Dear Duana,
I’ve got a good education, solid career, winning personality, and a killer body. At five-foot-eight, my measurements are 36-24-35. My breasts are a 36C. My eyes, lips, hair? Lovely. It’s not uncommon for male strangers to pay for the dinner I’m eating out with a friend, and I haven’t paid bus fare or opened a door in years.
But my nose resembles a clown’s—round, like a rubber ball, and too large for my face. Your Butterface article made a lot of sense to me, because although men have flocked to me for sex and short-term flings, they’ve rarely been interested in the long-term.
I’ve consulted with an outstanding plastic surgeon and spent months looking at photos as I will appear post-op, to get used to the idea. Part of me wishes I’d had the surgery 5 years ago; part of me is scared to do it now.
I know there is controversy about plastic surgery, but I don’t care about public debates. I just want an answer: Do you think the right nose job would help me attract Mr. Right?
Grace
Dear Grace,
Here’s the short answer, according to science from the 1970’s to now: yes.
And here’s the much longer answer.
The beauty bias is hard-wired from birth. Infants stare longer at a beautiful face than a plain visage, and blind men acknowledge—sometimes with a degree of shame—that they care what other people think about their date’s appearance.
Unfortunately, the physical attractiveness stereotype is about more than just looks. Most folks most of the time in most of the world implicitly believe that beautiful people are not only better-looking—they’re better in almost every way.
The stereotype starts when we’re still kids ourselves and carries on from there. Attractive preschoolers are more popular among their peers; 5th-grade teachers think a good-looking child is smarter and likelier to succeed in school than a kid with the same bio but a plainer face. College students think a good-looking professor is better, clearer, and more helpful. It even hits the bottom-line: Better-looking people make more money than the unattractive, short, or obese.
And men tend to think women look amazing—no, that women *are* amazing—after plastic surgery.
To wit, in Michael Kalick’s Harvard experiment, undergraduate men rated the physical attractiveness of eight women. Half the men viewed photos taken before the women had cosmetic surgery. The other half viewed the same women’s *post-op* photos. Vitally, the men were kept ignorant as to the study’s purpose and the women’s surgery status.
Results? The men in the post-op group rated the women higher for physical attractiveness than did the men who viewed pre-op pix. Not only that, the post-op group men judged the women as warmer, more sexually responsive, likable, and kinder than the pre-op guys did~even though all these men were from Harvard! Not one of them said, “Hey, I only have a photo, I can’t rate anything but physicality here.”
So this isn’t a logic thing. It’s not an intelligence thing. It’s a human thing.
A thing plastic surgery can help you with.
All that said, here are three words—okay, paragraphs— of warning:
1. The surgery will only get you a nose-in; it won’t close the deal.
Investing in your face will probably help you to attract a more serious type of man post-op, given what we know from the research on body-focused Butterface-chasers versus the guys who place a premium on a pretty face—and commitment. And rhinoplasty can probably bias would-be suitors to cast most qualities you possess, and some you might not, in a better light.
The effect will likely be temporary, though. Appearance is important mainly for first impressions and getting men to draw nigh; after that, character counts a lot, and you’ll need to deliver the goods on being good.
2. You might feel a little worse about the world, if better about your marriage prospects, post-op.
Kudos to you on planning thoroughly for this decision, including carefully selecting a surgeon and spending a lot of time with the computer-generated image of what you’ll look like after the rhinoplasty. Even a positive change takes some getting used to, and the psychological work you do now will help your adjustment later.
One of the changes to prepare for is not quite so positive, though: It can be depressing to notice yourself being pursued more seriously post-op. It’s one thing to intellectually realize that great looks are a great social asset, but it may be another to experience it. People who’ve always been beautiful sometimes suspect they’re receiving praise based on their appearance and not their performance or intrinsic worth~but women who’ve had plastic surgery *know* it’s true. Anecdotally, a lot of women find themselves a bit depressed post-op, when they get the attention they craved not based on who they are but how they look. It can make some feel more objectified, less known as individuals important in their own right, than ever.
3. You’ll still need to avoid being easy.
Women with difficult visages and hot bodies are probably more often the targets of short-term intentions. But once your nose is jobbed, you’ll face this reality: All beautiful women are targets of the short-termers at least some of the time, and giving sex up-front can turn off even the most serious-minded of men.
Don’t waste your time. You want marriage, so weed out the players by refusing to have sex with any man until he’s point-blank asked you to be his and his alone, has shown the same commitment to you, and has convinced you in deed, not just word, that he loves you.
Only The Serious will remain. Perfect.
In closing, I wish you peace of mind as and after you make your decision, and total healing in every sense. Whatever choice you make, may you make it work for you, and embrace the worth that is inherently yours regardless.
Cheers,
Duana
Do you have a question for Duana? Email her at Duana@LoveScienceMedia.com.
All material copyrighted by Duana C. Welch, Ph.D., and LoveScience Media, 2012
Related LoveScience articles:
Butterface: why some men pick one kind of physical type to have a fling with~another to make a lifetime with http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/butterface.html
Butterface Q&A: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/qa-from-butterface.html
Why men say they hate makeup, and why women should wear it anyway: http://rachelrabbitwhite.com/do-men-prefer-women-with-make-up/
Women as sex objects: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/women-as-sex-objects-youth-beauty-and-beating-the-odds.html
How long should you wait to have sex? http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/waiting-for-sex-for-how-long.html
Why having sex too soon can turn even serious-minded men off: http://www.lovesciencemedia.com/love-science-media/when-men-wait-for-sex-dumb-like-a-fox.html
The author wishes to thank the following scientists and sources:
Judith Langlois and others for research showing 3-month-olds’ increased gaze-time for attractive faces.
David Myers, David Buss, and other social scientists who have collected informal accounts of blind men who are concerned about their dates’/mates’ appearance.
Thanks also to Dr. Myers for the synopsis of Michael Kalick’s Harvard University dissertation, “Plastic surgery, physical appearance, and person perception,” which is unpublished.
Ellen Berscheid and Elaine Hatfield (formerly Walster), for identifying the physical attractiveness stereotype (the stereotype that what is beautiful is good and that beautiful people are over-all better people), and launching research on its extent in the 1970’s. Thanks also to Dr. Berscheid for research showing that beautiful people sometimes suspect whether the praise they receive is genuine, while the less-gorgeous are more apt to think praise is sincere.
Alice Eagly and others, for a meta-analysis of Western experiments examining the stereotype that beautiful people are good people. Nutshell? They found that beautiful people are usually considered better people in every regard, except for two traits where appearance made no difference: integrity and compassion.
Ladd Wheeler and Youngmee Kim, for research in Korea which also showed the physical attractiveness stereotype—but with opposite results than those found in the USA and Canada. In Korea, the attractive people were considered more honest and compassionate, but not necessarily better in other regards.
Karen Dion and Ellen Berscheid, for research showing that attractive preschoolers were more popular with the other children than less-attractive preschoolers.
Jennifer Bonds-Raacke and others, for research showing that professors who are judged better-looking by college students are also judged better over-all.
Margaret Clifford and Elaine Hatfield, (Clifford and Walster, 1973) for an experiment showing that 5th-grade teachers believe an attractive child more intelligent and successful in school than a less-attractive child with an identical biography.
Comila Shahani-Denning, for a review of experiments showing a bias towards hiring more attractive people, and her own experiments showing that women who are beautiful are particularly well-regarded, compared to attractive men and less-attractive women.
Kristie Engemann and Michael Owyang, for another review of how height, weight and/or facial attractiveness relate to salaries in every researched job and profession.
Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle, for research showing the good-lookers making 5% more an hour than average-lookers, and those below average in facial appearance making 9% less per hour.