Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with sexualattraction

Do people react differently to information from those who are attractive vs. those who have expertise?

Anonymous — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:56:29 -0800

Prettygirlfilter: Is my roommate treating me differently than he treats my boyfriend because of looks? If so, how common is this? Women, does this happen to you? I want to post this anonymously so we don't get into a discussion of whether I am pretty or not or attractiveness in general (it's fairly subjective, symmetrical features notwithstanding). My roommate, "John", is 10 years younger than me and 5 years younger than my boyfriend. He is a single straight male and something of a know-it-all. He has not had a girlfriend for any time period since I've known him, going on 7 years. When asking a question that has a definite answer (example: How can I find the static IP address for my computer? or How can I make macaroni and cheese if we are out of milk?), he appears thoughtful and listens to my suggestions or answers.

Also, when I correct him if he's wrong, he acknowledges it. When my boyfriend does the same, he is often dismissive, sometimes laughs or questions me for verification of the boyfriend's answer. It's not a personality clash; he is overly nice to both of us on most occasions and has gone out of his way to do nice things for the boyfriend, like set up a shared music server, picks up movies he knows the boyfriend wants to see when he rents, and offers us both his leftovers when he cooks. So, in confusion, I ask of the men of metafilter: Do you listen more carefully to answers from a woman you find attractive? (Roommate has gotten drunk and told me in past years he finds me attractive).

Why would my answer be more valuable than, say, the boyfriend's if boyfriend is an expert in the field being questioned? An example would be a cooking question. My boyfriend is a cook in a restaurant but roommate acts embarrassed when discussing cooking with the boyfriend, but not me. Also, all three of us live together, if that makes any difference, but we work opposite schedules and are in different areas of the home, so I see the roommate maybe 3 times a week, at most.

Don't think I need a throwaway email because I don't think it's a huge deal that will require more clarification. I'm looking for anecdotal evidence as well as any studies that show people react differently to others based on attraction alone vs. level of expertise.

Why would siblings who don't know they're siblings be attracted to each other?

AmbroseChapel — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 15:30:08 -0800

Why would siblings who don't know they're siblings be attracted to each other? There's been a lot of publicity about the marriage of a twin brother and sister who were adopted and didn't know about each other. They met as adults and felt, according to the article, an "inevitable" attraction.

Drew thinks this particular story was made up by the way, to get a bill passed in the UK parliament.

So, what's going on in the human brain (and why did the CNN writer just put "inevitable" without feeling they have to explain)?

Being attracted to people like ourselves is good? But not if we're too alike? And something about being brought up together hits a kind of kill-switch on being attracted to brothers and sisters? We don't automatically recognise our own genes and rule that person out as a mate?

If you're an obese man successful on the dating scene, what are your tips and advice?

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:23:27 -0800

If you're an obese man who's been successful in the dating scene, please give me some tips and advice. As always, there's Having come off a bad relationship and a stressful time with a considerably larger physique, I find myself entering upon the dating scene as a morbidly obese guy — this being a new experience for me. (Not that my body was Adonisesque the first time around, mind you — I was more the tall and gangly type.)

I am feeling a little bit awkward and, despite being able to carry on a good conversation and having good listening skills, I am feeling as though (no offense to potential answerers) this obesity makes me an extremely unattractive partner to women, despite the fact that my diverse interests, conversational skills, etc. served me well in that regard in the past.

Obviously, though, this isn't the case — women evidently do fall for and like larger men. So, as suggested, I wanted to put the question to the overweight Mefite men who don't have problems actively dating women ...

Psychologically ... how do you do it? How did you convince yourself that your ... well, not to put it too nicely, but how did you convince yourself that that big ol' potbelly doesn't matter when you found the need to approach a girl for the first time? Unlike before, I find myself paralyzed by a voice harshly critical of my physique at the moment of truth which freezes up most of my "normal" ability to interact with women if a romantic element isn't involved. (And I unfortunately can't "fool" myself into engaging "friend-mode".) I can't have been the only fat guy to deal with this; how do you?

Fashion-wise ... having formerly dressed for a more thin physique, I'm at a loss as to what fashions and style flatter an obese man. My business casual garb also serves as my "nice event" garb, and I have a feeling it's probably not as flattering as other things might be: single-color polo shirt and black Dockers slacks. How do you dress to be comfortable yet impressive (or, failing that, uncomfortable yet impressive)?

And, by all means, if you have any tips or advice unrelated to the questions above, by all means, I would very much desire to hear them and learn from them. Also, if it matters in terms of a generational sense, I'm in my late twenties.

Getting Used to Dating and Sex with a Changed Physique

Anonymous — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 15:02:32 -0800

I have a question to ask of heterosexual women on Metafilter: are you as shallow as I am? Do you find overweight men attractive? I'm a few years out of college in my late twenties with a BMI of 45. I'm not Brad Pitt or George Clooney, but I'm tall; I have a friendly, open, and expressive face; I'm well-read and can hold my end of a convo down pretty well; and I have a decent job that's not a huge moneymaker (no doctor be I) but puts me on the low to middlin' end of "comfortable."

I know I need to get back down to "normal." I'm working on it now, and I do think I'll get there. But I did enough damage to myself (read: gained enough weight) that it's not going to be an instantaneous process (read: probably a good year or two), and frankly, I have no desire to be a monk in the meantime. But I'm finding that some preconceptions and a weird sense of body dysmorphia are dealing a rather severe blow to my confidence. I've not been on the dating scene in a good number of years: my last girl and I didn't break up due to my weight, but the last time I was dating, I was 'normal', and this time, I'm on the scene with a physique that has gone to pot more than a tad.

I wish to God that I could divorce physical attributes from my sexual attraction to someone. Right now, I can't seem to do that, and, as such, I find women who are equally as overweight as I am to be unattractive, and I have no interest at all in them as other than friends, as much as I'd like to be gallant enough to do so. Now, to clarify, I'm not saddled with an unrealistic attraction to stick-thin Paris Hiltons — I am attracted to utterly normal women (frankly, most of y'all out there look pretty damn hawt to me), and I do find attractive women who are curvy or who lean a bit towards the Rubenesque; I'm just saying that the end of the scale where pre-weight-loss Star Jones was, or Roseanne-during-Roseanne, or Edna Turnblatt, wouldn't have done it for me.

And, unfortunately, I'm on the equivalent end of the male scale of where pre-weight-loss Star Jones was. (Award for the most convoluted sentence goes to ... ) I'm John Goodman-in-Roseanne-esque. And knowing that I can't find myself attracted to Star, or Roseanne, or Edna, or women carrying around a similar amount of weight, I find it very hard — in fact, outright impossible — to believe that a woman could look at me, or anyone with my body type, and find her sexual engine getting a little revved up, like a few did here and there with my old physique. Even though my brain knows that supposedly women judge on different criteria, I also know Clooney and Pitt don't sell movies just because they're good actors. So I'm hoping that perhaps the women of Mefi could either say, "Yes, you're right, you're just not sexy at this point, lardass," so I can stop wondering and start getting used to cold showers, or "No, you're not. I know from personal experience that ... " and share, well, what they feel comfortable.

I also know enough to know that women respond to confidence, and that a lack of confidence can show pretty clearly unless you're a good actor. That's another concern, obviously, I'm hoping to address with this question. If I can end up with enough material to quiet the voice in my head — "shut up, you, four out of five Mefite women prefer peppermint mouthwash" — maybe I can actually focus on the other things that terrify me about starting to going up to strange women again, instead of walking into the situation feeling like I'm wearing a strange-fitting fat suit. :-/

Finally, I have one last question. It is more than a bit on the graphic side, and I'll admit it is very likely thinking too far ahead. It's a question central to men's sense of "maleness," for good or for bad. A well-intentioned friend who I could now just friggin' hit over the head with a Nerf bat forwarded me an e-mail forward quoting Dr. Ruth as saying that men "lose" an inch for every 40 pounds gained. Anyone know if that's really the case? It does indeed feel like it's shrunk. And there definitely is also a visual comparative scale thing given that the man's gut hangs above his penis. If you have had an overweight sexual partner, were you satisfied with his length? Flaccid at the moment, it's visually really rather embarrassingly minuscule — and I think my outright nightmare is disrobing in front of a lady and having a woman laugh at its size. Erect, it's still probably a good four and a half inches, but that's definitely less than it used to be; I remember measuring myself in college at about near seven. It's perhaps the very definition of the word "emasculating."

P.S. Obviously, I come across in the above as a bit of a nutcase. That's because I'm cranking down about twelve layers of shielding and actually being quite blunt about the problem with you. Please rest assured that these insecurities are not out and displayed in full force during a date!

Is body hair a major turn off?

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 10:11:20 -0800

Body hair: how much of a turn-off (or perhaps turn-on) is copious body hair? I'm a straight, hairy, man and am really interested in what straight women think but feel free to chime in if you are otherwise oriented or gendered.