I have a friend with an impressively massive beard, which he’s frequently complimented for. However, two separate women have indicated to me in private that they find the beard unattractive. This, together with other personal experiences, leads me to believe that number of compliments can be a misleading metric for looking good.
Specifically, I think standing out will give me more compliments, pretty much independently of whether it improves my attractiveness, and it will be hard to tell if I’m actually becoming less attractive. I’m therefore focusing mostly on (b).
I personally often visually react to someone’s appearance changing without meaning to (e.g. “wow, you got a haircut!”) then feel pressured to compliment it to make the situation less awkward. I expect a lot of other people do this. And basically no one will come up to you and, without prompting critique your appearance. So you will get very positive-slanted feedback when it’s unsolicited (and probably when it’s solicited too).
I have a friend with an impressively massive beard, which he’s frequently complimented for. However, two separate women have indicated to me in private that they find the beard unattractive. This, together with other personal experiences, leads me to believe that number of compliments can be a misleading metric for looking good.
Specifically, I think standing out will give me more compliments, pretty much independently of whether it improves my attractiveness, and it will be hard to tell if I’m actually becoming less attractive. I’m therefore focusing mostly on (b).
I personally often visually react to someone’s appearance changing without meaning to (e.g. “wow, you got a haircut!”) then feel pressured to compliment it to make the situation less awkward. I expect a lot of other people do this. And basically no one will come up to you and, without prompting critique your appearance. So you will get very positive-slanted feedback when it’s unsolicited (and probably when it’s solicited too).