This is a response to John Wentworth's recent article, Why Physical Attractiveness Matters for Men's Dating Prospects. I have no quibble with the thesis stated in the title, but a lot of the body of the article struck me as off-base. When John sent me the article, I told him the article seemed “fundamentally confused.” He asked for details, and this article is my answer.

Here I list and argue with four premises I detected in John's article. Some of them he said in so many words; some are my (possibly-incorrect) inferences.

I have my own weird perspective on a lot of this stuff that isn’t necessarily to be trusted. To avoid just arguing purely from that weird perspective, I ran several glosso surveys to gather data. Glosso data itself is pretty sus! I could only survey people's self-reports, which could easily be inaccurate. The surveys have pretty low N. The population on glosso is itself weird; it's Aella's social network, originally seeded with Aella's slutty, high-body-count, looks-conscious friends. (I say this with love, as someone pretty firmly rooted in that social network, sharing those characteristics!) So we shouldn’t put too much weight on any of this data. I [...]

---

Outline:

(01:34) Premise #1: Eye contact is typically on the path from "we're strangers" to "we're flirting"

(01:42) One woman's ungeneralizable field report

(04:00) Okay, but what about other women, though

(05:25) A richer model of initiating contact

(06:05) Premise #2: Being physically attractive works on enough of the right women to make it a viable mainline strategy

(06:23) How big a factor is physical attraction?

(07:38) How efficient is physical attraction at getting you laid?

(09:56) Physical attraction does seem like a viable pathway, but to a narrower target

(10:24) Premise #3: The effort-to-results curve on making yourself physically attractive is favorable

(12:43) Premise #4: Being physically attractive saves you other kinds of time and effort

(14:45) My prescription: Be well rounded. No, not like that.

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

---

First published:
May 27th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ytzrakjgcvCfLCCZp/contra-wentworth-on-physical-attractiveness-for-men

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“Contra Wentworth on Physical Attractiveness for Men” by Gretta Duleba

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Contra Wentworth on Physical Attractiveness for Men” by Gretta Duleba