:
As you can see from the gray line, women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium. Very harsh. On the other hand, when it comes to actual messaging, women shift their expectations only just slightly ahead of the curve, which is a healthier pattern than guys’ pursuing the all-but-unattainable. But with the basic ratings so out-of-whack, the two curves together suggest some strange possibilities for the female thought process, the most salient of which is that the average-looking woman has convinced herself that the vast majority of males aren’t good enough for her, but she then goes right out and messages them anyway.
Just to illustrate that women are operating on a very different scale, here are just a few of the many, many guys we here in the office think are totally decent-looking, but that women have rated, in their occult way, as significantly less attractive than so-called “medium”:
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Females of OkCupid, we site founders say to you: ouch! Paradoxically, it seems it’s women, not men, who have unrealistic standards for the “average” member of the opposite sex.
Finally, I just want to combine the two charts to emphasize how much fuller the inboxes of good-looking people get. I have scaled this graph to show multiples of messages sent to the lowest-rated people. For instance, the most attractive guys get 11× the messages the lowest-rated do. The medium-rated get about 4×.
This graph also dramatically illustrates just how much more important a woman’s looks are than a guy’s.
Now let’s take a look at how senders’ and recipients’ attractivenesses affect reply rates, not just the number of messages sent.
As you’d expect, more attractive people get more replies. And since they themselves get so many more messages than everyone else, they write back much less frequently. Here’s the graph for female senders, plotted in evenly-spaced “attractiveness groups.”
And here’s the one for male senders.
One interesting thing seems to be going on here: when the best-looking men write the worst-looking women, taste the rainbow,
of self-esteem issues their message success rate takes a big hit. The knee-jerk response would be to somehow chalk it up to hunky spammers, but we very carefully control for that in these articles, and in any event why would better-looking girls be drastically more susceptible to it? It seems to be some kind of self-confidence thing.
As we did before, I’m going to consolidate the line charts to show just how your attractiveness changes how often your messages get responses.
This post has been the preamble to the larger discussion of “what makes a good profile?” We’ve spent a lot of time on OkTrends looking at messages, and since your profile is the other important place you express yourself, we thought it deserved the same treatment.
I wanted to address physical attractiveness right at the start, because obviously it’s a huge factor in how successful your profile is. In the upcoming posts in this series, we’re going to control for attractiveness, so that we can deliver real and useful advice for all the non-models out there.
We’ll look at, among other things: what makes a good picture (is it taken outside? inside? is it full-body? a head-shot? with your pet snake? what?), what kinds of self-presentation will get you the most messages (jokey? flirty? all business?), and how much profile information is too much. Should be good.
I hope you will do another follow-up post to this on gay men and lesbians. I’d be interested to know how the patterns compare.
Maybe it’s just me, but when I get the Quiver Match emails that try to bamboozle me into viewing a ton of profiles to find the one needle in a haystack, I get so annoyed at the blatant bait and switch that I just rate every guy one star. Not necessarily because they are medium or unattractive but because the primary photo they use is, if you actually click through the rest, clearly misleading. It’s either old, or taken at an unnatural angle OR REALLY, REALLY OLD. So, I rate these guys one star not because of their looks but because I felt like those few seconds of time I took were wasted. I write about dating and relationships for a living and I’ve reviewed more online dating profiles than I can count. Women, if they’re going to post older pics, post a series of older pics so you don’t know that they currently look different. Men will post a photo of them on vacation 3-5 years ago and use it as their main photo, then bury the recent photos of them 20-30 pounds heavier or clearly showing their real age.
I wouldn’t base anything on the rating system. Women factor in the guy’s character and his pic/profile. Men just rate base on looks.
It’s long been known that men are more visual when gauging a woman’s attractiveness and women tend to rate a man on more than just looks. At an unconscious level men are attracted to women who look fertile — i.e., sexy by whatever standards are in vogue. Women tend to be attracted to men who look like they can be providers — i.e., powerful, strong, etc.
I don’t need a woman to be beautiful, but I do need some initial attraction. She can be in that 5-6 range. I won’t message a woman like that if she doesn’t have an interesting profile, though. And some of the 9-10s I won’t bother with. I know they get a ton of email and it seems pointless.
You can’t win if you don’t play.
While these results are certainly thought provoking, they only are relative in white male/white female interactions. They do not take into account the results of non-white female/non-white male, gay, or interracial interactions.
That said, as a gay black male who is described by most as “top range”, my success rate on gay social sites has been inconsistent with and incongruent with my alleged attractiveness.
Of course, this is largely because gay social networking sites are made up primarily of WHITE men, and white men, as these studies have shown, whether they be gay or straight, overwhelmingly prefer their own. Furthermore, the gay community tends to embrace Eurocentric beauty ideals even moreso than the straight community, so even non-white gay men will pass up other non-white gay men in favor of white men.
So when expanding these results beyond intraracial white interaction, one can see how it’s not just LOOKS alone which ultimately determine how successful one will be on social dating sites. Personally, from my experiences, observations, and experiments, I would allege that RACE and ETHNICITY plays a far greater role than sheer attractiveness, especially when the interaction is interracial.
Sound confusing? It is.
Interesting study and results, but very limited in scope.
I found it interesting that guys are more likely to message a “4” than a “5”, I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one!
It’s not that I think that a “5” is out of my league (I like to think I have a lot to bring to the table), however one starts to make bad assumptions about the “5”‘s.
In your example photographs, the women have photos of substantially better QUALITY. My take-away is that men post really really horrible photographs on their ads, and if a guy wants a better response rate he should ask his photographer friend(s) for some quality photographs.
I think this is a good place to mention that if your looks keep you from getting the romance you desire IRL then looking online is not a viable option.
Perhaps it would be smart if OKC gave users a reality check. It would be nice to see what our own average rating is. Of course it would be confidential, nobody else could see what somebody’s rating was except the user that it applies to. seeing as OKC likes graphs and charts so much they could be given a bell curve indicating where all the votes are. Users could then get an idea of how others have voted them, and use that in realistically gauging who they have a better chance with. In fact, to make rating more effective we could have two separate voting categories for appearance as well as profile, to give people an idea what they aught to work on.
It sounds harsh, but I think it makes more sense than trying to gauge hypothetical “compatibility.” Saying “Oh, hey, I’m a 7 and she’s an 8″ seems like it will get people a lot further than “look! we both are liberal! I bet that goddess will totally love my desperate ass!”
like many other users have said, i only rate 4 or 5 star ppl. if i think someone is below that, then whats the point in rating them? i just click “cant tell” and/or “hide” if i think they’re a 3 or less.
but now i’m in a relationship and don’t rate ANYONE. that would be SKANKY
@Heina
I’m the guy you’re talking about, and feel a strange need to defend myself (and point out that, contrary to how my picture looks in comparison to the others, I’m not really a midget).
My profile does say that I “reply selectively”, which I hate… but I just don’t use the site that much. I think that’s something you can’t really take into account in this- I’m sure I’m not the only user that doesn’t “keep up” to the extent that others do. Maybe it depends what you’re actually on the site for? I wouldn’t describe myself as actively searching for a partner, but I’m certainly open to the idea (hence being on here)- I would imagine that in comparison to someone that is actively putting themselves out there I look like the laziest man alive. That doesn’t/shouldn’t reflect upon anyone who messages me, though!
Differential is important. You rarely see people in a romantic relationship that are more than 2 standard deviations of hotness apart. People, regardless of the sexual orientation, want to be proud of their significant other and the most common instance is based on looks. I’ve never heard, “Hey my g/f is totally awesome at quantum physics and abstract math.” In my experience guys are way more likely to say, “This chick I talked to last night was freaking hot.” Then he continues to describe her physical attributes and maybe some personality traits.
I’m not about to dive into a relationship with a girl that I’m not physically attracted to. When it comes to my friends I still like to hang out with a dominantly attractive crowd. Chemistry can make up for a lot. The last girl I met was completely up my alley when it came to her personality but her voice was masculine, she wasn’t athletic at all and the hotness differential was less than 2. Everything doesn’t have to click but everyone has some standards that must be met before they consider initiating conversation much less a short/long term relationship or date.
My advice, go for someone you think is good looking and within your hotness reach and is compatible with you.
Is it possible that women view of attractive men are more diverse then men? I think that might be a factor in the oddness. I mean i know as a female that my physical taste in men tend to be drastically different then my friends.
LOL! On the one hand there is at least moderately scientific proof of what I’ve long thought to be true. (and actually I would suggest a second analysis of “good looking” women data on a ‘matches societal features’ rating scale) On the other hand, I agree with the *ouch* for the guys. However, is it suprising a bunch of Math majors from Harvard got less than *Medium*. I’d prefer my math majors come from MIT.
I also agree with the comment that noted only part of attractiveness is genetic. Taking care of yourself (and, well, loving yourself) and having an attractive personality are a part of it.
Keep up the good work.
From an “ugly”. Heh.
I think several previous commenters make excellent points, re women’s ratings of men: I don’t think it’s that women are too picky so much as it’s that
1) Women have a much broader range of what we find attractive, as far as “types” go. Sure, a lot of men have preferences as far as things like hair colour or whatever are concerned, but most guys who prefer blondes wouldn’t kick a hot brunette out of bed and vice-versa, and their tastes regarding height, build, facial structure, etc. tend to be startlingly similar. Women, on the other hand, can be VERY different in what we find attractive, and lots of us would in fact have a very hard time being interested in someone who doesn’t fit the bill. My mom thinks Brad Pitt is the hottest thing ever, I think he’s so-so; I think Cillian Murphy is gorgeous, but my mom thinks he looks like a girl. Etc.
2) Women tend to post better photos and put more care into their appearance in general. I doubt there are more than a handful of photos on the site of women in terrible lighting, wearing no makeup, with their hair in a rat’s nest (or with a baseball hat hastily shoved over it to attempt to disguise the fact that it’s unwashed/unbrushed/missing), wearing their dumpiest, sloppiest around-the-house clothes, but there are TONS of photos of men in a similar state on the site. A lot of guys seem to be under the impression that, since women are supposedly less visual and care less about looks, they should make no effort whatsoever to make themselves look more appealing to the opposite sex. Wrong! One reason for this is also…
2b) Women don’t hold men to higher standards – we hold EVERYONE to higher standards, because we are held to higher standards ourselves. As a general rule, we are our own worst critics, despite the grousing by men in this thread about women thinking we can be ugly and yet date the hottest men. (One would think the fact that the lowest-ranked women don’t respond to messages from the highest-ranked men would make it obvious that that’s not the case, anyway.) Even the biggest anarcho-vegan-circus-hippie women I know, who refuse to wear makeup or shave their legs, still make an effort to keep themselves clean, take care of their skin, wear flattering clothes, etc. It’s hard to not be a little bothered by the fact that women are expected to make all this effort when plenty of guys can’t be bothered to put on a shirt with no visible stains, holes, or beer logos, you know? I suspect this may have a place in the ratings as well. “Might clean up okay, but clearly doesn’t care enough to try…next!”
On a somewhat different note, I am depressed, although certainly not surprised, by the outpouring of “this just proves how shallow/snobby/unrealistic women are” posts by men on this thread. Hey, guys, do you think that maybe the real reason women aren’t interested in you isn’t that you’re not good-looking enough, but because seething, barely-concealed resentment of women as a gender is not attractive? Just a thought.
breastfeeding got me here.
xoxoxo – JON
Oh, and – I think Catherine has a good point. I am a fairly attractive woman and I don’t reply to most messages sent to me not because I’m a snob who thinks most men aren’t attractive enough for her, but because a lot of the messages are creepy, rude, or from guys with low match scores who clearly didn’t read anything in my profile and are only contacting me because my “photos are hot.” The fact that I also don’t receive very many messages from men I personally find attractive doesn’t help, but even a hot guy who was totally my type sending a message snottily insulting my profile (“you seem like a bitch, but I thought I would try anyway” is an actual quote from a message I’ve received. Dear sir, were you raised in a barn?) or obviously just looking to hook up wouldn’t get a response. Sorry, guys.
Mark: “At an unconscious level men are attracted to women who look fertile — i.e., sexy by whatever standards are in vogue. Women tend to be attracted to men who look like they can be providers — i.e., powerful, strong, etc.”
This is a fallacy, and does not have any concrete archaeological or biological support. Although many assume the cultural popular idea of “man the hunter woman the gatherer,” this is an ethno and tempocentric view simply unsupported through any archaeological data. I find the information you present as common sense highly offensive. It seems to equate women to a natural propensity toward prostitution, seeking the support of a pimp or looking for a John to support them economically. It also debases men, implying that they are intrinsically more superficial than women, and more controlled by their sex drive.
Please do not perpetuate these fallacious perspectives by blindly reciting them.
Wow, so this is what you guys do at work! Fascinating stuff. I don’t think any of the other dating sites care this much about data mining. Maybe they should…
Hey what about HEIGHT & age study???
I agree “old dude”, or a study on how to actually attract women? >(
how do i emote on here? also what styles attract the ladies, for example, ie hippity-hop, cowboy, GQ, nude?
Very interesting, this does seem to confirm the idea that women have much higher standards, even if they’re not “in the ballpark” that they’re aiming to pull a man from.
Pot calling the kettle black? Why yes.
I’m believing more strongly as of late that women that are on dating sites are far more judgemental and… well.. out of their minds than their real life counterparts. While the idea of finding women on dating sites sounds good, the women that seemto occupy these sites are more confident in the idea that with so many men online, the perfect one will surface, and normal men are passed on more often.
Well that fucking settles it…. I’ve been thinking of getting plastic surgery for a while and hell with it, I’m just going to go ahead and get those precedures done. I’ve been denied love and affection because of my shitty looks for my entire life and I’m sooo tired of it. They want guys to look like models? Fine, I’ll do it. I’ll do the surgies and if I need to take it further, I got a buddy who can hook me up with some ‘roids. Screw the risks…I don’t care. If all THAT don’t work, I’m blowing my own goddamn head clean off with a fucking shotgun and I’m dead fucking serious!! I WILL do ANY DIRTY TRICK in the book necessary to join the ranks of men women find attractive because I simply cannot live like this anymore. This is it…no more rejections, no more pain. This is my last stand. Reading this shit is just the final straw that has broken the camel’s back.
Back in the day there used to be separate star ratings for looks and personality, then later that was combined into a single star rating (so people’s feelings wouldn’t get hurt?)–I wonder if the graphs in this article were based on ratings with the earlier version of the rating system or the current one?
What I don’t get is the number of guys who seem to think they are “owed” a response, even if that response is no.
You don’t want to hear, “Thanks but no thanks.” You don’t want to hear, “I’m sorry,but I don’t think we have enough in common.”
You want a response and you want that response to be yes.
And if I’m polite enough (or foolish enough) to send out one of the two above responses, then I get either an asshole response, or Mr. Your No Thanks Is Just the Beginning of Our Bargaining.
If I’m reading someone’s profile and they have that pathetic line, “Aw, at least send a response, even if it’s no” I automatically hit alt + back arrow. Why? Because it’s fucking passive aggressive.
You aren’t entitled to an email from a woman, You aren’t entitled to time.
Not everyone is going to respond to your interest. Get over it. In life, as in online dating, that’s how it works. My silence is your response, buddy.
No offense C as much as women say they are all about a broader “type” Even when they run into these broader types, they usually dont message them back. As they are just as shallow as anyone else with a sex organ. Physical attraction is a key part of our mating. Its the first thing we see of each other. And it plays a part in sex as well. Not trying to be shallow, but if i dont find a girl attractive. Im not capable of sleeping with her. And Im sure that is the same for women to a point. SOME just like men are happy to sleep with anything. But back to my point. Women like to claim they are interested in more then the rude jerks that message them. Yet theyll quickly choose them over the “broader” type every day of the week. Why? cause while they dont like to be treated like crap. They do enjoy a bad boy that gives them a false sense of challenge. That they can change that individual to better fit them. Same goes for pretty boys that have girls swooning over them…..examples? boy bands like nsync, backstreet boys and movies like twilight……………….
Wow, women is some harsh bishes. Thank god I’m queer.
thanks for proving what many of us knew.. with actual numbers.
u guys rock!
Are the distributions “M/F Messaging & F/M Attractiveness” the same for each group?
Interesting data. However, consider the human angle…. the girls in the photos rated “hot” clearly find attractiveness to be something heavily gauged by the physical. Look at them: tilted head, flippant slightly out of conrol / in their face hair, staring directly in the camera to command attention. yet the girls rated “medium” are not displaying their flirty – ‘come hither’ side… they are showing a human side: laughing, eyes closed, slightly embarassed to be taking this picture. See… this is the problem with studies; they inevitably are designed to promote the pre-determined belief of the “studier”. Yet, i would guarantee that if we had all four of those women in one room… the two at the bottom would be much “hotter” than the two at the top if you had to have a conversation with them for more than 3 minutes. I may be wrong, of course, but the reality is… the two at the top are promoting what THEY consider to be what attracts men or, in fact, that they want to attract me. The two in the middle are promoting their “real-ness”; either to attract intelligent or humble men, as a statement of their self image, or simply because they value MORE than looks. PS – I am generally considered very nice looking by women…so this isnt a defensive post
It’s an intellectual and rhetorical discussion. Big words… i know.
I find these studies really interesting. Thanks for sharing
Jmans, could you explain to me how the results confirm this? Because I’m not seeing it. In fact, it looks like it’s the other way around… what would the results look like if women were “fairer”? Would they:
a)contact almost exclusively the top third of men
b) rate the vast majority of the men on this site 4 or 5 star, or at least 3 star
c) among the top third, reply to all men equally, regardless of their attractiveness rating, even when they know that their own attractiveness is the reason for their high volume of messages — if you choose based on that metric, you’ve got to accept being rejected on the same basis, turnabout being fair play, and all that.
or
d) none of the above/fill in the blank?
I have been a member for years, looking at these stats pretty much summed up what I knew all along. People are shallow even when they do not mean to be. I know I do not want a woman who looks like me or someone I am not physically attracted to. Having a small novel for a profile does not make one more interesting or attractive even if they are.
What are the stats on age? height? race? orientation? distance? picture profiles versus non-picture profiles? does word count per profile make a difference?
I know the reality of these posted stats as I am pushing it to get 5 messages/IMs/replies per year let alone 5 views per week. I’ll have to check my e-feelings and accept that I am fugly by OKC user standards.
The women on here are quick to judge men as shallow, but this study is missing one important element, a women’s perception of a man’s success/money. Measure that and watch how the charts change. I bet a good looking 30 year old guy who makes less than 21k a year gets far less responses that an average/non-attractive guy that makes over a 50-100k a year.
I also suspect that gay and lesbian trends on this site will be different (to the point of statistical significance) from the overall trends. As a lesbian, I would posit that the difference will, in part, be attributable to society’s concept of beauty being applied strictly to femmes, whereas in the lesbian community, androgynous and butch women are often considered attractive. Another part of it is that, in general, gay and lesbian couples are searching for a different relationship dynamic than their straight counterparts (which, from my understanding, is why eharmony.com doesn’t even try to couple queer people, because queers don’t fit into their algorithm). Keeping that distinction in mind, it would be enlightening to consider the gay and lesbian communities separately from the straight community when studying ideas of attractiveness both in photos and in presentation on profiles. I’m interested to see what you uncover!
One thing overlooked in the article was the assumption that any message sent was pleasant. (Maybe there’s a control for that but it wasn’t mentioned.) Also, there’s no mention of the ratio between messages sent & messages received — isn’t it more rare in general for women to make first contact?
I couldn’t tell from the article whether it’s about ALL messages or just the first contact, and how that ties into total messages in the particular conversation. I realize it’s hard to include all the possibilities in a brief article.
I merely want to echo what many of the other women on this thread having been saying about men’s looks. Women do have very different ideas of what’s attractive in a man. I hear other women talk about how hot Brad Pitt is, but I don’t care for him. I also don’t go for McSteamy or Matthew McConaughey. I do have a very strong personal preference for men with beards, dark hair, and/or very fluffy/curly/long hair. I also like men with large noses. Many of the women I know have completely different preferences and find many of the men I think are hot to be very unattractive. For example, I would not find the two men who you put as examples of “the top of your range” to be very attractive personally, because they are too clean cut and boyish in their looks. Two of the men in your “less than medium” line up, I think are MORE attractive than average.
There is also the point that a lot of men post bad pictures of themselves. Half the time I can’t tell WHAT a really guy really looks like, if he’s attractive or not, because the lighting is bad, it’s blurry, or he’s far away in the picture and I can’t see his face. Or it’s a group picture, and I don’t know who I’m supposed to be looking at. Occasionally they even wear costumes or masks. Seriously, wearing a costume in your profile picture? Bad idea. I don’t care how funny it is if I can’t see what you look like.
Also, if a guy comes across as a douchebag, I will rate him lower even if I might otherwise have found him attractive. That of course, is the real key. If a guy is attractive but is too cocky or appears to have a disdain for women, or seems to feel he is entitled to a girlfriend (which I find to be a common affliction) he’s a douchebag and won’t get a second glance.
I am a ‘less attractive’ woman, I suppose, and am messaged semi-frequently by average- to better-than-average-looking men. I think that this happens mostly because they message me after only having seen one picture – my profile picture, which is unique in my photo history in that it makes me look better than I do in real life. I usually do not respond to these messagers because I look at their profile and see that their personality does not mesh well with mine. I prefer tall geeky boys with progressive philosophies and kind hearts; sadly, the guys who tend to message me first are ones who haven’t even read my profile and are probably what you’d call attractive ‘average joes.’ I don’t take people to bed whom do not tickle me intellectually, and bed would be all those guys are good for – to me. So I’m not messaging them because I think that they’re too good for me. I don’t message those ‘desirable’ fellows because they’re just not desirable to me.
Lewis – I was not saying that women don’t care about looks. Of course we do. But it’s much harder to pinpoint what one given woman will find attractive in a man than it is to guess what one given man will find attractive in a woman. Some women like very muscular men, some like very skinny; some love facial hair, some hate it; some really prefer guys with longer hair, others find them very unattractive. (Men with long hair remind me personally of my little brother, which I have a hard time finding alluring, for some crazy reason.) Culture/subculture also, I suspect, makes more of a difference to women than to men – I find fratboys and guys who align themselves with that sort of culture completely repulsive, but lots of girls do like that type and would be disgusted by the geeky, bookish guys I prefer. Most of the men I know have had girlfriends of all different heights, body types (though a basic requirement for a woman’s body to be not fat, yet not too skinny is common to almost all men), hair colors, interests, etc. But with women, their boyfriends tend to fit a pattern. Every guy my best friend has ever dated has been short, very skinny, big-nosed and dark-haired, with a strong interest in music and occult art, for instance. Most women probably don’t stay that close to type, but we tend to want to stay at least sort of close to our preference. So even if a guy is basically attractive, this is no guarantee that he will fit a specific woman’s type, and therefore she might give him a low rating, which does not reflect him actually being ugly – just not someone she would be interested in. Does that make sense?
Also, LOL to your citing boybands and Twilight. Seriously? I don’t know any adult women who are genuinely into guys like that – most women I know over 16 who read Twilight like it because it’s so hilariously bad. If you actually run into a grown woman who expects a guy to be like Edward Cullen, that’s a pretty serious case of arrested development, not a reflection of what normal women who are finished with puberty like. Jeez.
eli – BRAVO. For all that men claim that “all they want is a response, even if it’s no”…that’s bull. In my experience, ANY negative response, no matter how polite and gently-worded, is enough to get someone either a) replying back to say what a stupid bitch you are anyway, or b) replying back bugging you to reconsider. Any even sort of attractive woman on the site figures this out early on, which is why women usually only respond to people we’re interested in. Sorry, guys – if so many of you weren’t so bad at taking no for an answer, it might not have to be that way, but it is. Women do not owe you their attention.
Someone might have said this already; but what I miss in the numbers above is statistics for who men respectively women write to compared to the their *own* attractiveness score, not just that of the recipient.
@ Rock4TheLord
“You can’t win if you don’t play”
Why play at all? Love isn’t a game.
Interesting article. Now I want to see some more statistics based on other factors such as height, race, orientation, distance, income, education, etc.
Hell, use me for an unattractive woman. I think that would be great fun. Poor old Quasimodo rabbit_run.
Regarding this statement: Females of OkCupid, we site founders say to you: ouch! Paradoxically, it seems it’s women, not men, who have unrealistic standards for the “average” member of the opposite sex.
Women’s self-esteem issues are not to be blamed on men. It is our own fault and our own insecurities that create this vicious cycle of judgement on our physical characteristics. It is not men that judge us, but each other.
Maybe it is because we want to be the ‘most fit’ for the Alpha male, but whatever it is, it has caused a lot of women to make decisions based upon their immediate ‘look’ and not take in regards long term consequences. Anorexia, Bulimia, liposuction, boob jobs, face lifts, nose jobs…etc. All so they can be better than the other girl.
It’s sad really.
Ghostttt is gorgeous, and should promptly be signed to a long term movie contract with MGM. Now on to me: I just wish I could find a tempermental 19 year old guy who bicycles constantly, and always makes me go with him- if he’s jealous and horny all the time- that’s a major plus; no other requirements necessary!!!!
“it seems it’s women, not men, who have unrealistic standards for the ‘average’ member of the opposite sex.”
— Thank you, come again.
I don’t rate men (or women for that matter) based on their pictures alone. I read their profile, and then rate them. That means that I am considering them attractive or not based on their profile personality as well as their looks, and none of these statistics seem to take into account the possibility of that.
Looks aren’t everything, at all.
“The women on here are quick to judge men as shallow, but this study is missing one important element, a women’s perception of a man’s success/money.”
I don’t think anyone expects: (wow, I’m in a lettering state of mind today)
a) men in particular/people in general on a free site to be rolling in dough… generally, when it comes to free vs. pay, users are making a series of trade-offs. One of those trade-offs is the more moneyed/successful/commitment-minded potential dates at paysites for younger/more physically attractive/less “serious” dates at free sites. I came here originally because I WANTED a young guy with negligible bank, an equal with similar life experiences. Overall, people that come here are probably more physically shallow than their paysite counterparts, but they’re also probably less mercenary.
b) stated income to be a reliable indicator of said income when easily verifiable things that directly impact attractiveness like height are often… intentionally misstated. I assume anyone with a high amount of money stated on their profile is a liar or a jokester (because of c and the admittedly blind American faith in a meritocracy, I assumed that a really wealthy person wouldn’t be that dumb) I had half a mind to fabricate an income level myself purely for Ss and Gs.
c) for the vast majority of people, especially those on either tail end of the income bell curve, to fill the income portion out at all. I mean, come on. If I had money, I wouldn’t tell the world through my profile for fear of being that “Oh, yeah, I left my JAG running” douchebag on one end, and a target of every scammer online, foreign and domestic, on the other. If rich guys do use their income level as leverage, it would be part of the message content and not within the “The Skinny” portion of the profile, which would be the way OKC would discern the income distribution of users and how it would impact reply rate. It would be nigh impossible to track within the body of the profile, because it gets into how people subtly display SES through language, hobbies, residential location, interests, etc, etc. There would be a cluster of indicators that delineate class differences that I’m not sure OKC can tabulate — prove me wrong, though, guys! I’ll be hella impressed.
p.s. When I see guys complaining that women hate nice guys and only like “bad boys” who are a challenge, or men who are in boybands, etc., that’s usually a pretty strong indicator that a guy is going off media-based assumptions of what women want, rather than actually talking to women. This frequently indicates a lack of close female friends and a general difficulty relating to women as people, rather than simply seeing them through the lens of “potential girlfriend/sex partner.” This, to me, is a very bad sign. And when a guy has that attitude, it’s probably noticed and seen as a bad sign by other women as well. Just saying.
…apparently beauty isn’t in the eyes of the beholder anymore.