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Times are changing. Increasing emphasis is being placed on men's physical appearances and men are responding accordingly (by buying cosmetics to cover their unsightly blemishes, apparently).

But, sometimes I wonder if we don't overestimate how much emphasis women are placing on looks.

The important question then is exactly *how much* physical appearances matter to women nowadays. Are average and below average men doomed to struggle with women? Does the modern woman only care about looks? Has natural selection genetically wired women to seek only good looking men?

Obviously, these are very important questions. If looks are all that matters then we may just be wasting our time... our genes have already dictated whether we will be successful with women.

I recently took a survey to see how much men thought that women cared about looks. The results were surprising. On average, you guys thought that, on a scale of 1-10 (10 being looks are all women care about, 1 being they don't care about looks much at all), looks were a 5.74 of importance to women.

As you can see, while the average score may have been around 6, the majority of scores were 7's and 8's. These are frighteningly high statistics to men of humble appearance.

If I were to vote on this poll I would give it a 3. For the remainder of this article I would like to explain why. If you disagree with me, or if you voted higher than a 3, it may do you good to give this a careful read through. Believing that looks are all that matters (or that they are very, very important) is disempowering and worse, it's just not true.

Let's look at natural selection first as this will provide a nice foundation. Back in the days of "cavemen" looks were a non issue in comparison with today. Life was about survival. Women were much less likely to care about the subtleties of your facial features and much more likely to care about your social ranking, your sexual potency, your ability to provide food, shelter, and other necessities for any offspring, and your ability to keep her and her offspring safe. In this time and environment, women checked to see if you looked healthy and that was the extent of it. Other factors were much, much more important than looks.

But, at noted earlier, times have changed. Survival, for most of the world, has become a non issue... yet the genetic wiring stays the same.

There was an interesting survey done where women were asked, on a scale of 1-7 (7 being "very willing" and 1 being "not at all"), how likely they would be to marry someone who was not good-looking. Their average score was 4.42 which, you will notice is significantly closer to "very willing" than "not at all."

To put things into perspective, a woman was less likely to want to marry a man with less education (4.08), who was of a different race (2.84), who was of a different religion (4.31), who already had children (3.11), who would earn less than them (3.76), who was younger by 5 or more years (2.80), and who was not likely to hold a steady job (1.62).

So, from their own mouths, so to speak, we learn that looks are *relatively* unimportant to them.

So why the differences between the two surveys? Why do men feel that looks are important to women while women are claiming looks don't matter much. Are women lying? Are women saying one thing but then behaving differently?

I think women are being perfectly honest. Women don't care about looks as much as they care about other things.

Consider these scenarios...

Would a woman stay with a drop dead gorgeous man if he was a dirty bum on the street scavenging food from garbage cans? How many woman would stay with Brad Pitt if he was an abusive drug addict that liked to pick his nose in public? Would a woman stay with a good looking man who was utterly, completely, and unbearably boring?

No, no, and no.

Looks can only account for a fraction of attraction. Looks are not the complete picture. Think of every man as a puzzle. Each attribute men have (a good job, social standing, good personality, confidence, etc.) is a piece of the puzzle. Physical attractiveness is just one of the many pieces that together form a complete puzzle. In fact, it's not even a very big piece of the puzzle.

Some men have bits and pieces of the puzzle but very few have all the pieces. Every man has a different combination of pieces and each woman is looking for a different combination of pieces. The more complete your puzzle the better.

Yes, some women will be looking for the physical attractiveness "piece" but, without the other pieces, just that piece alone won't be enough.

Other women may not even look for the physical attractiveness "piece." If it's there, that's nice, but it's certainly not high on their priorities.

It would do us men good to consider developing the puzzle pieces that ARE under our control.

Looks do matter... just not as much as most men think they do. But, I acknowledge that the unattractive male will be faced with a challenge that the handsome man won't struggle with to the same extent - how to get women interested in him INITIALLY.

Good-looking men don't have a problem with this, their difficulty comes in trying to keep the woman interested in them.

The below-average to average looking man must concentrate on becoming attractive in other ways, ways that he can control, ways that are not decided by his genetic make up. Thankfully, there are many "puzzle pieces" that fit this description and, perhaps even more thankfully, they are just as important, if not more important, than looks.

Bottom line, looks do matter... but other things matter MUCH more. There is no sense in raising the white flag and surrendering to discouragement just because you weren't born beautiful.

And to the men that are good looking... looks aren't enough... not nearly. Start developing your other "puzzle pieces" and watch your game improve tremendously.

Talk to you later,

Brian Caniglia
Author of The DateSTACKER Program