Dispelling Beauty Lies: The Truth About Feminine Beauty

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The facts about feminine beauty are simple and intuitive, even obvious. But public discussion of the topic is dominated by lies that confuse many women. Oddly enough, intelligent women seem to be the most susceptible. This makes it harder for them to attract mates, subjects them to misguided self-doubts, and even damages their health. Their efforts to improve their appearance are in vain because they aim at the wrong target. All too often they simply give up on a game they could win if they understood the rules. But for fear of being impolite, men never correct their illusions.

In this comprehensive article I’ll dispel the confusion and tell you the straight truth about feminine attractiveness. In the closing section I’ll offer some practical advice.

A warning before you continue: I won't pander to boost your self-esteem. Writing the truth instead of repeating familiar lies will offend some readers. Most women will experience discomfort. If you're emotionally fragile or psychologically troubled, you should stop here.

However, learning the truth will enable clear-sighted women to improve their appearance and succeed at the game of beauty. This is a prize that's worth the cost. So keep the goal in mind as you read on. If you’re ready for real answers, these are the best you’ll find. (Note: if you can't read the font, click the "translate" button above.)

I. Everyone lies
II. Learning from love goddesses
III. Imaginary women
IV. The truth about breast size
V. Common and uncommon tastes
VI. Market forces
VII. The most important secret about faces
VIII. A note on masculine beauty
IX. "Beauty" and "hotness"
X. Drawing the right conclusions
XI. Reality-based beauty tips
XII. Answering objections
Appendix: survey results
Afterword

I. Everyone lies

Why are lies about beauty abundant?

Beauty is so socially important that almost everyone has a reason to lie about it.

The fashion industry uses tall, ultra-thin models to impress and intimidate customers. The tactic increases clothing sales, but these models aren’t the best examples of beauty. Similarly, paid beauty writers and influencers make their money from advertising fashion and beauty products. The conflict of interest discourages them from giving accurate advice.

Body-positive influencers sometimes praise the beauty of unhealthy figures in a way that seems disconnected from reality. They expand their audience through flattery and pandering, not honesty. Journalists lie about beauty to bolster their favorite social and political causes, which they consider far more important than the truth.

Men have incentives to lie about what attracts them as well. To be polite, or to flatter. Or even to show their good taste. Pretending not to notice overt sex appeal is a way of signaling refinement and class. It implies that they’re subtler and more perceptive than other men. But it also projects a false picture of what they really want.

Some insecure women deride any concept of beauty that doesn't match what they see in the mirror. Unable to acknowledge their own imperfections, they hope words alone can make them the fairest of all. Even the most beautiful and self-assured women will lie, whether to guard their secrets, to sabotage their competitors, or because they don’t really know the answers themselves.

Self-deception compounds the problem. Once you're invested in the lies you've been told by marketers, flatterers, and competitors, it's psychologically difficult to accept the truth. You're tempted to behead the messenger and cling to feeble counterarguments you wouldn't take seriously in any other context. And your friends tell you what you want to hear, because their only alternative is to hurt and offend someone they love.

“What makes a woman attractive?” is a milgram question. In other words, the social penalty for an unflattering answer is much higher than the reward for telling the truth. Because of this we simply can’t trust the answers we receive, even if they’re coming from friends.

In sum, everyone’s lying about beauty. And when you consider the motivations I’ve just listed, it shouldn’t be a surprise. We have very good reasons to lie!

All these lies can carry over into science. Scientific studies of beauty are often based on questionnaires. The scientists just perform a statistical analysis and repackage the results as verified truth. But survey responses on sexual topics are unreliable. Fancy mathematical language might make these studies sound authoritative, but it can't transform false answers into a true one. And there's a limit to how well a handful of numbers can characterize beauty.

So to reveal the truth about feminine attractiveness I won’t rely on surveys or professed opinions. Instead I’ll present direct evidence of men’s real preferences.

Why should men be the ones to judge what's beautiful? My approach here is simple and practical, not philosophical. The main purpose of personal beauty is to attract and satisfy a member of the opposite sex. There are other reasons to be beautiful, but they make a much smaller contribution to human happiness. That means men are the most important judges of feminine beauty, just as women are the most important judges of masculine beauty.

Your professors may have taught you to loathe the "male gaze." This crazy attitude will do you more harm than good. In fact, it's far worse than a beauty lie. You can't win by condemning the judges. Instead you should embrace your potential for beauty, and use it to cultivate a fulfilling romantic and sexual relationship.

Some claim an uncompromising analysis of feminine beauty is inherently misogynistic. This is quite opposite to the truth. Empowerment is about being able to get what you want. The more beauty you have, the easier it is to get what you want. And the better you understand beauty, the easier it is to obtain it. It's that simple.

Those who justify dishonesty by labelling the truth misogynistic are taking advantage of you. They're disempowering you and implying women are too fragile to handle reality. This article, in contrast, aims to help any woman who's ready to open her eyes.

II. Learning from love goddesses

Let’s begin with the most enduring visual examples of feminine beauty: love goddesses. The representations below were created hundreds or even thousands of years apart by groups that spoke different languages and lived in different climates. Despite differences in their style, function, and degree of realism, they share common features.

The love goddesses typically have an hourglass figure, with a small waist, larger than average breasts, and pronounced hips. They have a moderate, healthy weight: fairly slim, but not skinny.

This Indian statue is two thousand years old.

These two Minoan examples are more than three thousand years old.

This Babylonian love goddess is nearly four thousand years old.

Below are erotic odalisque paintings from 19th century America, France, and Italy.

Rubens is often cited as a counterexample to conventional beauty standards. But his corpulent figures, such as the last image below, are exceptions in a long history of painted love goddesses that fit the general trend.

Obese prehistoric figurines like the 30,000-year-old “Venus of Willendorf” are also frequently raised as counterexamples. But they don't qualify as love goddesses. The “Venus” appellation is arbitrary and disputed by scholars. These figurines weren't found with a label, and their true meaning and function are unknown.

In the next gallery you’ll find a selection of famous cartoons of attractive women that spans several decades: Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine, Jessica Rabbit, and three popular Japanese anime characters.

These images are in some cases exaggerated, but that’s the nature of cartoon art. On the other hand, most paintings and sculptures are sexually understated, partly because they’re made for public display in places where it would be inappropriate to inspire lust, and partly because unrestrained sex appeal would dominate men's attention and distract them from subtler elements of the artwork.

Despite these limitations, the cartoons, paintings, and sculptures of love goddesses share the same salient characteristics.

Cultural and regional variations do exist, but are smaller than you might assume. For instance, the ideal women preferred by American and Japanese men are more similar than real American and Japanese women!

Finally, here are three of the goddesses juxtaposed with human models.

So love goddesses and archetypes of beauty follow a pattern. However, they're not all identical. For instance, classical Greek statues don't have the small waist evident in our other examples. Nor do the later Venuses copied from them.

While the persistence of this deviation is evidently due to a founder effect, its original motive is open to debate.

Historical artwork may be compelling, but it's not enough to make a strong case. Furthermore, we can't rule out the possibility that current tastes differ from traditional ones. To reliably determine what men find attractive today, we'll have to examine more evidence.

III. Imaginary women

If men won’t tell the truth when asked what they find attractive, how can we ever know? One way is to look at what they choose in secret when they're free to have exactly what they want.

Humans are imperfect by nature. So in real life men rarely have the option to pick exactly what they want, and compromise is the norm. To avoid hurting feelings they publicly pretend their compromise was their ideal all along. Imaginary substitutes, however, allow men to bypass the limitations of reality and get something that actually does look just like their ideal.

The best guides to men's real beauty preferences, therefore, are imaginary women selected in private. These fall into three main categories: sex dolls, erotic drawings, and computer-generated women like those above. In this section I'll analyze each in turn.

Women are typically loathe to give credence to any of these privately imagined ideals. Not only are they incurious, they actively turn away from them to avoid knowing. This is an unfortunate mistake.

Putting your head in the sand may soothe your ego in the short term, but in the long term ignorance will do you harm. So please set aside your squeamishness and skepticism for a moment. There will be plenty of time later to debate the value of the evidence.

I’ve researched sex doll inventories at four online stores. Below I'll tell you what I found, starting with a little math you can skim over if you wish.

In mathematical terms, the most popular sex dolls at the four retailers had a waist to bust ratio of 0.61, and a waist to hip ratio of 0.61 too. In normal bust-waist-hips clothing measurements, that’s equivalent to 39-24-39. To check this number I averaged the measurements of over two hundred sex dolls from the inventory of one retailer. The resulting proportions were 0.65 and 0.61 respectively, equivalent to 37-24-39. By contrast, the average Victoria’s Secret model has a waist to bust ratio of 0.75, a waist to hip ratio of 0.71, and clothing measurements of 32-24-34.

The exact numbers aren't especially important here. In plain language, the majority of men choose dolls with far more pronounced curves than lingerie models.

As you can see, the typical sex doll resembles the example images in the previous section, while the runway model is distinctly different: not only thinner, but also narrower at both the hips and chest. The runway model's greater height also causes her body to seem more elongated.

The differences are evident from the rear as well. In addition to wider hips, the typical sex doll has far thicker buttocks and thighs than a runway model, with no thigh gap. The overall appearance is rounded instead of flat.

Sex dolls might be inherently tawdry, but the example below shows their basic shape is both beautiful and respectable in a woman with the right clothing and presentation, even when judged by very conservative standards. In fact, sex dolls are much closer to the classic female figure of traditional painting than fashion models are.

You can see the same shape in these photos of vintage actress Sophia Loren, who measures 38-24-38. Her figure is classic, beautiful, and elegant, not trashy or cheap. She looks good in many different styles, including formal and business attire.

How can we confirm our observations? Let's consider erotic drawings. This is another case where men can choose exactly what they want, privately and without compromises.

The figures in modern erotic drawings again share basic similarities with those found in traditional paintings, but they're less limited by social restrictions on sexual expression.

The imaginary proportions of fictional women in manga and anime intended to appeal to men are strikingly similar to those of sex dolls. Fourteen female characters selected from the most popular erotic animes have a purported median waist to bust ratio of 0.62 and a median waist to hip ratio of 0.64, equivalent to clothing measurements of 39-24-37. Of course, the drawings themselves can be far more outlandish than these imaginary numbers. You can see an example figure below.

The rear view of popular erotic anime girls also confirms our observations. Just like sex dolls, their legs have a rounded shape and no thigh gap. They're thicker than many women expect.

Sex dolls don't really have an age, but it's worth asking what age they appear to be. I circulated a dozen photos of randomly selected dolls on social media and asked readers to guess. The median estimate was twenty-two. So peak attractiveness appears to occur in the early twenties. You can see these dolls in the gallery below and make your own estimate.

A major retailer categorizes 25% of their dolls as “teen,” 12% as “MILF,” and 63% as standard. If most men really preferred teenagers, as some claim, we'd expect most sex dolls to be listed in the teen category. But that isn't the case. In fact, teens are only twice as popular as "MILFs."

Even so, some signs of age are unequivocally bad. While a few sex dolls do have gray hair, none have obvious wrinkles. This suggests the variance in men's taste for youthfulness is rather limited. You can see a “MILF” doll below.

Anime girls have very young faces and very adult bodies, and they're drawn in an unrealistic style. By consequence it's impossible to determine their age.

The confusing combination of a juvenile face and a sexually mature body isn't an accident, however. It's common in AI-generated erotic imagery as well. When they were shown the following AI-generated image in two pieces, men estimated her face to be around sixteen and her body to be around twenty-four.

Similarly, the thirtysomething model below accrued millions of followers by using a "teen" AI filter to make her face look much younger than her body. Oddly enough, men rarely notice the incongruity before it's pointed out. To see the unclothed images they're paying for, click here. The real, unfiltered model is circled in red at the bottom of the page.

So men typically prefer the combination of a neotenous face and a mature body. While imaginary women can take it to extremes never found in reality, some of the most attractive real women exhibit the same traits. "Early twenties" isn't a magic number that men fetishize. It just happens to be the age where this combination is most likely to occur.

This might lead you to wonder: what about the small fraction of men who truly prefer women without mature curves? At the time of writing AI-generated images are new and not subject to legal action or deletion from social media, so they can provide an answer that was unavailable in the past, and will likely be unavailable again in the future.

Around 3% of the sexualized images found under the #aigirl hashtag have neither adult faces nor adult bodies. I evaluated 350 images and included only indisputable cases, so this number errs on the side of understatement.

AI girls who lack curves almost never possess the tall, lanky figure of runway models. Instead they look juvenile, and often underage. Due to the nature of these images, I'm not going to take the legal risk of showing examples. They reveal a notable overlap between men who are indifferent to curves and men who find children more attractive than adults. Indeed, some of those presented in plainly sexual poses appear to be less than twelve years old.

Concluding qualifications are in order. The fact that men perceive peak attractiveness to occur in the early twenties on average doesn't imply that everyone peaks at the same age. Nor does it imply that a younger woman is always more beautiful than her seniors, nor least of all that beauty "hits a wall" at age thirty. Peak and slope are not the same thing.

As I'll explain near the end of this article, there's still hope for older women. So please be patient and keep reading whatever your age.

Some people object to the idea of using sex dolls, erotic drawings, and AI girls to reveal men's preferences. They claim imaginary women in general, and sex dolls in particular, are the refuge of low-value men, and because of this they're not a reliable indicator of broader male tastes. However, you may have noticed that ice cream tastes good to the young and old, the rich and the poor alike. So it is with many types of beauty.

What distinguishes sexually successful men from unsuccessful ones isn't their basic sense of the female form, but rather their ability to obtain it. A broad network of evidence, including love goddesses and erotic oil paintings commissioned by wealthy aristocrats, tells the same story about feminine beauty. And we'll expand this evidence further as we continue. Dismissing all of it is simply wishful thinking, usually motivated by insecurity.

The restored and colorized video footage above shows upper-class women walking at a park in 1902. Traditional aristocratic clothing was designed to create a pronounced hourglass surpassing even today's most generously proportioned sex dolls. Those who deride the taste for curves evident in imaginary women as low-class or porn-induced are historically ignorant. If they wish to engage in snobbery, they shouldn't do it by advertising the plebian quality of their education.

It's important to understand that imaginary women actually give us a more accurate picture of male preferences than real glamour models. That’s because if men prefer multiple uncorrelated traits on the tail of the distribution in the female population, even the best real models will necessarily be a compromise with the mean. The same argument applies a fortiori to pornographic actresses, who are drawn from the very small population of willing participants, and thus unlikely to represent the ideal. This is a consequence of statistical laws, not male desire, and it leads us to underestimate the demand for rare traits.

So real glamour models can indicate the direction of male preferences, but not their extent. Imaginary women aren’t subject to the same limitation. This makes them especially useful for answering our next question.

IV. The truth about breast size

Women frequently ask: what breast size do men really prefer? Of all the questions about attractiveness, this is the one where men are most likely to lie when asked directly. In fact, they lie so often that some women begin to doubt the obvious answer.

A professor thoroughly reviewed the scientific research on size preferences for a major periodical. He concluded that men prefer average breasts, and women are fooling themselves into believing size matters.

Some girls might be inclined to believe intellectual authorities like this professor instead of stereotypes and common sense. But they shouldn't. He's wrong.

Once again we can learn the truth if we look at what men actually choose in private. A large online sex doll retailer categorizes their dolls by breast size. The frequency of these sizes is as follows:

Note that the terminology they use is misleading, since "small" refers to the average size of a slim woman, and "medium" is already large by everyday standards. That means around 80% of men choose what we normally call big breasts. Here are examples of each size according to the retailer's classification.

A second retailer categorizes dolls by cup size. The distribution of their inventory is visualized in the next graph. The result is essentially the same, but we can add a few additional details to our observations:

• Only 2% of men want an A-cup.
• 90% of men want more than a B-cup.
• 78% of men want "large" breasts (D-cup or more).
• The average man wants an E- or F-cup.
• 43% of men want a G-cup or more.

Below you'll find similar data drawn from an anime image site, once again followed by examples of each size. Men's order of preference is exactly the same as above. However, among this audience "large" breasts have an even bigger advantage over the other sizes.

Cartoons are prone to exaggeration, so we can't assume these translate directly to reality. Nor should we assume they don't. Fortunately exactness isn't necessary for our purposes here.

From the evidence above we can draw three reliable conclusions that will hold even if our data is imprecise. First, male preferences for breast size vary a great deal. Some men prefer small breasts, others enormous.

Second, the demand for larger sizes is much greater than the supply. The average male already prefers a size rarely found in nature, and the gap between supply and demand increases with size, without any practical limit. This means that “bigger is better” is true in an economic sense even if it isn’t true in an absolute sense. In simple terms, the most buxom women are highly valued because there aren’t enough of them to go around, not because all men prefer them.

Third, the median preference is broadly similar to the size we’ve seen in earlier examples, and conforms to well-known stereotypes. It’s also close to the size of common glamour models like “page 3” girls or centerfolds. In fact, some vintage centerfolds (NSFW) are larger than most sex dolls, despite the extreme rarity of this size in the general population. So are these storefront mannequins designed to attract passersby.

When we consider both overall clothing measurements and bust size, here’s what the median sex doll looks like:

You might still be tempted to dismiss these conclusions because they're derived from an analysis of imaginary women. So I’ll now draw your attention to the top 50 uncensored image-search results for “best breasts” (NSFW). This search was conducted anonymously using Tor to avoid contaminating the results with any past history.

Large breasts are the most common result by a wide margin, and only a single image shows an A-cup. The first model resembles the median sex doll above. An uncensored search for older images yields a very similar outcome.

Of course, search results can fluctuate depending on the precise terms used, the search engine, and the degree of censorship. In Bing, censorship and term variation increases the average bust size from large to huge. Google skews results toward celebrity gossip unless you use an explicit term. Yahoo falls somewhere in between. But no matter how you search, big always comes out ahead.

While you shouldn't put much faith in search results on their own, they do add more evidence to an already voluminous pile. And it turns out that sex dolls actually give us a moderate and conservative representation of male taste. This article may draw on imaginary women, but the conclusions are quite real.  

Skeptics are thus faced with an impossible question: if guys don't like large breasts, why do they keep seeking them out when you're not looking?

Some just can't accept the fact that a substantial majority of men prefer well-endowed women. Feeling their self-esteem is at stake, they resort to flimsy fallback positions. The most popular of these is “But rich men prefer small breasts.” This is no more plausible than the claim that rich women prefer poorly endowed men. If women with wealthy husbands really believed it, they'd hire maids with double-Ds to protect their marriages. But they don't.

It's easy to explain the supposed class difference in breast size preference. Status conscious upper-class men feign indifference to the obvious in order to signal their refinement. Then flat-chested women who fear they can't compete on the basis of sex appeal amplify the claim to stigmatize a trait they don't possess and slander their competitors as peasants.

They're lying for their own gain. And they're guilty of hypocrisy too, because women's analogous attraction to size is at least as strong as men's.

Common sense, stereotypes, search results, AI images, sex dolls, anime girls, and vintage centerfolds all agree. It doesn't matter if men deny it to be polite or to impress you with their refinement. The evidence they're attracted to large breasts is overwhelming. In practice, bigger is better.

So what do "perfect" breasts actually look like? I asked men to submit photos of large breasts with a perfect shape and then vote on their favorites. You can see the five most popular images here (NSFW). Men's top choices look remarkably similar, and three are almost identical.

If you're poorly endowed, don't despair. There are many elements of beauty, and breast size is only one of them. Later in this article I'll offer some words of encouragement, and also discuss whether cosmetic surgery might be a viable option.

V. Common and uncommon tastes

The diverse examples we’ve examined so far point toward a common male taste. This common taste is remarkably consistent between times and places.

To summarize, most men are attracted to women with a small waist, large breasts, a rounded rear, and prominent hips. They prefer women who have pronounced curves but aren’t overweight or obese. There is no evidence they favor the extreme thinness and tall, elongated figure of fashion models. In fact, the shape preferred by men is strikingly different from the shape of fashion models.

The average woman is also strikingly different from fashion models, and resembles a sex doll more than a runway model, as the following table of measurements shows.

The average woman from 1951 is four or five inches wider than runway models in every measurement. Yet her bust and hips are almost the same as those of sex dolls or anime girls. Many women worry about their hips needlessly. Waist size and cup size are the main factors that set an attractive figure apart from an average one.

Women assume they can see through fashion marketing and other beauty lies, and will claim to know that men like curves. But they're often confused about what "men like curves" really means. They may envision lingerie models in push-up bras, or actresses whose curves fall well short of the proportions men prefer. These media representations of sex appeal aren't accurate.

Note that the drawings above don't simply have larger breasts than the models and actresses, but also wider hips, thicker legs, and higher bodyfat. The same pattern is evident in the images below, which compare typical models for a famous "sexy" lingerie brand to similarly dressed women whom most men would find more appealing.

The gap between women's intuitions about what's attractive and men's actual preferences is most pronounced at the extremes. The unusually curvaceous woman below was rated "hot" by 91% of men, but only 60% of women. To guess what men want, you should use reason, not just intuition. Women consistently underestimate the appeal of feminine curves, so when in doubt, assume that more is more.

One major sex doll retailer sells over a hundred detachable heads, and only a single headless body. This limitation gives them a strong incentive to offer a body with proportions that will please the largest possible number of men and offend the fewest, and gives us a perfect opportunity to visualize the common male taste. You can see it here (NSFW). So now you have an accurate picture. In fact, this image can serve as a concise summary of our conclusions so far.

The voluptuous hourglass figure preferred by so many men is a well-known stereotype, but oddly excluded from magazines and media that address the topic of fashion and beauty for women. The narrow and skinny ideal that replaces it is both less attainable and less attractive.

Some women feel compelled to make excuses for the errors of the beauty industry. It's Stockholm syndrome. They claim a boyish figure is what women really want, and that rail-thin models are necessary to put clothes on display properly. These defenses are absurd.

It's a verifiable fact that many and perhaps most of the top fashion designers aren't attracted to women. It would be unreasonable to assume this has no impact on their tastes, and also unreasonable to assume their tastes have no influence on their work.

The images below reveal a double standard. While male fashion models have pronounced masculine sexual traits, female fashion models have diminished feminine sexual traits. Some scholars discern an analogous masculinization of women's fashion among the ancient Greeks.

By contrast, consider the vintage romance covers below. These novels were written by women and cater to women's fantasies. Some of the covers were painted by women as well. The protagonists resemble sex dolls more than fashion models or actresses.

The fashion world has created a negative-sum game. It grants women status points for achieving a boyish look that's both taxing to maintain and unattractive to the majority of the population. But when they're free to dream their own private dreams, it seems women would rather have a curvaceous, feminine figure that satisfies the common male taste. They want to be loved and lusted after, not just held up as trophies for public display.

There's no denying that the particular type of ugliness promoted by the fashion industry can increase a woman's status in some "elite" subcultures today. And if society were less interconnected, it would be best to leave the overambitious to their fate. But this same influence is pushing all women to make poorer choices, look worse, and enjoy life less than they could.

Because today's fashionable ideals are doing real harm to public welfare, they need to be harshly criticized until their influence is ended. Realigning socially approved aesthetic goals with genuine beauty, as revealed in men's true, private preferences, will have enormous benefits whose full extent will only be appreciated in retrospect.

Of course, not all men are looking for an hourglass. Uncommon tastes are quite real. Everyone knows there are some who prefer the petite, girlish look, or the tomboy look, or the extravagantly well-endowed look shown above, even though these tastes aren’t pervasive enough to be reflected in the statues of love goddesses. And a few men really do prefer runway models or Rubenesque figures.

Below you can see a random selection of photorealistic AI-generated images posted on social media under the "#AIgirl" hashtag. While most of them match the common male taste, the remainder cater instead to the minority tastes I've just mentioned.

Unfortunately, some writers become too enamored of relativism. They use these real minority tastes to justify the pretense that the norm doesn’t exist and doesn’t matter. Then they go on to claim that everything is beautiful. This lazy attitude is intended to flatter your self-esteem, not help you succeed. You shouldn’t trust it.

VI. Market forces

Beauty might be relative. Does that mean anything goes? Practically speaking, no. Consider supply and demand.

To catch and please a mate, it’s advantageous to have traits whose demand exceeds the supply. It’s disadvantageous to have traits whose supply exceeds the demand. (Where taste is concerned, the reverse is true. That is, you'll have an easier time getting what you want if there's an oversupply of potential mates who match your taste.)

For example, there are more men who prefer a small waist than there are women who have one. So women with a small waist have a relatively easy time finding a mate. In contrast, only a few men prefer obese women. There are far more obese women than there are men who prefer them, so they have a hard time finding a mate. And even if they succeed, they may be treated carelessly, because they're easily replaced. Don't behead the messenger. This is the cruelty of Mother Nature.

The logic of supply and demand seems too cold and disturbing for some women to accept. But consider the alternatives. If we pretend beauty is objective and universal, we can't explain the variation in tastes. And if we pretend everyone is equally beautiful, we can't explain why some looks are valued more than others. Only an economic analysis respects differences and still accurately captures what we all observe. It's by far the most broad-minded way to make sense of human beauty.

While polls aren’t particularly reliable, the poll below gives a reasonable estimate of overall demand. The added black lines indicate approximate supply. The most advantageous traits are the ones with the biggest gap between these two.

According to the poll, the most advantageous set of traits is: hourglass figure, thin, oversized breasts, bubble butt. Once again, this matches the beauty examples we’ve given above. But the variety evident in the poll also indicates that there’s more than one way to be attractive. It’s not necessary to conform to the majority taste to succeed.

The data we gathered earlier allowed us to establish a simple mathematical formula for the woman preferred by the median male: 37-24-39, F-cup, 22 years old. But supply and demand shifts the advantage away from this median toward rarer extremes, like the example below.

In fact, the appearance desired by the largest number of men isn't always the best. It's counterintuitive, but some women can have more success with rare looks the majority of men dislike! In these cases it's actually good to be weird.

Skeptical? The following illustration shows one way this can happen. If you can't follow this graph, don't worry. Just remember that you don't need to please everyone to be beautiful.

Nevertheless, rarity isn't sufficient to make everything valuable. When demand is too low, uncommon traits are still a real disadvantage. For instance, tattoos are a dubious choice even in subcultures where they've been normalized.

I'll address one additional remark about supply and demand to any men who might be reading.

Men typically try to improve the quality of the mates they can catch by raising the “price” they can afford to pay. That is, by improving themselves, their social position, or their skill at seduction. This is rational on an individual level. But it's actually a zero-sum game for men as a group.

Collectively, men can only catch better mates by improving the supply. In other words, by helping women to be the best they can be. Please keep this in mind before you engage in the battle of the sexes. The best world is a world where everyone wins.

VII. The most important secret about faces

Beauty lies aren't a serious problem when it comes to faces, so I'm not going to include a detailed analysis of facial beauty in this article. Instead I'll tell you the most important secret about faces.

It's no secret that men broadly agree on which faces are pretty and which are ugly. This implies that some underlying elements of facial beauty are universal. However, men aren't just searching for generically pretty faces. In fact, each man prefers a different and sometimes shockingly specific type of face.

I asked people to submit images of four faces they consider particularly attractive. Most chose faces that are unique, but also extremely similar to each other. Often so similar they could be mistaken for sisters, and occasionally so similar they could be mistaken for twins.

You might not believe me yet, but you will after you see the example sets that follow.

Our first respondent chose four girls who look like sisters. The first two could almost be twins, and both of them are wearing glitter. Not just any glitter, but the same colors of glitter.

In the second example set we again have the impression of sisters. The first two are especially alike. When asked about this, the man who selected them replied:

Respondents consistently reported that they'd been unaware the faces they chose were similar. Some had trouble seeing obvious similarities even after they'd been explained. When it comes to our favorite faces, the sense of beauty seems to hamper our objectivity.

The girls in this third set couldn't be mistaken for sisters. In fact, they appear to have different ancestry. But while they're less obviously alike than the previous submissions, they still share common features.

The first two models have the same brow, eyes, cheeks, mouth, jawline, and chin. The fourth model is more similar to the first than she initially appears. When we superimpose photos taken at the same angle, their features match up so exactly that they create the impression of a single face.

And when we put two sets side by side, the differences are stark. It's incredibly easy to tell which faces belong together.

In the next set the first three faces are again similar in shape. They're all facing the camera directly and tilting their heads at the same angle. The image below superimposes two of them. Although one face is more elongated than the other, their features match.

They're also wearing the same expression. If you examine the previous examples again, you'll notice the faces there are wearing the same expressions too.

We see a slight smile in the first set, a tough glare in the second set, a sad pout in the third set, and a questioning gaze with parted lips in the fourth set.

One respondent included these three photos of women smiling in an identical fashion. The first two also have similar features, similar hairstyles, and similar poses.

Another submission included the two photos above, featuring a unique lopsided grin. The expression doesn't occur in any of the other examples, but this respondent chose it twice.

What's interesting about the next set is that the respondent selected four women from different parts of the world, but still managed to find two with both the same expression and the same face. The second is simply a wider version of the first.

Where facial preferences are concerned, matching features are more consistently important than matching ancestry. You can see another example of this below. Despite different origins, these four faces share very wide cheekbones, the same jaw and chin, the same hair, and noses of the same length.

Some respondents were sensitive to the mood of the images they chose. They submitted high-quality photographs with an artistic color scheme. Yet the first three faces in the tasteful black, white, and sepia photographs below are no less similar than the blurry selfies we examined earlier. In fact, this attention to aesthetic detail increases the impression of sameness.

You might assume the examples I've selected above are exceptional, but that isn't the case. Similar faces are the norm, and sister faces are common. Only a minority of submissions included four faces that were markedly different.

The faces in eclectic sets are frequently celebrities, so it's not unreasonable to imagine that external factors like laziness, the easy availability of photos, or the aura of fame sometimes motivated the choices. Still, we shouldn't rule out the possibility that they reveal genuine preferences. Some men may not have a "type."

One reader contacted me to say he didn't agree with my theory about faces. He argued the evidence was weak. So I asked him to submit his own set. Here's what he chose.

When I pointed out the similarities between his first two faces, he still disagreed. He told me the hands were a coincidence and the remaining two faces were actually very different, and submitted a new photo of the third face. To his mind, this new photo showed the resemblance was an illusion. Was he correct? I'll let you be the judge.

The preceding sections of this article demonstrated that most men share a common taste for the same female body shape. Bodily attractiveness is often as simple as having a smaller waist and larger breasts than other women. This is a very unromantic conclusion that suggests individuality has no relevance to feminine beauty.

Below the neck, that conclusion isn't entirely false. Minority tastes do exist, but they're not very specific either. And because of unequal supply and demand, stereotypically desirable traits still end up being the most advantageous in practice.

Where faces are concerned, a much different picture emerges. As we've acknowledged, men usually agree on which faces are ugly and which are pretty. But they aren't just seeking any pretty face. They each have an individual taste for a specific ideal face that very few women match. And the face that's perfect to one man may be quite uninteresting to another. So much so that the man who compiled set three wouldn't bother pursuing any of the women in sets one and two. That's a very significant effect!

At this point you might be thinking, "Fine. I'm convinced men really do have weirdly specific visual tastes. But women aren't like that. Women mainly care about status and narrative." Not true. Female submissions show the same pattern.

This female respondent submitted three faces that could belong to brothers, as well as a fourth half-brother. The first two are especially close, including the style of facial hair and squinting eyes.

This second female respondent drew on radically different sources but still came up with a complete set of brothers. The second and third faces could almost be twins and are posing at the same angle with the same expression and the same hair. When submitting these faces she wrote, "It's partially the physical attractiveness, but much more so everything else surrounding them (character, story, status etc.) that makes them stand out."

No objective observer could draw that conclusion. Certainly such factors influenced her selection. But even taking into account their shared ancestry, these are extraordinarily similar faces on a purely visual level. Her self-analysis implies that our unique facial preferences influence us subconsciously.

If we're each seeking specific and uncommon faces, good matches are rare and special, and effectively determined in advance. So the romantic idea that relationships are both individualized and predestined isn't far from the truth. Strangely enough, we go through life completely unaware of this, and invent other justifications for our choices. The right faces seem so meaningful to us that we can't believe we loved them because of an arbitrary visual preference.

In sum, to catch a mate it's not enough to be beautiful. You need to match his taste. If someone is indifferent to you, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're plain or have an unlikeable personality. You may just not have the right face for him. In such cases it's best to accept fate and move on.

These facts about faces are important and clear up many mysteries about beauty and romance. They should be made common knowledge. Yet as far as I'm aware, this is the first time they've been systematically explained.

VIII. A note on masculine beauty

The truth about masculine beauty isn't obscure, and the lies are few in number. There's therefore no special need for an in-depth article on the topic. However, this section will provide useful context for our observations on feminine beauty. You can skip it if you'd like.

Scientific research suggests that height, upper body strength, and penis size are the main factors in masculine bodily attractiveness. This conclusion is corroborated by more reliable sources like stereotypes and the descriptions of attractive male bodies found in romance novels. Naturally a healthy weight is assumed to precede these three factors.

Most women also prefer men who are older than them. In romance novels a fifteen or twenty year age gap is typical, though in surveys women report they'd like a much smaller gap. The optimal age gap may be unclear, but it's important to recognize that most marriages involve a difference of less than five years. Since older men typically desire younger women, they sometimes delude themselves on this point. It's unwise to assume you'll "age like wine."

Men between 19 and 21 are at a distinct disadvantage, because while current laws and customs inhibit them from dating high-school students, they're still below the age preferred by recent female graduates. Be patient and persistent, and don't give in to discouragement. Your day will come.

Sex dolls marketed as “for women” typically have physiques that resemble those of the Korean actors above, and are less burly than romance-novel cover models. Stubble or facial hair is the norm, chest hair is common, and all have six- or eight-pack abs. Their median age looks to be late thirties, with lined faces and graying hair at times. Unfortunately women aren't the only buyers, so male sex dolls can't be considered reliable evidence.

A common beauty mistake men make is to imagine that raw muscle size is a cure-all. Precisely determining the optimum build is a difficult problem I don't intend to tackle here. If you're weaker than the men shown in this section, adding muscle should improve your attractiveness to the average woman. Even so, it's only one factor among many. Most romance cover models are considerably less bulky than top bodybuilders. And just as some men prefer less curvaceous women, some women prefer more modest muscles. Slim, fit men with other valuable traits can be successful.

Height is so simple that there's very little to say about it. But men do sometimes overlook the value of relative height. Short men will obviously have more success with short women. Tall men should also keep in mind that their natural advantage is multiplied where tall women are concerned, because these are reluctant to date men of average height. Since they're competing with a smaller pool of suitors, tall men can expect a higher success rate if they make it a priority to approach tall women.

Penis size is a particularly sensitive subject for many men. So in public women will often lie about the size they prefer, dodge the question, or at least understate their tastes. As usual, those with the most extreme tastes are the most likely to lie. Men should forgive them, because they tell the same lies for the same reasons when discussing breast size.

Below you can read a private discussion among women. I'm not presenting this as a typical conversation. It's an anecdotal example intended to shake the preconceptions of men who believe women are less demanding or judgmental than men in their physical preferences. In fact they can be quite brutal.

What penis size do women really prefer? I've gathered data using the same methodology I employed when researching breast size. You can see the results below.

The taste isn't universal, but "large" is clearly the most popular size. For a more precise answer, I manually counted up all the realistic dildos at a single retailer. Most dildos include a suction cup that's not counted in their advertised length, whereas penises are measured by pressing the fat pad against the pubic bone, which adds around 0.75". This means the difference between them is larger than the chart below shows.

The average realistic dildo also measures 5.6" in circumference, 1.9 standard deviations above the global mean of 4.7" (Western mean 4.8").

From this data we can make the following observations:

• Only 1% of women want less than five inches.
• 80% of women want seven inches or more.
• The average woman wants eight inches.
• 33% of women want nine inches or more.
• The average realistic dildo is 2.4" longer and double the volume of the average real penis.

We can't assume these dildo statistics transfer exactly to reality, of course. But we don't need to. The gap is so substantial that larger members will have an economic advantage even if dildo sizes overstate real preferences by a considerable margin. In practice, penis size is another case of bigger is better.

Some will argue that evidence derived from the sex toy business doesn't represent what women really want. Below you can see the results of an anonymous internet poll. Polls are unreliable, but this one gives remarkably similar answers to the research presented above. Romance novels, stereotypes, and even science tell the same basic story. And let's face it: the idea that women are buying much bigger toys than they actually enjoy is pretty implausible.

With cosmetic surgery and good weight management, women can increase their breast size by four cups or more. Men, on the other hand, have essentially no ability to control their size.

So why bother publishing this data? To put an end to hypocrisy, finger-pointing, and denialism about beauty, and show that men and women are more alike in their preferences than is commonly acknowledged. The battle of the sexes is a negative-sum game we shouldn't be playing. Put down your rhetorical weapons and try to build mutually fulfilling relationships instead.

Below I've made a composite of these two charts. We can easily see that there's a close analogy between women's penis size preferences and men's breast size preferences. For instance, an A-cup is equivalent to a four-inch penis, a B-cup is equivalent to a five-inch penis, and an H-cup is equivalent to a nine-inch penis. This "translation" may help you to understand and accept the tastes of the opposite sex.

The comparison reveals that both sexes prefer partners who are very far above the mean. That shouldn't be surprising at all. Why wouldn't they? But since humans are flawed and insecure, they rely on lies, complaints, and accusations to cover over uncomfortable truths, no matter how natural and obvious they might be. Women who feel hurt or offended by men's beauty preferences ought to stop and look in the mirror.

A more remarkable conclusion we can draw from this data is that around a third of the people you'll meet today are attracted to extravagant sizes hardly ever found in reality. This applies to both genders. A number of women even want a penis size that's expected to occur in fewer than one out of a hundred billion men.

Some people have trouble accepting that preferences for scarce or impossible traits not only exist, but are normal. It seems to irk their moral sense even more than their pride. What they want is to live in a world where the real is already the ideal, or close to it. But not only is that not the case, it fundamentally can't be the case. I'll explain the reason for this later on.

Poorly endowed men shouldn't obsess over their size. There are many factors that influence attractiveness. A disadvantage in one trait won't prevent you from building a successful relationship. To put this in perspective, consider that a small penis and a flat chest are about equally popular with the opposite sex. But no one believes flat girls can't find love. You can find it too.

In practice, penis size is less important than breast size, because it doesn't affect your clothed appearance. Since advertising is the first and most important step for finding a mate, the practical utility of a trait you can't effectively advertise is limited. Never let on that your size bothers you. Instead, project confidence and win her over with other strengths.

Male readers are hoping I'll conclude this section with tricks that will help them to catch women. I'd very much like to. However, the facts compel me to advise fatalism.

Of the three main factors in male bodily attractiveness, only muscular strength is under your control, and even that to a limited degree. Fashions are bland, and makeup is out of the question. There are some effective options for facial cosmetic surgery. But overall, men's ability to improve the appearance they inherited is considerably less than women's.

Men looking for a magic solution to this limitation sometimes turn to pick-up artist “game” (a collection of psychological tricks for seducing women). I won't claim that game is false. But the effect size is limited, and those who peddle it are often guilty of overpromising. The next time you walk down a busy street, observe the couples. They have a similar level of purely physical attractiveness. If psychological tricks could really cancel out a poor appearance, this wouldn't be the case. The exceptions are so rare and noticeable that they prove the rule, and they typically involve large sums of money.

I'll leave men with a short list of advice.

As a side note, fantasies of dominance and violence are much more common among women than men. In fact, they don't even make the top fifteen list of men's fantasies. Women aren't aware of this gap, and those who project a lust for sexual violence onto men in order to enhance their own jouissance don't really want to be aware. Some women may expect you to engage in a theater of dominance that doesn't come naturally, and even detracts from your enjoyment. Whether you choose to indulge them or look elsewhere is up to you.

IX. "Beauty" and "hotness"

Some women make a fuss over a purported conflict between platonic “beauty” and visceral “hotness.” They're afraid too much sex appeal will make them less beautiful. They may even fear an overtly attractive body will harm their reputation, whether or not their behavior is virtuous. This is a mistake. It's best to have all the good things together.

For your inspiration, I asked men to send me images they consider both hot and beautiful. I've presented their submissions unfiltered and unedited in the galleries featured in this section.

Platonic beauty and hotness might be distinct. But they don't detract from each other. They complement and enhance each other. “Feminine beauty,” as I discuss it in the rest of this article, comprises both.

Public discussion tends to emphasize platonic beauty over sex appeal because it sounds more respectable. Consequently, an honest account like the one you're now reading will appear to do the reverse.

There are serious disadvantages to having a type of beauty that lacks sex appeal. You'll be put on a pedestal like an antique art object. Praised and even sought after, but not truly desired. You may even become a victim of infidelity. That's not a fulfilling state of affairs. It's in your own self-interest to pursue the full complement of feminine attractiveness.

Other women may try to deter you. But you should be aware they're engaging in intrasexual competition. By convincing you to handicap yourself, they reduce the chance you could poach their mates or potential mates. By denigrating attractive traits, they confuse and demoralize the naturally gifted. Even your friends might do this unconsciously.

The illusion that beauty and hotness are in conflict is partly a result of social norms restricting the acknowledgement of genuine feminine sex appeal—even at a time when sexualization seems ubiquitous. And it's partly a consequence of the statistical probabilities that govern the selection of models. A model chosen for erotically charged traits will likely be average in other traits, and therefore plainer than models selected purely for their facial beauty. The converse is also true. This might appear to imply a tradeoff or contradiction, but it doesn't. It's just chance.

The notion that there are always tradeoffs between good things is a lie we tell ourselves to support the flattering illusion that our faults are, in some larger sense, not faults at all. But aesthetics isn't a roleplaying game where each player gets a set number of points and distributes them, so that one point here means fewer points elsewhere. Nicer hair doesn't come at the cost of uglier toenails.

This vintage centerfold (NSFW) is a striking example of beautiful eroticism. The model's extravagant chest does no harm to her prettiness, which is photographed in a style reminiscent of pre-Raphaelite painting. There's simply no meaningful aesthetic tradeoff for being hot.

There is, however, a meaningful social tradeoff for dressing in clothes that portray you as easily available. While they attract more men, they also deter the best long-term partners. Some women observe this and conclude that hotness itself deters the best partners, and it's better to be average than stunning, or even shun sex appeal altogether. But that's the wrong conclusion. Slutty fashions deter the best partners because they suggest you won't be faithful, not because hotness and beauty are fundamentally in conflict.

The photos men submitted for this section indeed show fashions that are hot and beautiful, but not all of them are appropriate for every context. When you're searching for a mate it's important to select styles that signal your fidelity and your broader value. This doesn't mean you need to dress conservatively, let alone intentionally make yourself plain. It's possible to look sexy without looking promiscuous, easy, or cheap. I'll offer more examples in the beauty tips at the end of this article.

Take some time to look closely at these galleries of images submitted by men. The makeup, clothes, lighting, and even scenery are aesthetically appealing. Each model has an individual character. Feminine sexual traits are indispensable, of course. But men have a finer and more holistic sensibility than you would assume if you judged their tastes on the basis of today's typically ugly pornography.

Don't let yourself be trapped in an aesthetic Madonna-whore complex. The distinction between platonic beauty and hotness is rarely useful, and best forgotten. Instead, embrace an undivided feminine beauty and enjoy together all the good things life has to offer.

X. Drawing the right conclusions

It's unfortunately common for women who read this article to draw the wrong conclusions from it. Realizing they'll never attain the ideal form desired by men, they react by rejecting the ideal, rejecting men, or even rejecting themselves. Women are sensitive to any criticism of their appearance, so this emotional reaction is understandable. But it's also very foolish.

Imperfection is part of being human, not a reason to hate yourself. If you always get a perfect score, this only means you're being given tests that are too easy.

A beauty ideal actually needs to be unattainable. If it were attainable, it wouldn't be useful for discriminating between the best potential mates, since all of them would have attained it. That's why a gap between the ideal and the real is fundamental to our sense of sexual aesthetics, and not something that can be argued away. At times this manifests itself as a taste for unreachable extremes, the simplest of which we've examined above.

So not only is there no shame in falling short of the ideal, it's actually expected that everyone will fall short in one way or another. This isn't your fault nor men's.

In the present day there's a strong push to deal with human shortcomings by lowering or eliminating ideals and standards. All sorts of sophistical arguments are put forth to accomplish the destruction. This race to the bottom isn't motivated only by the resentment of the least successful. It's also happening because our society has, by and large, forgotten grace. High ideals are more psychologically sustainable when they're accompanied by forgiveness for humans who fail to meet them.

A gap between the ideal and the real is a condition of possibility for our aspirations to make the world a better place. So if the truth about beauty is difficult for you to accept, don't join the mob set on erasing ideals. Don't listen to dishonest flattery you'll never really believe. Instead of lies, seek grace. And remember that love neither requires nor expects perfection.

What's the right way to use the information you've just learned? By understanding the truth about feminine beauty, you can target your efforts to improve your appearance more accurately and stop wasting energy running in the wrong direction. The truth won't ensure you reach the ideal, but it will help you to get the most out of your innate potential. That's the topic of the next section.

XI. Reality-based beauty tips

Here are a few simple, reality-based beauty tips. Many of them will be familiar. But since you now know the truth about feminine beauty, you can reconsider them with a fresh perspective. The basics of beautification aren’t magic. This advice will work for anyone, including you. And in the final account, the accuracy of this article will be proven by men's reaction to those who apply it. (Male readers may want to skip this section and hold on to their illusions.)

Don’t be discouraged because the ideal body of a love goddess is out of reach. Modest improvements still help. Giving up on the game of beauty because you can’t win first place is a mistake. In fact, average-looking girls benefit more from improving their appearance than naturally gifted women do.

It’s also a mistake to rely entirely on your personality and intelligence to sell you as a mate. This is like trying to win a triathlon without learning how to swim. Instead, use your intelligence to improve your appearance. If you follow all the advice below, you might gain three points on the beauty scale. That's the difference between a six and a nine.

More and more women are trapped in a game mass marketing has created for them, and men only have a token role in it. Indeed, women today have been trained to value the tastes of celebrity spokesmodels above those of their lovers. So they spend time and money on fashion with little to show for it. This trend is encouraged by businesses, who exploit rhetoric about "independence" to replace love with dependency on consumerism.

Many women are too prideful to admit they've been fooled and change direction. But their loss can be your gain. There's plenty of room to increase your romantic success and strengthen your relationships if you ignore the chorus of lies and make an effort to apply your new understanding.

The stakes are higher now than ever. Today men are increasingly seduced by "egirls" who hook them with a combination of personal charm, virtual stripteases, and powerful AI effects. While real women have been wasting their time reading Vogue, shopping for handbags, and copying Hollywood actresses, these online strippers have weaponized the truth about feminine beauty.

They'll use every trick in the book to hack men's brains and lock them in a world of virtual sex and imaginary relationships. As I explain in my essay on ultrahumanism, even desirable men are increasingly vulnerable. So please don't hold back. Apply the advice below, and beat them at their own game. You'll do us all good.

1. Diet and exercise.
2. Clothing and fashion.
3. Cosmetics and cosmetic surgery.
4. Hair, skin, and eyes.
5. Motion and posture.
6. The most common misconception about seduction.
7. Personality and individuality.
8. Beauty and aging.
9. The top seven ways to look more attractive.

1. Diet and exercise.

Excess weight harms your appearance and your health. In fact, weight is the single most important element of beauty under your control. But that doesn’t mean anorexia or obsessive dieting are advantageous.

Trolls on the internet will tell attractive women they're overweight just for the joy of causing pain. You need to learn to ignore them and focus on the facts. When men can choose any bodyfat level they want, as in an erotic drawing, they don't choose a skeletal figure. The image below was the most popular drawing of the day on an anime image site.

In erotic drawings and AI-generated images, girls without curves are always depicted as juvenile, never tall and narrow in the manner of fashion models.

Men do prefer a small waist. In fact, smaller is better. However, losing too much weight shrinks your bust, hips, and rear more than your waist, and the overall effect becomes negative. The tradeoff simply isn't worth it. You should avoid losing too much weight even if you have breast implants, because extremely low bodyfat will typically make them look more artificial.

The examples in this article show that a healthy, slim weight is best, but not less. Minimizing bodyfat by undereating won't maximize attractiveness. So if you're already healthy and slim, don't obsess over your weight. Women who weren't born with the potential for a 24-inch waist can't get there through brute force. The optimal weight for attractiveness ultimately depends on your personal bodyfat distribution, not an arbitrary number you can predetermine.

The photo below is instructive. This model has more belly fat than men typically want today. Yet because her chest and hips are much larger than her waist, the net result is attractive even if it's not perfect. A flat model would look plain with the same amount of bodyfat, and should aim for a leaner look. That's why it's impossible to specify the optimal weight for all women in advance. Use the examples in this article as a guide to determine where your own figure looks best.

In case it wasn't already evident, I'll point out explicitly that thigh gaps are not a good target for determining your ideal weight.

An ancestral diet and moderate exercise are enough for most women to maintain a healthy weight. Further specifics about diet are uncertain and likely vary from person to person. Some people seem to benefit from eating more protein and less fat (more lean meats), but others do best eating more fat and less protein (more fatty meats and oils). Some people have a high tolerance for carbs, others low. Some even thrive on a purely carnivorous diet.

To find out what works for you, you’ll have to experiment over a long period of time. Eliminating carbs and seed oils entirely for a few months and then gradually adding them back to your diet is a popular technique for finding the right balance. If you need to lose a lot of weight but you’re not sure where to start, you might want to try this first.

If you struggle with anorexia or body dysmorphia, it's important that you consume regular meals with a good balance of nutrients. Fasting or skipping meals can exacerbate psychological issues and even suppress your appetite, creating a vicious cycle of anxiety and undereating. Eat regularly even if you aren't hungry, and when you find yourself stuck in a mental loop, focus your mind on a distracting activity until it passes. Save the beauty examples from this article and remind yourself that you'll be unattractive if you're too thin.

Exercise is less important to maintain a healthy weight than diet, but still worth some effort. For aesthetic purposes, a brief but intense strength training workout once a week is sufficient.

Even if you dislike and avoid exercise, it's wise to do hip thrusts to improve your rear shape. Extra strength training focused on the glutes is especially advisable for women with a flat rear, but there are limits to what it can accomplish. Models with a large rear may credit it to exercise, but genetics, good weight management, and surgery are the main causes.

2. Clothing and fashion.

Men don't have X-ray vision, so beautiful women in ill-fitted clothes can actually pass unnoticed for years, which is a very sad thing. The best men should be able to think past your clothes, but the truth is most are dumb and only notice what's on display.

Because men have such a strong preference for a small waist, you should always wear clothes that are fitted at the waist, not loose. This is especially true for women with a monarchiste body type. These clothes can be hard to find today, when most of the population is overweight.

Stretch fabrics or elastic bands are an easy shortcut solution, but sometimes a tailor is necessary. Don't skimp. It's well worth the money to have everything altered to match your personal measurements. In fact, wearing clothes off the rack without having them tailored is the most common reason curvaceous women fail to benefit from their gifts.

There are a few exceptions to the rule: very straight and thin women can do well with flowing clothes, and top-heavy women with a relatively thick middle may look best in an empire waist.

If you’re socially anxious and wear baggy or poorly fitted clothes to hide your body even though you have a healthy weight, stop! There are better ways to be modest. Wear snug but high-necked shirts, and long skirts that are tightly fitted at the waist. These look modest but still allow people to notice that you have an attractive figure.

Of course, all things being equal, it’s best to dress to an average degree of modesty in the area where you live, with modifications based on the occasion. You’ll normally have the most success with good men if your clothing is neither particularly modest nor particularly immodest. That said, all things aren't necessarily equal. The sexier you are, the more careful your clothing choices should be.

Most women want to avoid inviting attention from low-quality men while still presenting themselves as desirable mates for high-quality men, and this informs their beauty decisions. Today they typically solve this problem in ways that reduce their overall attractiveness. For instance, maintaining an excessively low bodyweight, and wearing fashionable but unappealing clothing.

This is a poor solution, and it's not the one women chose historically. It may signal class and deter undesirable men seeking quick sex. But in the same blow it reduces your attractiveness to the men you really do want, and reduces the amount of beauty in the world too.

In past times women signaled class with refined manners and elegant clothing that enhanced rather than reduced their feminine beauty. This clothing was designed to emphasize a curvaceous figure without inviting the wrong kind of attention. So while women's default solution today requires a costly tradeoff, their historical solution did not.

Naturally you don't have the power to bring old dresses into style. But that doesn't mean you can't use the historical solution today. By selecting the right clothing instead of flattening your curves, you can deter undesirable men while retaining all of your sex appeal when you undress. You don't need to make yourself plain to filter your suitors.

It's not possible to give instructions for finding the “right” styles that are both precise and universally valid, because standards vary too much from place to place. Below I'll offer a few more general suggestions. But in the end you'll have to rely on your own judgment.

Some traditional, aristocratic dresses are quite low cut. However, with today's less ornate styles a good starting guideline is to assume that the more cleavage you can show, the less you should show. Compensate with a proper fit that displays your silhouette, and avoid resorting to baggy clothes.

You shouldn't apply the guideline strictly, because appropriate fashion always depends on the context. If flatter women around you have plunging necklines or see-through tops, it may be best to compete in kind. Consider your personal goals and use your intelligence and sensitivity to position yourself effectively.

Wearing provocative clothes in private while dressing conservatively in public is an approach that can minimize tradeoffs and let you have it all.

Below are images of the same three glamour models in different outfits. As you can see, it's easy to tone it down or turn it up to suit the context. And that holds no matter how curvaceous your body.

Because men like variety, periodically changing your style may also make it easier to retain or reawaken your mate's attention. That includes both short-term variation between conservative and provocative clothing and occasional long-term shifts in your wardrobe. Note, however, that this has little to do with following current fashion trends.

Contrary to what most beauty magazines, sites, and influencers claim or imply, up-to-the-minute clothing styles aren’t important. The fashion industry makes money by persuading you that you’ll be more beautiful if you buy the newest clothes, but this simply isn’t true.

While it would be odd to go out in your grandmother’s dress, it doesn’t really matter whether you wear this year’s fashions or last year’s. So there's no need to waste time chasing fads.

Men are typically less enthusiastic about formal dresses and unusual fashions than women are. What matters most to them are the fundamentals. If you have a poor fashion sense or little interest, don't worry. Provided you follow the basic guidelines explained in this section, it's perfectly acceptable to wear "normal" clothes and leave it at that. Fit is more important than fashion.

3. Cosmetics and cosmetic surgery.

Cosmetic surgery is more common than you might assume. Once again, everyone lies. Women who’ve had work done normally deny it. Men are ignorant on the topic. They criticize artificiality, then ogle surgically-enhanced models. Men claim to care about “naturalness,” but in practice they’d rather see good results. Watch what people do, not what they say.

Most men prefer a breast size that’s rarely found in nature. In fact, it’s almost impossible to resemble some of the beauty examples in this article through natural means. One in twenty-five women now have implants, a number that’s increased steadily over time, and they’re especially common among glamour models who appeal to men. Today it's likely that the majority of slim women with large breasts have had surgical help.

Why are so many people convinced that cosmetic surgery doesn't work? The worst results are obvious, while the best don't appear surgical at all. Because they stand out the most, people mistakenly assume the worst results are typical. I call this the "gaudy graveyard" fallacy.

I won’t advise you for or against surgery. Weighing the risks is a personal matter. Your health and happiness should come first, and it's up to you to decide how much effort this type of beautification is worth. But the truth is, it usually works. In fact, while you'll never hear anyone admit it, a good boob job is the single most powerful way for a slim woman to increase her sex appeal. (N.B. All linked images in this section are unclothed.)

Well-executed breast augmentations are difficult to distinguish from the real thing. Many of the top search results for “best breasts” are augmented, and some have an openly artificial appearance. For comparison, these vintage centerfolds are excellent reference examples of the best natural breasts.

Men instinctively lie about beauty in general, and about cosmetic surgery in particular. So to learn what they really think about implants I had to resort to deception. I reversed the before and after photos of a breast augmentation and told them it was a reduction. Then I asked which they preferred.

Men chose the augmented breasts over the natural ones by a shocking ratio of more than thirty to one. Many described the big fakes as "perfect," and some even made cruel remarks about the pre-surgery photo. It's true that you can't trust polls to be accurate. But this result is stark and thought-provoking. It also fits our earlier finding that only 2% of men willingly select an A-cup over the alternatives, a number similar to the 3% who enjoy sexualizing children.

The effect of each implant size depends on your starting point as well as your overall body shape, but here you can see common surgical outcomes compared to examples from this article. Contrary to what most people assume, small implants aren’t more convincing than large ones. However, extreme, oversized implants have a distorted shape and should be avoided.

Articles about breast augmentation usually ignore the reality that male preferences extend far above the popular implant size of 400cc. Men's median breast size preference seems roughly equivalent to 800cc. A substantial fraction of men prefer twice that or more. This shouldn't come as a surprise. Women can be even more demanding and judgmental about size than men are.

Since rarity increases with size, it would be advantageous to exceed the average preference to meet the unsatisfied demand. But "bigger is better" only holds as long as you can maintain a good shape. Due to the limitations of current surgical technology, shape quality steadily worsens above about 700ccs. 800cc is the upper limit for reliable surgical results, and for most women it's simply not worth it to push the limit.

This article promotes a naturalistic or too-good-to-be-true look, not an overdone look. Cosmetic surgery shouldn't announce itself as such. While a few men actually fetishize the appearance of excessive surgery and blatantly fake breasts, a much larger number find it distasteful. The difference lies not in the size itself, as women tend to assume, but in the quality of the shape.

For a guide to good shape, refer to this set of examples. The top row shows photos selected by men as exemplifying perfect shape. Note that some (or all) of these are augmented. The rare look at the far right was likely achieved by adding both fat transfer and implants to a naturally substantial bosom. The bottom row shows the shape of breasts on sex dolls. The third sex doll has a combination of size and shape that's impossible in reality.

As you can see, men actually prefer some sag, so you should resist any temptation to request spherical breasts. A high and round look is the hallmark of a poor boob job. Upward-pointing nipples are thought to be advantageous, and can be found on most, but not all, of the linked examples. The author recommends this as a particularly noteworthy example of "perfect" breasts that nearly all men will find attractive.

If your goal is to look as attractive as possible without undue risk, just find a trustworthy plastic surgeon and request the largest size that can be achieved safely in a single surgery—usually around 600cc, though it varies slightly from person to person. This size looks impressive without sacrificing shape.

In practice, many women select smaller implants because they fear excessive attention from men or retaliation from jealous friends. When choosing a size you should consider your personal comfort level, just as you do when choosing clothes. But keep in mind that 300cc implants entail nearly the same costs and risks as 600cc implants, while providing only half the benefits. And some post-op polls suggest most women underestimate the size they want. All things being equal, it's best to choose the larger size.

Narrow hips aren't a good reason to limit yourself to small implants, because the effects of breasts and butts are mainly independent and additive. In other words, 1+1 > 0+1 > 0+0. "Balance" might sound respectable in conversation, but it has relatively little effect on your attractiveness in itself.

The two examples below illustrate the range of possible results. It's often wise to dress with a higher neckline after your surgery.

Nose and eyelid surgeries are also common, and can be very beneficial for some faces. The model at left above has had a nose job as well as a breast augmentation. Lip fillers seem to be best in moderation. The lips at right above are overkill, and likely done that way because they pop out on Instagram.

Since large breasts are about twice as popular as large rears in most of the world, butt augmentation will provide a lower return on your investment than breast augmentation, and you should therefore give it a lower priority. I'm not going to discuss less popular surgeries or non-surgical procedures, but the omission isn't intended to imply they don't work. My purpose here is to correct widespread misconceptions, not to provide a complete guide to cosmetic surgery.

This article may be dedicated to refuting beauty lies. However, at present there's still a social stigma surrounding cosmetic procedures in some parts of the world. So if you live in one of these regions and opt for surgery, it may be prudent to lie about it. You can shift the blame for this little crime to the author. I don't mind.

In the future improved medical techniques will surely replace the current ones. But where your body is concerned, innovations need to be treated with caution. Their long-term effects may be unknown. If you choose to use new or recently developed cosmetic technologies, please do your research first.

Today’s professional glamour models take advantage of a wide array of procedures that are impractical for the average woman. Typically they won’t admit this in public. You shouldn’t assume you can afford to duplicate their results. And trying to do too much increases the risk something will go wrong. When in doubt, it's wise to use moderation.

Some women are strangely offended by the assertion that plastic surgery works. They shouldn't be. It means you have the power to change your body if and when you want to. Whatever you decide, the option is liberating.

You might be surprised, but studies actually show that cosmetic surgery provides lasting increases to happiness. The biggest gains come from breast surgery. However, studies can be wrong, so if you’re considering a procedure, talk first to trustworthy women who have gone through with it. Ask them if they’re glad they did, and ask your doctor to explain the risks. Men tend to give dishonest or uninformed answers, so in most cases you’re better off not listening to them.

Men’s ignorance about makeup is similar to their ignorance about surgery. Don’t be misled. Those who claim to prefer women without makeup actually prefer “natural-looking” makeup, but don’t realize it. The reality is that all women look better in makeup. Men's beauty advice is sometimes hard to distinguish from sabotage.

Fortunately you can get most of the benefits with a simple and efficient routine that doesn’t require hours every day. Makeup techniques are best learned from instructional videos, so I won't go into any detail here.

Heavy Instagram-style makeup is meant to be effective when viewed on a small phone screen. To avoid looking clownish, make sure to tone it down for real life. The example below is wearing a little too much eyeshadow.

A beauty mistake often seen in fashion advertising is using cosmetic contouring and even buccal fat removal to create or enhance the appearance of hollow cheeks. Like much of high fashion, this has a masculinizing effect worsened by excessively low bodyfat. Tastes do vary, especially where faces are concerned. But most men prefer full cheeks. You can confirm this by reexamining the images in the faces section.

4. Hair, skin, and eyes.

The chart below shows the distribution of different hair colors at a major sex doll retailer.

Blonde and red hair are both overrepresented compared to their frequency in the general population. So if you intend to dye your hair, you should consider these first.

However, the best hair color will ultimately depend on your complexion. The famous faces most frequently submitted to my faces survey are actually framed by dark hair. Note that strange colors like pink or blue are quite unpopular outside an artistic context.

Hair length is far more important to men than hair color. Not a single beauty example above has short hair! This isn’t an accident. Almost all men dislike short hair. It was nearly absent from their submissions to my favorite faces study.

Below you can see the thirty standard hairstyle options one sex doll manufacturer offers with their full-body dolls. Styles descending below the breasts occur the most frequently. Most women can increase their attractiveness by wearing their hair longer. You may even want to consider growing it out to waist length.

Of course, there's some individual variability. A bob can look good on the right person. But it’s a mistake to cut your hair shorter. There are hardly any exceptions to this rule. If you've been considering a short hairstyle, please stop.

Classic paintings almost never depict beautiful women with a tan. Women once wore broad-brimmed hats and carried parasols to avoid it. Reader selections for best breast and butt shape are either untanned or lightly tanned, AI girls are untanned more often than not, and tanning is even less common among popular anime girls. However, tanned and untanned skin occur with similar frequency among sex dolls, and uncensored search results display a diverse range of skin tones.

The data is thus mixed and inconclusive, with evidence against tanning slightly outweighing evidence in its favor. It appears to serve as a fashion signal whose intrinsic effect on feminine beauty is neutral at best, and potentially negative.

You can decide whether and how much to tan based on local conditions and fashions, as well as your personal style. But despite its popularity, there's no firm basis to recommend sunbathing for aesthetic purposes. Since excessive sun exposure accelerates aging and tanning is unlikely to have a significant positive effect on your appearance, the default choice should be to avoid exposing your skin to any more sun than is necessary for good health. Heavy tan lines from sunbathing in bikinis have an especially unfortunate effect, and are best avoided.

If you're very pale and have no tan at all, don't let anyone tell you it makes your skin looks plain and sickly. This view is not supported by contemporary evidence, and it's strongly contradicted by historical representations of beauty.

Because people generally perceive brighter colors as prettier than brown, it's natural to assume blue and green eyes are more attractive than brown eyes. However, the data doesn't clearly support this view.

Individual men do sometimes prefer a particular eye color. Yet the frequency of eye colors in sex dolls matches the frequency of eye colors in the population, implying it's a neutral trait on the group level. Academic studies also indicate that colorful eyes provide no advantage. Well-publicized research claiming otherwise is sponsored by companies that sell contact lenses, and of dubious quality.

It's still possible that some colors are more attractive than others. But the advantage is likely small, and overwhelmed by other factors. There's thus no particular need to change your eye color with contact lenses. Nor is there any harm in doing so if it suits your mood.

Nevertheless, certain eye colors combine well with certain cosmetic, clothing, and hair colors to create a pleasant overall effect, and this does tend to work better with light eyes. For instance, a green scarf will bring out green eyes. So if you have light-colored eyes, take advantage of them.

5. Motion and posture.

An attractive woman is more attractive when moving. Some otherwise beautiful women remain very stiff and still. This is a mistake that makes them less appealing. The effect of movement is so strong that many readers will consider the images in this section pornographic, even though they're clothed and no more revealing than those seen earlier in the article. It's impossible to cover the topic properly without such images, which is why no one else does. To provide you with the most useful and accurate information on feminine beauty, I'll go where others fear to tread. If you think they might bother you, please skip to the next section now.

A few women have an excellent intuition for attractive motions. They'll find it ridiculous to hear them spelled out in instructions. But the reality is that the majority of women need to learn. Because of prudishness, conventional beauty advice doesn't explain thoroughly. Men typically aren't aware either, because a good performance creates the illusion of natural spontaneity. They don't spend time to consider that the girls they see on the internet have been coached and rehearsed. And there's nothing wrong with rehearsing. With a little practice, you can create the same illusion.

A small sway as you walk can have a powerful effect on men, especially if your posture is good. A bounce can show off your chest or rear. The example above shows how you can incorporate these into your gait. You don't need extravagant curves for this. Modest curves are enough.

High heels encourage a bouncing and swaying gait, so to look your best you should wear them whenever you can. Some advise a minimum of three inches, but even two will have a beneficial effect.

I recommend you always walk with a feminine gait. This will support the illusion that it's natural and unstudied. And if anyone remarks on it, you should steadfastly maintain that it's "just the way I walk." Match the amount of sway and bounce to the occasion. It's important to use moderation in daily life to ensure you attract the right kind of attention. The minimum dose is the safest, and there's nothing wrong with conservative poise and elegance. In a dance club or behind closed doors, on the other hand, you can be more liberal.

Whether you're walking, standing, or kneeling, the most basic type of attractive motion is a shake or bounce that shows off your curves by causing them to change direction on a slight lag to the rest of your body. This can be done subtly, as in the left image below, or overtly, as in the right image. It goes without saying that the latter is best reserved for private use, but the concept is exactly the same.

The twerking movement being rehearsed in slow motion at the center below is now practiced by large groups in gyms or dance studios. The example shown here is fine. But caution is in order. Despite its popularity, this mass of asses moving with an athletic and almost masculine forcefulness seems grotesque to some men. The left and right images demonstrate that violent movements aren't necessary to be seductive.

Men's critical remarks about strippers and the like may discourage you from trying to copy these examples. But don't take this disdain the wrong way. Context is often what makes the difference between trashy and sexy.

You shouldn't be afraid to use the movements shown here in private. The fraction of men who will react badly is quite small, while the fraction of men who want to see them but feel awkward about asking is much larger. If you cede them to paid entertainers you'll only give the latter more power over men than they deserve. That's not morally pure. In fact, it hurts all of us. So don't be trapped by a misguided sense of shame. In the proper context it's morally righteous to be as sexy as possible.

The main thing good examples have in common is an impression of ease and fluidity. However, even timid motions can be more attractive than stillness, and they sometimes have a charming naivete, as in the right and left images above. A lighthearted mood and sense of fun will help to excuse any initial clumsiness. What you should avoid above all is giving the impression that your movements are an unpleasant obligation that doesn't flow from self-expression. Every woman pictured here visibly enjoys putting on a show, including the awkward one at above right and the demure girl shown earlier biting her sweater. This is quite important.

If you're flat and thin with narrow hips, displays of elegance or youthful agility may prove more effective than the type of movement shown above. These are harder to execute and difficult to characterize in writing. Note that runway models aren't reliable exemplars for imitation, because their gaits are sometimes rather aggressive. This is intended to impress you with their confidence so you buy their clothes, not to look good to men.

This is only a small selection from the wide variety of possible movements. It's intended to be a reliable starting point, not a comprehensive encyclopedia. It consists of time-tested images that have ranked near the top of internet search results for years or even decades, and are thus likely to have the broadest and most enduring appeal to men. Nevertheless, better quality examples can be found elsewhere.

I recommend you seek out popular, high-quality videos of attractive women with a similar body type and study the way they move in different contexts. Solo videos like the two below will be especially instructive. Pay attention to those with a style and mood you like. Then adapt their movements to work for you. Don't try to put together a dance routine. Simple is best, and many videos may be too involved. You'll have to do some experimentation to learn what works in real life. Be aware that men do vary a little in which motions they prefer to see.

You'll get the fastest results by practicing in a mirror or on video. Start by imitating your favorite from the images here, and repeat until your own video matches the model. When it does, you'll be confident you're looking good. You can learn each motion in just minutes, or a few hours at most. That's a better return for your time than any other beauty technique. What feels artificial at first will eventually become second nature. If you have a partner you feel comfortable with, you can present the search for his favorite motion as a humorous game where you playfully demonstrate various alternatives. This creates a low-pressure means to figure out what he really likes and improve your technique.

If you're too shy to use any of these motions yet, try gradually introducing sway into your gait as described earlier. Increase it a little each week from an almost imperceptible starting point so no one notices the change. This should help to break the ice. Then you can move on to using subtle movements like this one.

Facial expressions, and especially expressive eye motions, can also make a valuable contribution. So do remember to pay attention to the eyes when you watch example videos. When possible you should look your partner continually in the eye while you perform these movements, without, of course, expecting him to maintain eye contact in return.

If you have a particularly youthful face you can win hearts by making a show of cute and girlish mannerisms. This will fall flat unless you're the appropriate type, so evaluate yourself honestly before you try it. Neoteny has lower durability than any other aspect of beauty. By contrast, most of the motions shown previously are still effective for fit middle-aged women.

It's true that sophisticated traditional dances are more beautiful and more impressive than any of the movements shown in this article. But while they require more skill, they don't achieve better results in today's environment. People may be impressed by ballroom dancing, but being impressed and actually caring are not the same thing.

Because there's so little hard data on motion preferences, I asked men to rate all the images in this section. You can see the results in the galleries below, presented in order of popularity.

These results require important caveats beyond the usual warning about surveys. Men aren't good at separating motions from models, so one should always assume they're rating both. And the votes show which images are most popular, not which are best. Your lover may not share the majority tastes. That's why experimentation is indispensable.

Where rear motions are concerned, the raw popularity scores are particularly misleading. As explained previously, men disagree about which butt size is best, and around a third prefer large. So when a third of men rate a big butt motion "very attractive," that's a good score, because it implies all of the men who like big butts like the motion. If you have one, don't be afraid to use it.

The great appeal of a well-executed feminine gait is worth highlighting again. Nearly everyone likes it, hardly anyone dislikes it, and you can even use it in public, making it one of the best tools at your disposal.

Before moving on to the next section I'll take a moment to address posture. Common sense already dictates that you should follow the normal rules of good posture. For instance, hunching your shoulders inward is a widespread error you should take care to avoid, especially if you're well endowed. But the less familiar posture shown below is also an important one to learn.

Men prefer to see the rear curled outward and upward, with a concave curve in the lower back, and as a rule erotic drawings and photos present it that way even if no sexual activity is implied, regardless of whether the figure is sitting or standing. Look again at the earlier examples and you'll see it repeated over and over, whenever the perspective is from behind. High heels encourage this position, which is yet another reason to wear them.

The same principle holds in a bent position. It's more attractive to curl your rear out and pull your lower back inward than to do the reverse. This posture can become rather lewd when it's exaggerated, so as usual, you'll have to be sensitive to the context.

The above example is rather obvious. Below you can see a subtler error that's very common. The posture on the right is much more attractive than the posture on the left, and indispensable in the bedroom. So practice until you do it correctly without thinking about it.

Movement and posture can give you a real advantage over stiff women who look prettier than you in a photo. Not to mention sex dolls. They're free, easy to learn, and offer substantial benefits to women of all types. So don't just lie back and think of England. Put your beauty in motion.

As I'll explain in the next section, it's especially attractive to move and pose on your own initiative, without waiting for your partner to prompt you. This applies to subtle and frank motions alike.

6. The most common misconception about seduction.

A course in seduction would be beyond the scope of this article, but one simple point is worthy of mention.

A common myth is that women are most attractive when they're passive and submissive. This is not the case. While always being forward is too masculine and submissiveness is often desirable, consistent passivity is unexciting. It raises no questions and elicits no interest. To be seductive you should mix forwardness and passivity in the correct proportions.

I'll draw your attention to some familiar evidence. The most common titillation scene in movies and television aimed at men is simply an attractive woman undressing without being asked. In fact, it's much more common than a man undressing her or asking her to undress, let alone forcing her to do so. This is not an accident. Men don't find passive submission optimally attractive, and they prefer enthusiastic partners over unwilling ones.

Academic research on fantasies, pornography statistics, and an analysis of popular fiction all support the idea that violence and power dynamics aren't important erotic triggers for the majority of men. Much like women, men want to be wanted. And this shouldn't be a surprise, because a partner who wants you is always more reliable, and therefore more valuable, than a partner who doesn't.

If you reexamine the erotic imagery in the previous section, you'll notice women are always presented as warm and inviting and in a state of arousal or pleasure, never cold, hostile, resistant, or indifferent. Acting cold and hostile and waiting for men to conquer you is rarely an effective approach, and the longer a relationship endures, the more counterproductive it becomes. Evincing a low sex drive reduces your sex appeal too, and likely to an even greater extent.

Enthusiasm is inherently more attractive than reticence. So much so that men fantasize about women who are unrealistically enthusiastic. However, this doesn't mean immediately giving men everything they want is a good idea. Part of seduction is about being elusive, and it's harmful to be too easy too soon. People don't value things they obtain too readily. After you've created interest, allow it time to grow in his mind. A little hunger is the best spice.

Consider the stereotypical seductress, often a villain. She will flirt, then play hard to get, disappear, and then suddenly appear and drop her clothes, and the male will find her unexpected forwardness irresistible. In contrast, the slut will throw herself at anyone without hesitation, and the boring girl will quietly do nothing.

These stereotypes have a lesson to teach us. By adopting a flirtatious and coy attitude, using subtle motions to draw attention to your body, and punctuating passivity and elusiveness with frank sexual displays, you can use your beauty to maximum effect. The right combination of push and pull will both confuse and excite men.

In the early stages it's best to tempt him subtly and then wait for him to pursue. But contrary to what you may have heard, frank sexual advances initiated by women are highly beneficial in the context of a relationship, and can completely change men's attitude toward you. You'll be the hot girlfriend instead of the cute but boring one. And that makes your relationship more likely to endure.

Your lover will confirm this if you ask him. But I recommend you don't. Good communication is normally important. However, when it comes to demonstrating enthusiasm, a premeditated or businesslike attitude would dampen the effect. If you've long been passive in an established relationship, you can justify the change by first complaining about an unusually strong hormonal cycle. Buy some chocolate, leave it on the counter, and then act emotional about something unimportant. Afterwards your behavior will seem spontaneous and natural.

A simple way to begin is to partly undress, and then tempt him with one of the less vigorous movements suitable for your body type. While playing hard to get isn't good idea in an established relationship, you can still build anticipation through other means. For instance, titillate him when time or circumstances don't allow for escalation, and then resume later.

Don't be cold toward your lover because you're afraid of seeming slutty. It's true that men value promiscuous women less, and that being too forward with strangers will invite distrust. But what men want in the long run is faithfulness and exclusivity, not coldness or indifference. These are not the same. In fact, if you're too cold they're more likely to stray to women who apply the ideas just presented. Don't wait for them to tell you so, because it's unlikely they ever will. And remember that it's morally good to be sexy.

You may be troubled to know that a large majority of men have fantasies involving multiple partners. Yet as mentioned earlier, it's possible to simulate variety and multiplicity by periodically making significant changes to your clothing, makeup, and hair. Gradual, minor alterations will have little effect, because the purpose is to look like a “new” woman. Men's taste for variety is strong enough that even cutting your hair short, one of the worst beauty mistakes you can make, will briefly increase your lover's interest. Fortunately there are innumerable better ways to vary your style that can make seduction easier in a lasting relationship.

I've described seduction in broad strokes using many rough generalizations, and it's up to you to work out the specifics. Not all men have the same tastes. Experiment, then judge your success by his reactions. As with attractive motions, the short-term risk of embarrassment or awkwardness is more than justified by the long-term benefits you'll enjoy after you get it right.

7. Personality and individuality.

As far as beauty is concerned, your personality doesn't matter very much. This article isn't a complete guide to life or relationships, so if you want to read about personality in a larger context you should look elsewhere. However, you might first ask yourself whether beautiful girls with bland personalities, or even terrible character, really struggle to catch the mates they want.

The vast majority of us prefer a physically attractive lover with character flaws to an ugly angel. This is an uncomfortable truth we do our best to ignore. But it's actually a good thing. It implies that you don't need to distort your personality or pretend to be someone else to find love. You're free to be yourself.

Women who bring up personality when the topic is beauty are often afraid they can't compete on appearance alone. Shifting the discussion to personality allows them to surreptitiously change the game to one they think they can win. Since the scorekeeping is nebulous, at least they know they can't lose. And as a bonus, they seem "nice" (the most common motive for dishonesty).

This clever trick is counterproductive here, because our goal is to improve your appearance, not measure your value as a human. When you're learning to swim you shouldn't excuse the flaws in your stroke by bragging about unrelated skills.

Nevertheless, even on a purely visual level, expressing your personality does help a little. More importantly, it makes it easier for the right mate to find you.

It's not necessary to develop a completely individual style, especially below the neck. And while the unique features of your face will often determine which men are interested and which aren't, they're largely out of your control. So get the basics right with the generic beauty techniques we've discussed above, then add some touches of character in the details. You can do this with clothing choices, accessories, or even makeup.

Personality and individuality may have limited relevance to beauty, but this doesn't imply that all women should conform to a single ideal. Appealing to a minority taste can work too. Remember, it doesn't matter if most men are indifferent to you as long as some of them value you highly.

At times the right strategy is simply to make the best of what you already have. But don’t use this as an excuse to neglect basics or maintain unhealthy habits.

8. Beauty and aging.

No one seriously doubts women are more beautiful when they’re younger. However, the claim that they hit a "wall" at thirty and suddenly turn ugly isn't true. It’s possible for older women to remain attractive, so you shouldn’t give up just because you reach a certain age.

The techniques I’ve mentioned in this article work for older women just as well as younger women, and may even offer older women greater benefits. Careful attention to diet and exercise is essential. Of course, makeup and surgery also help.

The most common beauty mistake among women over forty is adopting a short hairstyle for a “fresh and youthful look.” This almost invariably has the opposite effect. Don't dabble in androgyny when your fertility is fading. Short hair makes middle-aged women look older.

Some claim that curves don’t age well. This is a myth. In fact, youthful skin is the least durable element of attractiveness. Because your other assets diminish faster, your basic silhouette is responsible for an increasing fraction of your sex appeal over time. That means curves actually become more valuable as you age, provided you avoid or correct sagging. For the same reason, breast implants (and breast lifts) are especially useful for older women. Here's an admirable example.

Nevertheless, there are limits to what can be achieved today, and it’s important to be realistic. Creams and lotions currently advertised as rejuvenating have little real effect. Surgery can’t truly reverse aging, and trying too hard to erase the years will do more harm than good. Only genuine rejuvenation technology will get that job done.

Rejuvenation medicine is more plausible than it might sound. Because aging is simply an accumulation of damage, reversing it is no different in principle to repairing an old car. Of course, the cellular machinery in our skin is far more sophisticated than an engine, so the task is quite difficult. But we'll accomplish it one day. And if demand is vocal enough, that day may even come soon enough for you to benefit. Public advocacy for rejuvenation research is a great way to help. I explain further here.

For now, however, no woman looks better at forty than at twenty-five. And while you age, the most eligible males are snatched away by other women. If you want the best long-term partner you can get, you shouldn’t waste time. Those who tell you otherwise don’t have your interests at heart. Find him sooner rather than later, then use modern technology and good health practices to retain your beauty longer.

9. The top seven ways to look more attractive.

To summarize, here's a simplified checklist of the seven most effective ways to look more attractive. These may seem obvious, but hardly any women cover them all.

Start at the top and work down. Points 1, 4, 5, and 6 will help develop or enhance an hourglass shape. Points 2, 3, and 7 will take care of the rest.

Since seven is a more auspicious number than eight, I've listed motion as a bonus point. It actually has a multiplicative effect on all the others. Fear of seeming ridiculous during the learning curve prevents most women from taking what's actually an easy win, and perhaps the lowest-hanging fruit in the realm of feminine beauty. If you persist a short while and get it right, men won't be able to look away.

Some women may feel uncomfortable to see implants included here. But breast augmentation can be one of the most effective beauty interventions. Omitting it from the list to make readers feel more comfortable would go against the high-minded principles that motivate this article.

You can go beyond these seven points, of course. But you'll quickly run into diminishing returns. One of the most common beauty mistakes is to obsess over irrelevancies. Conventional beauty advice reinforces this mistake by encouraging you to worry about details that don't matter so you buy stuff that doesn't help.

I've kept it simple for good reason. Get the basics right and don't stress about the rest.

XII. Answering objections.

Here I'll directly answer the most common objections to this article. If you're already in agreement, you may want to skip to the next section.

1. “This article objectifies women.”

“The objectification of women” is a harmful meme we should all reject. Why? Because it uses the word “objectify” to conflate two distinct concepts.

1. Being treated like an inanimate thing (dehumanization)
2. Being perceived and acted on by a subject

1 is bad, but 2 can be good. The meme's payload is to denigrate 2 by association with 1.

Because many women enjoy being perceived and acted on, conflating this with dehumanization sets a psychological trap for them. It persuades them that they ought to have moral objections to their own enjoyment, and that conventional relations of male and female are inherently bad.

There's nothing morally wrong with appealing to the male gaze. And you're not psychologically defective if you enjoy it. So when you want to criticize dehumanization, do it explicitly instead of spreading the "objectification" meme. This meme actually hurts women.

Finally, the purpose of this article is to empower women by offering them the truth. Not to dehumanize them. Any reader smarter than a sex doll should be able to understand that I've presented dolls and anime girls as useful examples of men's visual preferences, not as a recommendation to be vapid. Beautiful, intelligent, wholesome, human, and an object of desire: yes, it's really possible to be all these things at once.

2. “Your conclusions are obvious.” And, “Your conclusions are wrong.”

I agree that some of the conclusions are obvious. Indeed, the first words of this article are, “The facts about feminine beauty are simple and intuitive, even obvious.” However, things that are obvious to some aren't obvious to others. I receive a large volume of negative and even hateful comments denying any of it is true. Most of it includes slander directed at me personally. I'll tell this story in detail so you can understand just why beauty lies are so persistent.

Naive readers might find it hard to believe that a single free article, purportedly written in this highly aesthetic font by an Oriental sex slaver, could really provide more accurate and useful information about feminine beauty than the totality of previously published academic research (generated at a cost to the public of eight figures in professorial salaries). Yet in an age dominated by liars, incompetents, and frauds, could it really be otherwise?

The public objects to my obvious conclusions vociferously. They can get nasty! If you haven't experienced it firsthand, you can't imagine the amount of hate I'm subjected to for sharing the information you've just read. Many girls seem to believe that denigrating me, willfully misrepresenting my writing, or suppressing my data will make them more beautiful. (It won't.) Opposition has been so consistently fierce that I regret having wasted my time on a subject that's brought me so much trouble and so little personal benefit instead of pursuing my many other interests.

Journalists can be worse still, as the example below makes clear. This offended journalist jumped straight into ad hominems without bothering to read more than a few lines of my writing. She dug up a months-old joke and used it to misrepresent my work to over 600,000 people, and ignored many requests to correct the record. She went on to attack my novels despite reading no further than the chapter titles, telling the public they're erotica when they're actually comedy, as any intelligent reader can verify in a few minutes. All because I provide evidence men like more curves than she has. Pretty lies might not make you pretty, but that doesn't mean ugly lies work any better.

Censors, however, are not to be outdone. After a set of social media posts summarizing my "obvious" conclusions began to go viral, content moderators shadowbanned them to prevent their spread. Even links to this article have been removed repeatedly. New accounts under new names did nothing to escape the pattern. Explicit pornography and extreme politics are demonstrably less suppressed than my writing on beauty.

Today's professional censors leave unpopular dissent alone to create the illusion of free speech. But when ideas they dislike begin to catch on, they manipulate procedural outcomes to tip the scales against their dissemination and favor their own cherished causes instead. For instance, through the inconsistent application of vague rules. By maintaining plausible deniability in this fashion they can shape society invisibly and pass off the result as the will of the public.

Corporate employees aren't the most important censors. Social media algorithms are set up in a way that allows a collective to silence ideas they don't like by downvoting, blocking, and reporting them. This can be exploited by a formal organization using a network of bots, or by randoms acting in aggregate. Are there really women out there so petty that they'd downvote, block, and report accurate information just for making them feel less attractive? To ask the question is to answer it.

To irrefutably debunk the claim that my conclusions are obvious and everyone already agrees with them, the gallery below comprises the complete and unedited reaction to this article on a popular beauty forum. No, I don't expect you to read it all. I'm posting it here as a matter of public record. The chart shows the fraction of upvotes for positive, neutral, and negative comments. The woman who originally shared the link was shamed into deleting it, and later reposts were removed by moderators.

Fallacious reasoning, misplaced vanity, dishonesty, deception, defamation, and an overpowering urge to torture and execute the messenger are all on vivid display among my critics. And with tactics like those, who could lose?

Because we don't compare notes on taboo topics, there can be huge gaps in knowledge that we aren't aware of. These gaps reduce our collective quality of life. So the obvious needs to be stated. And not all of the conclusions in this article are entirely obvious.

Much of the analysis I've presented is entirely novel. Most women really don't know some of the key facts explained above. If they did, there'd be no reason to resort to censorship, manipulation, and deceit to conceal them. And when an attractive gait can be learned within a day but is hardly ever seen on the street, it's reasonable to conclude that few women have fully assimilated the truth about feminine beauty.

3. “Normal men don't buy sex dolls or look at anime girls. So, your conclusions are invalid.” And, “Normal women don't buy dildos. So, they prove nothing about the size women really prefer.”

It's true that most men don't buy sex dolls. But it's not true that the men who do buy them have aesthetic tastes that differ dramatically from the rest. Read carefully. The data from many sources confirms the same basic conclusions. These sources include not only sex dolls, cartoons, and AI girls, but also statues, paintings, search results, centerfolds, stereotypes, and common sense.

If you're grasping for excuses to dismiss all of it, you're rationalizing because you don't like the answer. And if the median sex doll (shown in this section) seems like an abnormal vision of feminine beauty to you, you ought to take a step back and think harder.

4. “The love goddess examples in this article are cherry-picked, and they don't prove anything about today.”

Historical representations of feminine beauty aren't random. In fact, they show a definite pattern. As we've discussed, it's not hard to find variations and exceptions. But if you latch on to exceptions and pretend they're the rule, you're making a mistake.

Nevertheless, we live in the present, not the past. Although historical archetypes of beauty can occident us in the right general direction, the contemporary data is more relevant and more reliable. And this contemporary data supports our conclusions.

5. “This entire article is about how men like big boobs, but I don't have/want/like them, therefore you're totally wrong, and also evil. They don't matter at all. Delete your website right now.”

Would you be this angry if I said men like girls with large ears?

No. You wouldn't.

But why not?

6. “You write too positively about makeup, implants, and other cosmetic surgery.”

Beauty isn't a game with rules. But if it were, "cheat to win" would be good advice. Anything less is an unforced surrender to genetic luck.

Breast augmentation is extremely common in glamour models, and more common in the general population than most people suspect. The large majority of women with implants are glad they have them, but keep quiet because of the social stigma. In an article that aims at the truth, it's entirely correct to write positively.

A good set of large implants can give you a substantial advantage, because a significant fraction of men are obsessed with big breasts. They're too polite to tell you.

The primary material reason not to go under the knife is the risk of complications or a botched surgery. This risk is real, and it has to be weighed individually. That's why I highlight successful cosmetic surgery, but stop short of recommending it for all women.

7. “The beauty standard described in this article is heteronormative.”

I'm concerned with determining the facts about straight men's tastes and the most effective techniques to satisfy them. Not with enforcing or subverting norms. How you use this information is up to you. You might be surprised to learn that transsexuals intent on duplicating men's ideal female body have supported my work here much more warmly than the average woman to whom it was originally addressed.

Most heterosexual women today would be unwilling to accept and profit from the strongest conceivable evidence that straight men consider the figure above ideal. Instead they chase fashionable beauty standards shaped in large part by gay men. Perhaps they too secretly wish to be trans?

8. “You claim all men like the same thing, but I don't like that thing, your article is wrong, you are dumb.”

No, I explicitly and repeatedly state otherwise. This is what it looks like when all men like the same thing:

And this is what it looks like when men like different things:

This article is intended for intelligent people with good reading comprehension and the ability to understand bar charts, as well as the logic of supply and demand. If you do not meet these criteria, please find a simpler beauty article to read instead of criticizing one you can't follow.

9. “This article is just an elaborate justification of your personal tastes.”

While some of the illustrations have been arbitrarily chosen by the author, the data has not. The reasoning is objective and honest, and applies generally. If you dislike particular models you can indulge in an ad hominem. But it's not that easy to dismiss the conclusions.

And in point of fact, many of the photos were submitted by readers. They don't necessarily represent the author's tastes.

10. “No one believes you and this article isn't helping anyone. Are you just trying to be mean?”

There are two groups who readily accept the truth. The first is men. The second is women who are already very attractive. Both of these groups have firsthand knowledge that what people publicly claim is beautiful isn't what men actually respond to. They're happy to read a coherent explanation of the reality they already see.

However, this article aims to help smart and open-minded women of average attractiveness, as well as women who are victims of an eating disorder. If you're one of these women you may have trouble accepting the truth, even if you recognize it subconsciously.

It actually doesn't matter if you accept the data I've presented. Besides, we all know long arguments can obscure the truth as easily as they can reveal it. What does matter is whether acting on the claims increases your success with men and your quality of life. So keep an open mind and a pragmatic attitude, and try the beauty tips above, starting with those that require the smallest investment and the minimum risk. They will help, and that's the important thing.

11. What is the “monarchiste” body type?

The monarchiste body type is a voluptuous and pronounced hourglass. The term was inspired by a real woman who resembled the model below, and described herself as a monarchiste awaiting the restoration.

This body type is still very popular with men. It was once common in paintings and considered the pinnacle of feminine beauty. But it's particularly ill-served by current fashions. Monarchistes today often dress badly and underestimate their own attractiveness. To rectify this situation, it's worth singling them out for praise with an amusing and historically resonant term.

12. “I want to be a trophy wife in a social circle of wealthy status-seekers. Shouldn't I copy the high-status look promoted by today's media and fashion world instead of the 'truth' you write about?”

Probably. But look out for your husband's secretary. You should also ask yourself if a man who'd marry a status symbol instead of a woman he's actually attracted to is really the kind of man you want. As time wears on, your desire for him may not survive the nagging thought that he's emasculated himself just to impress others of his social class.

Some of today's elites are trapped in a negative-sum game where they sacrifice beauty to win status points. This game is refereed by fashion and art critics in places like New York and Milan. I explain how the process works in my companion article "Against Good Taste." Whether you should participate in this negative-sum game is ultimately a question for you to decide. My aim here is to make the truth about feminine beauty explicit, not to make your life choices for you.

Appendix: survey results.

As I explained in the very first section, beauty surveys are unreliable. I've cited them above only in rare cases where I could find no other source of information to answer an important question. You shouldn't interpret this inclusion as a confident endorsement, but a tentative fallback.

Logic and solid evidence flow unnoticed through a sewer. Because they're more popular on social media than better sources, it was necessary to use polls for promotion, along with a vivid presentation style that increased visibility. These promotional polls may confirm my conclusions, but they by no means serve as their basis. For your entertainment, I provide a selection below. Most reached an audience that greatly exceeded my own following, until shadowbanning made it futile to continue.

The trio of polls below show that runway models are barely more attractive to men than impossibly extreme physiques. Men may date them as status symbols, but few actually like them.

I also asked men to rate reader-submitted photos of the most attractive large breasts for shape, ignoring size. Several days later I asked which they believed were fake. I'll share the result to satisfy your curiosity, with no guarantee of accuracy.

Respondents judged about half of the best-shaped breasts in the world to be fake. What's the true number? You're welcome to make your own guess. Men's top choice in my best butt shape survey (at center) was actually photoshopped, which says a lot about the true value of naturalness.

Afterword

Perverse social dynamics mean that beauty lies will always persist to some degree. But by sharing this article you can help to spread the truth, and help more women to look their best. That’s good for men and women alike. So if you know someone who might benefit from learning the truth about feminine beauty, please send them a link, or better yet, be brave and post one on your social media account. Feel free to include the eye-catching infographics below, or the even more eye-catching "perfect shape" infographic here.

If you're a male and don't feel comfortable explaining to women what you find attractive, just show them this article instead. And if you need to maintain an air of respectability, share it with a critical comment like, “This piece gets all the facts about feminine beauty right but still somehow totally misses the big picture,” and then go on to explain how you actually prefer average-looking girls. Or, denigrate the article's author as an untrustworthy character while admitting with feigned reluctance that the claims are accurate.

The feminine desire to be beautiful and the masculine desire to possess that beauty are basic human drives that should draw men and women together. Yet today liars and profiteers are manipulating them to drive the sexes apart. While the beauty industry and the media lure women toward a false representation of beauty cleverly designed to play on their vanity and ambitions, the sex industry is filling the resulting gap by selling men an empty simulacrum of possession. The foundations of love are being crowded out on both sides.

Unfortunately, the reasoned examination you've read here isn't enough to correct beauty lies on a larger scale. Women's intuitions about feminine beauty are based on the gradual, unconscious assimilation of social cues. By showing young women a vast quantity of fake social cues that are designed to be psychologically potent, modern media has broken their intuitions. It's similar to holding a magnet near a compass.

Only a small minority of women are capable of setting aside these broken intuitions, and their pride, to arrive at the truth. To help the deluded majority a massive social movement would be necessary, strong enough to outweigh both the persuasive power of modern media and the everyday lies men tell for convenience. It would have to rely on propagandistic methods like repetition and signaling, not reason. Such a movement is unlikely to arise any time soon.

And perhaps it's for the best if it never does. The love and lust that surge up from deep within us are the most audible cries of truth in a society dominated by respectable liars. The truth, you see, hasn't agreed to be respectable in all cases; but the respectable have. So it's fitting that they go through life miming a simulacrum of eros, while beauty remains to the rest of us an open secret, whose querulous call awakens us too to other, quieter truths.

It may be irritating to watch people stubbornly clinging to beauty lies, but keep in mind that you can turn their errors to your advantage. You might even consider this, dear female readers, your induction to a secret society.

Today women are taught that it's wrong to make any effort to please the "male gaze." But the male gaze is the most practically important yardstick for feminine beauty. Women who recognize this and learn what men find attractive have an opportunity to snatch the best mates away from their competitors and build stronger, happier, more lasting relationships.

The first and most difficult step is to accept and acknowledge your own faults with good grace. Very few can do this! Then, while other women succumb to illusions and narcissistic delusions, you can get ahead by making use of the information I've presented here. You don't need to convince anyone with words. Men will react to true beauty instinctively—and you'll win the game that really matters.

Good luck, dear female readers. And now that you’re prepared for your new life as an odalisque, it’s time to travel to the Orient!

For the remarkable tale of my wicked rise to almost absolute power, including bonus tips for the plundering and profitable resale of Occidental virgins, read my comic novel Memoirs of an Evil Vizier. You may also enjoy my article on beauty lies in the art world: Against Good Taste.

Also by J. Sanilac

An Introduction to My Music

Memoirs of an Evil Vizier

Trust Networks: How We Actually Know Things

Ultrahumanism: How We Can All Win

Critique of the Mind-Body Problem

End Attached Garages Now

A Pragmatical Analysis of Religious Beliefs

Against Good Taste

Amor Fatty

Milgram Questions