There is a persistent bias, in general and online, against any claim that one's job prospects, social status, overall life satisfaction is dependent on the way people treat you specifically due to your physical appearance. I think this bias has worsened in the recent decade due to how emphatically the affirmative claim is espoused by the incel/looksmaxxer movement, so conceding any ground means "proving them right".

There are certain realities people feel more comfortable denying/de-emphasizing. Another such bias is the impact of innate talent and its connection to success in any field tied to cognitive ability. People don't seem to want to accept that there are differences in ability/faculties that are:

1. Extremely impactful on one's life outcome

2. Extremely hard or impossible to change, especially past adolescence

3. Largely predetermined by genetic differences, many of which are random

One of my favorite examples of this is a transgender woman who worked at Subway (sandwich shop) and wrote about her experience on reddit. Someone posed a question on reddit that was something like "people who have transitioned, how did others treat you differently after the fact." I interpreted the question as how did friends and family react after knowing you previously as one gender and then another, but this trans woman's response on how the general public treated her was much more interesting IMO.

Before she transitioned, as a man she said she'd get lots of compliments and kudos from customers for basically just doing her job at Subway. As a woman, though, people were much more likely to complain and she was rarely complimented, and only if she went "above and beyond" her normal work duties.

The thing I loved about this is that, like the women who lose a lot of weight, she basically "acted as her own control". When it's different men and women you can argue over whether or not people behaved differently, but it's harder to do that (or at least it should be) if it's the same person.

I'm sure being treated nicer by everyone might also increase my confidence tbh. I think the opposite order is more interesting for that though - people who become overweight and notice their coworkers and friends changing how they look at them and so on.

Mild counterpoint: a friend of mine, a professional woman, started on GLP-1 drugs some time ago. She has lost weight, but she also says she's had significant cognitive improvements, more focus, better sleep, etc. It would be great to have research which explicitly teases out these various effects.

I find it amazing people don’t believe this. I lost about 50kg and people treated me better. They didn’t randomly shout ‘fat fuck’ in the street for a start.

So weird to me anyone actually refutes this effect.

I lost weight for two reasons. First was for health, second was for career/being taking seriously in certain social circles (aka networking).

I also went through one of the least confident periods of my life for unrelated reasons right about the time I hit my target goal weight. Debilitating so.

I still got treated better, even when I was barely able to engage in a social interaction. From subtle things I noticed, up towards things that were quite literally spoken out loud and explicit. Just small interactions were less full of friction and low-stakes requests such as solving a problem with a pharmacist tech just seemingly got easier somehow.

And I'm a dude. The impact for women has to be multiples larger.

I'm close to B. In the 80's they tested how appearance affects people. Some women were given a facial scar and went to interviews while others were left as is. The scar group reported higher levels of discrimination than those without the scar. Tricky thing was none of them had scars in the interviews. The women that thought they had the fake scars had a "touch up" and the testers removed it.

Link: https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/what-a-1980s-facial-scar...

Nah I see this as a bald dude. When I wear a cap people smile at me, make conversation, etc

Not when I’m clearly bald though

People treat you better when you look better it’s sad but true

There's 2 sides to this:

1. Halo effect - people treat you better cause you're hot.

2. Confidence effect - you do things you wouldnt have because you now have energy, confidence, and freed up mental capacity from lower food noise.

“Deserved” might not be the right word, or is carrying serious weight.

All I can say from my personal experience is that I’ve noticed major widespread improvements when I A) got in visibly good shape and B) became confident in my professional career and abilities. I behaved differently as a result of my confidence, and it is clear as day to me, including the more positive results it delivers.

My angsty nervous young adult self, completely unconfident, was working against me. I don’t think I “deserved” that in any retributive sense, but yeah, I can see how people respond differently to confident people vs perpetually negative doubters. It’s no one’s fault, it’s not cruelty, it’s just how social humans work in large part (not all cases, of course, but most)

I would point out that there's a middle way between those stances: GLP-1 receptor agonism has anti-auto-immune effects.

(I don't know yet if anyone has determined whether this is a direct effect of GLP-1R agonism; or whether e.g. metabolic disorder has auto-immune aspects, and GLP-1R agonism effectively treats metabolic disorder; or whether it's just that e.g. sugar and other simple carbs are directly pro-auto-immune, and GLP-1R agonism breaks the addictive salience of sugars/simple carbs in such a way that even if you're eating the same amount, you're putting less of those in your body. Regardless of the mechanism, there does seem to be a consensus on the overall anti-auto-immune effect itself.)

The anti-auto-immune effects of GLP-1RAs show up visibly, e.g. on the face, entirely separately from the effects of weight loss (because this effect still occurs even when the dose of GLP-1RAs is too low to provoke weight loss), in the form of decreased puffiness, oiliness, acne, chapped lips, etc. It causes a bunch of small changes that make someone look like they're "taking better care of themselves" (even though they may have been taking assiduous care of themselves before, but didn't look it, for autoimmune reasons.) People definitely judge others on how "healthy" they look, so this could definitely help someone to get a job.

But the anti-auto-immune effects of GLP-1RAs also show up in entirely unconscious behavioral changes — not in anything cognitive, like "confidence", but rather due to GLP-1RAs being at least partly effective in treating chronic, sometimes-subclinical, usually-not-well-managed autoimmune pain disorders (think fibromyalgia) and autoimmune energy disorders (think ME-CFS.) Being less achey and having more energy makes people behave differently — whether that be on the macro level in subconscious decision-making (think of how people make different choices when overtired without being aware of it — people with chronic energy disorders are "overtired" 100% of the time!), or on the micro level, in terms of how e.g. speech is performed (people have reported becoming less "croaky", and their usable vocal range expanding), how nonverbal communication is performed (it's easier and "cheaper" to move your face and head and body, so you do), etc.

And note how, for these behavioral changes, some of these might be obvious to the person going through the changes (like your voice changing); but others are things you may not be aware has changed.

For facial expressions in particular, people learn to use their face in certain expressive ways when they're young, and then often don't notice when their face stops "responding" fully/correctly/in the way they'd anticipate to their brain's commands to execute these expressions. As far as you're concerned, you're doing what you always did; it's just that, at some point, you developed an autoimmune condition that attacked (or plugged up with waste) some nerves or muscles or tissues or whatever, that made those higher-level signals from your motor cortex stop translating perfectly to actually initiating the actions you expected. Most people don't periodically test their facial expressions in a mirror, so you only get info about the breakdown of these capabilities reflected in other people's reactions toward you changing. And, likewise, if these capabilities were to be suddenly restored, you'd only find out through others' reactions to you as well!

Why is lookism supposed to be bad/stigma, but favoring intelligent people is good/meritocracy? Both are "unjust" in the sense that they are a result of genetic lottery. If anything, it's the intelligence you are born with that you can't do anything about.

Society is better off with more intelligence, but also with more beauty! As we automate intelligence, the selection pressure on good looks will only increase.

why not both?

Attractive people regardless of sex are universally treated better, unattractive - worse.

You could call it a stigma or prejudice, but until calliagnosia[0] becomes a reality, it is what it is.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liking_What_You_See:_A_Documen...

I also snag on her not attributing it to any personality changes because people reported no change in life satisfaction, loneliness, or depression from taking GLP-1s. Which seems to run counter to the reasons why [overweight] people would take GLP-1s

I'm not about to dive into the literature, but I kinda just assumed that losing weight naturally would help all those things.

The study also paints this as "kind of unfair against women", but didn't include men at all.

in an era when interviews are done by zoom, is there a height effect for men?

The best analogy I have heard about height and men: Height is a proxy for strength, and that is why it is so advantageous in economics, politics, and dating. I fully expect serious medical research in the near future for a childhood genetic treatment to increase adult height, as the advantages are just so enormous.

I thought this has always been pretty obvious. It’s just human nature that makes people “judge” by appearances. As long as there is a face to face interview I don’t think someone could claim is not discriminating on appearance. It happens “naturally” and could go both ways but more often the “good looking” and “charming” is rewarded. It’s part of the “life’s not fair”.

The halo effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

I was gonna say "this is decades old", it's over a century old.

Relevant sequence from 30 Rock - Jon Hamm lives in "The Bubble"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQoXOLlvT0

I like "pretty privilege."

In my experience, improving appearance is already one of the top suggestions for job applicants. We're attuned the other way too, showing up to work in a nice outfit tends to be met with "got an interview today?"

My mid-50's mother was on quite a long unemployment streak, and I suggested she use realtime ML models to replace her webcam face with a de-aged and improved one.

Ageism and being attractive are both real things, like it or not... =/

If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero. It's also not clear what parts of "looks" actually have an effect. It's also not clear what effect GLP-1 has on other elements that might make someone more employable.

The study itself is certainly not conclusive. The control group were women who wanted to take GLP-1, but didn't. That can indicate all kinds of status/class differences. The study also seems to have been a fishing expedition, and is based on self-reports, so it's tentative at best. I wouldn't recommend taking GLP-1 for a job interview based on this article.

Might be different for programmers… my experience is that—broadly speaking—programming ability is inversely proportional to how well dressed you are. I wonder if that is still true, or if I’m just old.

> Lookism

Pretty privilege

Stop spamming with these unwieldly lists. If there's no significant discussion, there's nothing.

first sentence is one step from outright discrimination even if not everyone recognizes it. if you’re visibly transgender/queer, have noticeable accent, visible disability, and on and on and on

I am trying to re-find it but there was a study I'd read that was saying that in general if you don't break it down, there's a massive amount of weight stigma impact on women's employment but not men's. However, if you do break it down, you see that that impact doesn't exist for blue collar men, and does exist (if in a mediated form) for college-educated white collar men. If anyone can help turn this up (or something contradicting it) it seems useful.

I think there are studies that analyze height vs. career achievement.

Indeed, men on average look worse than women.

Do you find this finding surprising? I do not.

It just changes the baseline. Maybe weight stops being an easy discriminator, but we go back to clothes, styling and make up quality. The lookism still exists even among the prettiest, as we can see in the eating disorders and other issues among people in Hollywood. Many of the prettiest women on the big screen see themselves as on the edge of not getting any more work.

It puts a finger on the scale. Which unfortunately lasts as long as the person takes the drug. What happens when they stop taking it, unless they were on some serious strength trailing, is that they will have lost all the muscle they need to burn the extra calories they will start to eat when they transition off the drug. Which means the weight comes back even faster.

The body has no mechanism to break down fat cells like it can muscle cells. So every fat cell they had before taking the GLP-1 will still be there after years of taking GLP-1. Like deflated balloons, just primed to absorb any extra calories.

Diminishing returns though. Once everyone is on glp-1, noone gets an employment advantage from it anymore. I still recommend riding the wave as long as it works.

> Now not being obese is becoming increasingly rare.

For men, I assume?

    > 40 years ago educated women were rare, even in the western world.

Your reading comprehension is off.

Are you for promoting obesity and unhealthy behavior? It's not because you want to promote people being healthy (aka having a normal body weight) that you are "fat-shaming".

Usually, chronically-overweight ppl have tried regulating weight with all kinds of diets, lifecycle interventions, regular exercise, etc, and a lot of the time the thing that actually worked was the GLP-1. I think this speaks a lot to the variance in metabolism, hunger, cravings etc across the population.

Why suffer hunger for the rest of your life when you can inject a drug weekly and it takes only 2 minutes?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/well/eat/ozempic-food-noi...

I've been overweight many times in my life, and I've been able to use diet and exercise to get my weight back to a healthy level.

Each occasion took a large amount of willpower and the healthy habits didn't stick around forever.

I started taking tirzepatide weekly and the most striking effect was a marked decrease in cravings. Where previously it took all my willpower to ignore cravings, it has now become difficult to overeat. I would have to force myself.

Now I wonder if its like this for those who have never had issues with their weight. Are there people who insist it's easy but have never experienced cravings?

I'd be surprised if there wasn't a similar dynamic for men. While men probably have a wider range of "acceptable" physical flaws as compared to women, that doesn't mean there isn't a range. A morbidly obese man is probably going to have a tougher time finding a job than a similarly skilled fit and trim man.

Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.

Men get the same effect through things that are traditionally masculine. Off the top of my head, things like height, ruggedness, and for clothes you want straight lines (such as with suits, which a well-fitting one has a lot of and a badly fitting one curves around the body and breaks the straight lines).

People look for different things for "beauty" in men and women.

Taller people--an area where men have a very distinct advantage--make more money and have an easier go of things.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X2...

"Based on the meta-analysis, we found evidence that the height premium varied by context: the height premium was smaller in the U.S. and Australia, and larger in Latin America and Asia. Within geographies, there appeared to be a larger height premium for men than for women."

Men tend to work in less public facing/social career fields. Your appearance doesn’t matter much if you’re a linesman or a welder; it matters more if you’re doing sales or supporting clients. Probably not the entire story, I think people do have different expectations for men and women, but certainly part of it.

I don't think anyone can objectively judge the attractiveness of both genders on one scale.

Women and men are not judged according to the same standards. We're not super sexually dimorphic as a species, but certainly enough to matter in terms of evolved social responses.

Well you kinda said it yourself? If men are generally unattractive then a man should be less likely to lose out to a better-looking man, simply because there's fewer of these to go around.

Maybe to you, I personally find both the average man and woman attractive. Women spend more time taking care of their bodies though, given societal pressures

> If looks are important for employment how then men find a job?

This feels very fallacious. Attractiveness can be important but not the only factor that matters.

Height is a way that men are judged as attractive. Likewise, tall men tend to do better than short men on income and promotions.

> Men are mostly unattractive

Could it be that _you_ are simply be not as attracted to men as you are to women?

Go to the barber, to to the tailor, go the gym...

All these things help.

Not exactly sure why this is downvoted - seems like a genuine question.

Here's a random Internet troll's theory (mine): there's a kernel of truth to the whole "patriarchy" thing. It's just that most men aren't part of it.

Hold that pitchfork for just a moment! What I meant was: the entire economy is controlled by a very small number of people. Most of them are men, and they have very particular preferences. Assuming the majority of them are straight, it would make sense that they prefer women they see as pretty, and don't care much about men. If anything, a good looking man might be a competitor.

I don't think this idea is completely nuts. Think of the few times in history when a woman had real power. For example, Catherine the Great. Who was suddenly promoted to positions of influence? Sexy men, her "favorites" (yes, that's an actual term).

It's attractiveness all the way down

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest

yes! i still wondering why feminism had to be created /s