Introduction:
In this episode Tucker and Dr. Miller go through the different ways that women evaluate men: size, body shape, clothing, jewelry, smell and initial contact, and help guys understand what they are doing wrong, and how to fix it.
Podcast:
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Video:
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Key takeaways:
Guys think attraction is about what you do, but it’s far more important to focus on what you are presenting to her.
Women assess you on a number of things before they talk to you that are as, if not more important, than anything else you do.
What you actually say to them is important, but it comes after a bunch of other things like size, shape, clothes, shoes, smell.
Guys need to understand what these primary unconscious indicators of attraction are, and make sure they are right before they worry about other things
You don’t need to have huge bodybuilder muscles – an athletic v-shaped body like a swimmer, or Crossfit athlete, or soccer player, is more desirable to women.
Try sitting in a mall or in an airport for 20 minutes and looking at how guys walk and carry themselves, and rate each guy’s confidence on a scale of 1-10 based on how they’re walking. Be more like the guys you’re rating as 10′s.
Keep your hands and nails clean.
Your clothing should reflect the norms of the social group you’re operating in. Business suits for business, goth clothes if you’re a goth, etc.
Wear clothes of good quality that fit well. Women notice these two things way more than guys do.
If you don’t know what you’re doing, go to a clothes store and ask the female sales associate for help. Now she’ll help you and you have an excuse to talk and flirt with her while she does it. Failing that, ask your sister, her friends, or your female friends for advice.
In general, when it comes to clothes, you want to look like you made an effort. Look like you care.
Wear leather shoes.
If you’re unsure what to wear, go for classical looks (think Don Draper). Cutting edge men’s fashion is not relevant.
If you wear a watch, make it a simple, classy one.
Social context is important – women don’t always want to be approached (e.g. when they’re at the gym with headphones in).
Things are much easier if a girl knows who you are, has heard good things about you, or has seen you around before.
Smell is important – no smell is fine, but bad smell is terrible. Shower regularly, brush your teeth, floss, and use gum.
There are no magic pickup lines you can use that will instantly or always work.
Everything that a woman judges you on is something you can change and improve.
Show notes:
1:40 The differences between what men think and what women think
2:59 The basic fundamentals: size and shape
7:19 How shape relates to physical attraction
10:15 The most attractive body shapes
12:00 Why it’s important to wear clothes that fit well
12:55 Body language, how you carry yourself, and what information that conveys about you
16:49 Grooming, sex without socks, and porn
22:09 Body ornamentation – the importance of clothing and personal style
23:59 Getting your measurements right
26:01 Tucker’s method to get help with clothes for guys with no style
29:46 Spending money on clothes and making it look like you care
35:08 Ornamentation – jewellery and watches
38:25 What assessment a woman has made in the first second or less
40:41 The importance of social context
46:36 Smell and bad breath
51:40 Initial contact, and the woman’s immediate response
Links from this episode
Crossfit physique versus bodybuilder physique
One of Geoff’s papers from a few years ago. Accurate judgments of intention from motion cues alone: A cross-cultural study (pdf)
Vineyard Vines clothing
Huntsman, a Savile Row tailors
Lululemon men’s clothing
Zappos, Allen Edmonds shoes, M-Zane shoes
What not to wear: cowboy boots with skull and crossbones.
Dress like Don Draper
This t-shirt says “frat boy”.
Good Psychology Today article about smell and attraction, including reference to the studies that Dr. Miller talks about.
Audio Transcription:
Tucker:
Alright, so in this podcast what we are going to talk about is how women see you. Because it seems like it’s one of those things that seems obvious but want to start thinking about it and you realized oh my god I have no fucking idea what I’m talking about on this. And I noticed I think I’ve talked about this on another podcast but we’re going to repeat it over and over again until you guys really get it and learn it. Most guys have no idea how women see them. If you’re guy, you kind of you do the things you think are important or relevant or meaningful without actually considering what do women look at. What do women think about those things and how do these things I do actually impact my sex dating mating success. You know what I’m saying? The best example I think, it is that a lot of guys that we see to come to us for advice in mating grounds. In fact we did a survey. And we said, what do you want to hear the most about? What’s important? What do you think is the most sort of crucial thing? And more than a third of the guy, I want to know how to have conversations with woman, how to talk to one. But if you actually break down how women assess guys, conversation is anywhere from the sixth to the tenth thing that they look at. And for most women, the sort of attraction decision whether it’s conscious or unconscious is made prior to the conversation.
Geoff::
Yeah we are not talking about the importance of conversation. Conversation is super important but in terms of the sequence of how women expose to you in your image and your visual appearance, your courage, your kind of charisma. By the time you go up and say hi, they’ve already gathered so much information about you.
Tucker:
Right. It’s really like saying you’re a basketball player. If you’re scouting a basketball player, you don’t ask about whose jump shot first. First you ask how tall is he, how good of an athlete is he, how good at basketball is he? And then when you get pass to certain sort of set of fundamentals then you start asking about details. It’s the same sort of thing with how women see guys. It’s that they look on fundamentals first and most guys don’t know what the fundamentals are.
Geoff::
So many guys are soft handicapping with their appearance or grooming or style before a single word with someone else.
Tucker:
So let’s start breaking, let’s go on the basic list of fundamentals. You talk to psychologist, social psychologist, anthropologist. The order of this may vary to some extent but for the most part what we’re going to tell you is pretty agreed upon size. You say I’m right?
Geoff::
Yeah. There’s a lot of consensus person perception. How we perceive other people.
Tucker:
How humans look at other people.
Geoff::
Yeah. How we categorize on what we notice first and then what we notice later.
Tucker:
So the first thing you look at when you’re a person. Now like imagine a girl sitting on a bar or it can be any situation. The first thing human sees when they see another person is the first thing they evaluate the size. Actually you don’t even know when you see something moving in your peripheral as a human being. You don’t even know if it’s a human. It could be a dog or I don’t know. It could be an ape or something if you’re in a zoo or whatever. I laugh about that it could be an ape but the reality is that’s actually how our visual perceptual curiosities are designed. They’re not designed for modern American urban living. So, first thing you assess is size. How big is this entity? Because in the natural or in the wild, pretty much every creature uses size as a proxy for threat. Things bigger than me are threat. Things my size are different type of threat. Things smaller than me are not a threat. Obviously it’s not a perfect thing. Spiders can practically kill you there’s a docile. But size is a good sort of proxy for threat. Correct?
Geoff::
Yeah. If it moves and it’s big it’s probably predator or some kind of danger. Might be a rhinoceros, elephant or lion and remember we have all the lots of other species of bidpedal hominids running around not just humans but lots of other things that walk on two legs, had big brains and could have big brains, could have been threats but weren’t humans.
Tucker:
Right. So size is the first thing. And remember too: if you have big dude, you need to be conscious of the fact that you are triggering unconscious threat responses and men and women actually. It’s not just women. It’s definitely men like which can have a lot of impacts on sort of business and social interaction and etc. which is sort of a different discussion. And we’ll get to that in sort of later podcast. So first is size – literally how, big is this entity. Then the next thing is shape. Shape is sort of a way that you determine like what the actual entity is. So I can imagine you walk along the trail, this big thing you see at your periphery. You know it could be a human or a great dane. You know some great danes are like a 160 lbs. Bigger than humans some of them right? So this big thing, you turn, see the shape, immediately it’s a dog. How quickly are these sorts of assessments being made by human body.
Geoff::
Less than a second.
Tucker:
Wait less right?
Geoff::
Right, I mean 100 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds.
Tucker:
Right. So basically instantaneously you’re seeing size shape. And then shape is kind of how you determine, from shape you determine any number of things. Then you know like what kind of creature is it? How does the kind of creature plus the size of the creature relate to threat, perception then you’re starting to make more sophisticated judgments. So, yeah – also more relevant to you as a dude shape is – once a human determines this is a human – shape is very important for determining base levels of physical attraction. Why is that?
Geoff::
Well because it says; (a) what sex are you? Right okay, men look different than women in terms of shoulders, waist, hips, bodies, leg and proportion. But it also indicates things like age, health, right? Strength and nutritional status like fatness thinness. So these are whole bunch of information just from body shape and that’s why we study physical attractiveness by manipulating. Even line drawings right or even simple computer images of different body shapes can give women a lot of information.
Tucker:
That’s why photo shopping exists in magazines even for like some of the hottest people in the world. These are literally models being photo. And they still photo shop them, either thin or small or whatever. But they always have a certain body shape right? So you want to talk about golden ratio at all? Or is that getting in too deep?
Geoff::
It’s a little too mathy. But yeah also note that like when women’s clubs where gentlemen are dancing like chip and dale type stuff, they’re not necessarily focused that much on height but the shape of the guy is crucial. Right, they want the female customers to be pleased with that guys v shape, the shoulder to waist ratio, he’s got some upper body muscles. You know the legs in relation to the torso length and all that stuff has to fit together, and even if the guy is short he’ll still get massive tips.
Tucker:
Right. So guys this is so crucial. Like I am not one of these people who’s like “oh, you have to work out and be able to bench press 270 or you’re not a man” or all that stupid fucking bullshit like that. I hate that idea but it’s so important to understand that the shape of your body is not arbitrary right? The shape of your body reflects your overall health strength and these are all huge factors in determining how attractive women find you.
Geoff::
Yeah one example, I was just reviewing a paper that ended up in a top journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Australian group systemically varies the projected images of males on walls and women and rating. They vary height, they vary penis size and they vary shoulder to waist ratio. How much v do they have? The v was hugely more important than either height or penis size.
Tucker:
Right, so if you got a small dick, you need to be in great shape and you’re still going to be okay right?
Geoff::
Yeah absolutely.
Tucker:
But like that’s study is one of those things where it’s like oh wow. Here’s the thing that you don’t understand too guys. Your body shape is so easily changeable. It’s not hard to be in shape and to have a good v. It’s really not. Like no one say you need to look like The Rock or something. You don’t have no, in fact you shouldn’t. And a lot of ways that body, that sort of outsize muscular it’s called hypertrophy but like huge inflated muscles are actually less attractive than sort of a swimmer, Crossfit athletic v shape.
Geoff::
Yeah and a lot of women say, if I see a guy who isn’t too good in shape, I know he’s not going to be a good boyfriend because (a) he’s narcissistic and (b) he spent too much time at a gym.
Tucker:
Right.
Geoff::
And he’s going to neglect me. I want a guy who’s in good enough shape to be a good lover. But I don’t want the kind of a male model.
Tucker:
Exactly. They don’t want a male model. Actually if you look at male models they are not super oversized.
Geoff::
That’s true yeah.
Tucker:
They usually have a great v and they’re normally muscular and they’re defined. They’re not overcut – they’re very defined but you can’t see every muscular striation like some crazy lunatic body builder right? And they’re not big dudes. You don’t see huge dudes as male models. The other important thing that we need to point out about shape is that these evaluations that women are making are instantaneous and unconscious. Correct? Like this is not women didn’t get together and decide. Oh this is the body size we have consciously decided we’re going to be attracted to. At this sort of primal, instinctual levels, attraction is not a choice. It is what people are born with, men and women.
Geoff::
Yeah and also bear in mind, when women are assessing these things visually, they don’t have superman x-ray vision. They can’t see you naked. If you’re wearing clothing that hides your shape or exaggerates it in the wrong way, you’re giving all through wrong impression. A lot of guys for example wear shirts that are not very well fitted. So even if they have a great v hiding underneath that, women can’t see it because they’ve got all this extra material blowing out around their waist and guys think that’s kind of relaxed and cool but trust me most women want your clothes to be much better fitted than you realize. And partly that so they can assess what’s your shape without you having to strip down in front of them.
Tucker:
And a lot of this is unconscious again. It’s not like women are sitting around a boy which had a tighter shirt. It’s more or like oh like I can see his body and they react positively to that. Not like it’s a far or less conscious that sort of sound I think. Alright the next kind of thing basically speaking size, shape then we’re talking about I think body language. This is not like a sort of little small gestures like you probably saw on some tv shows and it’s like “oh, you look up to your left you’re lying” or something. It’s much more how you walk. Are you hunched over, shoulders back, head high? Basically like listen, have you ever look at someone’s posture or gait like meaning walking style or anything like that and you made an assessment either conscious or unconscious about them based on their body language? That’s what women do when they see you. Men too, obviously. But body language is hugely important. What are some of the things that just show your walking style, your gait, your posture, your facial expressions. What are those things convey? What information?
Geoff::
Well things like self confidence, like social status, energy, mood right? Depressed people tend to kind of to slump over and walk slowly and happy people stand up straight and walk fast. There’s a lot of study show, even you’re just walking speed is attractive to women. Basically the faster you walk to women, the more confident and energetic you
Tucker:
Hold on, be careful – up to a certain point.
Geoff::
Up to a certain point, yeah. We are not talking speed walking, no. Like a normal…
Tucker:
Race walkers are not super attractive.
Geoff::
No. Like a normal walking gait. And guys there’s a good exercise you can do. Go to any public place like a mall, a city street, a diverse neighborhood, just when you’re in an airport. Stop watching the women just for twenty minutes and watch the guys.
Tucker:
It sounds pretty gay to me.
Geoff::
And actually right, it feels kind of gay but just do it anyway, you’ll learn something. Right down a little number like between 0-10 about what confidence level do you think each guy has just based on how he walks and how he carries himself?
Tucker:
Right.
Geoff::
And you’ll be amazed to how much you can start to discern, probably pretty accurately. Now that’s like what it’s like to look through a woman’s eyes right. That’s how they see you. You should spend at least 10% of your time looking at other guys and figuring out what signals are they giving off that women would notice.
Tucker:
Exactly. We’re going to dig deep about if it in the later podcast somewhere in the 20’s. It’s a very important but just understand that even the fundamental basics, the expression on your face, the body language, that determines a huge amount of how people react to you.
Geoff::
And also how you move around in the environment. I did a bunch of studies back in the day about how people per see the animals moving and even if you make an abstract little dot on the screen then you make it move on a certain way. People will interfere: is it pursuing something else? Is it being pursued in running away?
Tucker:
Yeah.
Geoff::
Right, or is it courting, is it displaying to something else or is it wondering around aimlessly. This is just a dot without no other information about size or shape or anything, just based on movement balance.
Tucker:
So what does that mean for people like that?
Geoff::
What that means is, you want to give the impression if you’re courting a woman that you’re courting not predating, not hunting right. And also you want to give the impression you’re not evading or running away because some guys will literally run away as the woman approaches her. Or they’ll run away with other guys and not maintain their personal space.
Tucker:
So, body language. The next thing the woman looks at generally speaking and you can reverse these orders back and forth, grooming and body ornamentation right. So grooming is basically, are you clean or dirty? How much care do you take with your body? Hair, eyebrows, skin, things like that, nails you can see dirty hands from 20 to 50 feet maybe, things like that. Are you clean or unclean? This is one of those things where everybody says, “yeah, I’m clean” and when you look at them, you think “no, you’re a disgusting pig.” And it’s like I don’t give a shit dude being a disgusting pig but I’m not even looking at you as a sexual creature the way women are. If I think you’re disgusting dirty pig, I promise you girls. What are some ways that you’ve seen that dudes are totally unclean but don’t realize it? Or women see that guys don’t see?
Geoff::
Well the most common thing that went, so I had a PhD student do a whole dissertation on how women perceive man’s hands, just the hands. This is an understudied topic. Most guys take horrible care of their hands, their nails, their cuticles. They either cut the nails too short. Let them grow too long, always gang under their nails. This is a massive turnoff.
Tucker:
Dirty knuckles.
Geoff::
Dirty knuckles, just not washing your hands after you come home from work if you’ve got a physical job. Women don’t want to be touched by that, alright. It’s actually, emotionally, physically disgusting.
Tucker:
On an unconscious biological level.
Geoff::
Their brains are thinking kind of instinctively. The dirt under his nails, the bacteria, it’s infectious, it’s going to give me diseases.
Tucker:
It is giving you harm.
Geoff::
Yeah. And do I want that touching my breast? No. So hands, feet particularly same thing. Women don’t notice feet as easily but almost every woman I talked to, if she goes home with a guy she’s got to kind of unconscious apprehension about what are his feet going to be like when he takes off his shoes and socks.
Tucker:
It’s like that old school Eddie Murphy movie.
Geoff::
And so many women are bracing for that disgusted reaction when you take off your socks.
Tucker:
Right or if you got green tone nails and shit.
Geoff::
Yeah, so that’s a big thing.
Tucker:
You know what, does that have a little thing to do with just a little aside here. So universally I’ve been with a lot of woman. I have never been with a woman who wasn’t repulsed if I kept my socks on during sex.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
I should say, the only outliers are women who didn’t care and they were not many of those. I’ve never been with a woman who’s like, “oh you’re going to keep your socks on.” That’s like an incognizable thought to me. But basically 90+%, it’s like a thing for them. They get really upset by it. It’s not like I give a shit I’ll take my fucking socks off. I wear flip tops, I don’t give a fuck.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
Like I’ll fuck you clothes, no clothes on but like that’s a big deal. A few times I’ll forget or whatever, even in the throes and heat of passion, girls will stop and be like “Pull my hair, spank me, fuck me – but wait take your socks off!”
Geoff::
You can see the difference in like normal porno that’s just for guys versus couple’s porno.
Tucker:
Right.
Geoff::
You know the guy often has his socks on if it’s just porno for solo guys. But in a couples porno it’s like an iron clad rule. No socks on the guys.
Tucker:
We should get some of the XR producers on the show.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
The difference between male and female porno. I actually know some of them. There’s a couple of those. And they don’t do as well money wise. But they’re really doing very well.
Geoff::
And it’s really informative for the guys to watch it.
Tucker:
It’s beautiful. That porn is actually really beautiful too, it really is. It’s really well shot, the cinematography is great, the lighting. It’s very bright and white. The dudes have no fucking hair, most of them. Or they’re hairy, there’s no in between guys. Like stubbly shaved chest, like male porno. And it’s funny and they’re always super clean and it’s bright white light too. That’s sort of like cinematography discussion where guys are shot in yellow light. It’s a very different look.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
I didn’t think about that but that’s probably why.
Geoff::
And XR has Tiffany Thompson as well, she’s awesome.
Tucker:
I like how you know the names of the porn stars.
Geoff::
She’s the only one I know.
Tucker:
You’re connecting a little emotionally. I just use them as masturbatory material. So alright, the only porn star names I guess are the ones that I know are the met. Porn’s a different discussion, but…
Geoff::
Tucker, focus. Tucker, focus.
Tucker:
Yeah right. Alright, so body ornamentation. So I’m talking about my clothes and stuffs, clothes, jewelry, earring. Guys in the abstract understand that clothes sort of matter to girls but I don’t think guys really understand what clothes they should be wearing and how they should be wearing them. We talked about tailoring a second ago and sort of how women see clothes. You know a lot about this I think more than I do. So what are some big things on this issue?
Geoff::
I think the biggest thing really is that women want evidence that the guy has just been thoughtful and has some sense of personal style. Whatever that style is, you can be a gothic, a hipster, preppy, you know. business suit. Whatever it is, she wants evidence that you have an understanding of clothing, that you care enough about women to delight their little eyeballs with what you’re wearing, right. You’ve invested time and energy if not a lot of money in it. We’re not going to recommend particular kind of clothing style.
Tucker:
Because it varies on the social group.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
Like if you’re goth, clearly you dress totally differently than someone who is a professional in a suit, who dresses totally differently than someone who is in the yoga. The point I think you’re making – correct me if I’m wrong – is the social group that you’re operating in more than the norms of the group and how well does your clothing reflect those norms and how good is it within that parameter, right?
Geoff::
Yeah, and if you’re doing normal signaling where like better quality is better, rather than counter signaling, we should talk about that later. If you’re doing quality signaling then it’s the most important thing really is number 1 fit. Most guys wear clothing that simply doesn’t fit them.
Tucker:
Yes.
Geoff::
It’s generally in modern America it’s too baggy. But a lot of guys don’t know their measurements. They don’t know their neck, their chest, their waist, their inseam. They don’t know that stuff and it’s a disaster. They can spend $2000 on a suit that’s great material and it doesn’t fit. Or they spend a $100 on some you name brand cool software and it doesn’t fit. And you might as well naked and gotten everything from a thrift shop. Women notice fit above all, second quality, manufacturing quality. Guys have to learn the difference between a well made shirt and a badly made shirt. And there’s a difference.
Tucker:
In that extends across all domains. Like if you’re a young kid in college, that shit probably doesn’t matter. So what well made means is, so my college Vineyard Vine is the cool brand, not Jay Crew or whatever right? That’s what you have to understand in a social environment, whereas maybe if you’re on a professional conference where everyone’s in suits, a well made shirt is sort of a tailored, maybe Saville Row, I don’t even know the fucking brands, whatever. A shirt that has really good quality materials that looks great. Most guys wouldn’t know the fucking difference but you’re not trying to fuck the dudes, you’re trying to fuck the girls who will notice it.
Geoff::
Yeah, I mean one way I think about it when I go shopping is I just you know, I look at a rack of clothing. I’m overwhelmed there’s so much choice. But then this might not work for all of you but I ask myself. Okay, if I was a stylish gay guy, what would I buy? And that’s almost infallible guy for me.
Tucker:
No, I think that works for you because you’re borderline with that. I’m kidding. You know I actually I’ll tell you what I do. I’ll tell you guys, if you can pull that off, if you have enough style to understand that, that works. I don’t and I think most guys don’t. You know what I do or just what I used to do now I just pick a t-shirt I like I’m just going to buy I don’t know fifty of them and I’m just going to wear them. I go to stores that have the clothes I want or probably I know that there’s somewhere in the store and then I find a female clothing associate. And I go to her, like retail employee and I’m like, “Listen. I want to dress well, I have no aesthetic sense, I need help.” So I’ll tell her, I’ll say “Let’s pretend you’re my girlfriend. What would you put on me to make me look great?” And then the worst case scenario is the girls going to dress you well. The best case scenario is she’s going to be in to you and you now have 20 minutes to an hour to talk with her and flirt with her as a perfectly valid reason, right? You’re not creepy at all, you’re not disgusting, you are not some random dude pinching her ass, like committing assault. You’re a guy who needs help and she’s helping and then it’s like oh this girl is great. Then it’s like you have a perfect reason sort of grass spot ask her out or whatever. If you’ve got game maybe hook up with her there but actually I don’t think I’ve ever done that. That would be some shit, that would be pretty good to hook up with a girl who helped you out at Ralph Lauren.
Geoff::
That’s a little freebie shop-girl hook up advice. But actually that’s a really good point. If you can find a confident female sales assistant who actually knows.
Tucker:
What do you think in retail? There’s a lot that are incompetent?
Geoff::
Yeah I do. You basically you want, you do not want the 18 year old girl however cute. You want the experienced woman who’s been working on that men’s departments.
Tucker:
Well, it depends. If you’re going to Abercrombie and Fitch or whatever Hollister right, the store, not your ex-girlfriend. The girls who work in there are going to be 18-22. I think ask me then that situation makes sense. But if you walk in to Macies or Neiman Marcus or something, you don’t want the brand new 22 year old who’s working who’s like basically the perfume girl. You want like the woman who’s been there at least few years and really knows sort of men’s stuff well.
Geoff::
Yeah and the other advantage of interacting with the sales woman in the shop is that you get in to the mind sets that this is about how I look to women. This is not about what’s comfortable or easy or cheap. This is going to make an impression on women and use the sales woman as your proxy for women in general.
Tucker:
Right.
Geoff::
And if it’s a place without sales woman, you know if you’ve got an older sister and she has any taste, bring her. Or take a photo of what you’re looking at and send it.
Tucker:
Bring your friends.
Geoff::
Send it to her friends or – even your mom probably has better taste than you do.
Tucker:
Some dudes maybe, some dudes not. That depends. You have to kill me where I stood before I would send a picture to my mom in like a t-shirt and say “Mom, what do you think about it?”
Geoff::
Yeah, but the general point is just do some little exercise and get to thinking about “I’m not buying these clothes just for me. I’m buying them for a future girlfriend.”
Tucker:
You know you are not just buying them just for you. I would go around in a burlap sack or be naked if I didn’t care what women thought about it. I mean instead of a Lulu Lemon gray t-shirt, I have a Walmart gray t-shirt for real. Like why would I spend $60 on a fucking shirt if I didn’t give a shit about women? I could spend $5 on it for almost the same shirt.
Geoff::
I envy your shirt. Anyway, the other thing to realize guys is that women spend so much money on the clothing to look good for you. And before you’re used to spending money on clothing you’ll resent it. And you’ll think this is crazy. Why am I wasting all this money? Bear in mind the average dress for a woman going on a date for any gainfully employed woman is like at least $200-$300. Decent pair of shoes, the same, when she’s wearing like heels. And she wants to spend like a third as much on your clothes.
Tucker:
So we did talk about that. We’re going to release a study. We did a big study, 500 women on Mechanical Turk, about how do you respond to various types on the best selling men’s shoes on Zappos if a guy showed up wearing these on a date? Here’s the thing though, I want to point out something. We’re like talking about “Oh, dude, you need to spend the money.” I don’t necessarily think that’s true. What would you have to do is you have to look like you care.
Geoff::
Yeah. Make an effort.
Tucker:
It’s very easy to look like you care if you spend money right? If you don’t have a lot of money to spend that probably means you got a lot of time. So you can replicate 90%, I think, of the impact ofa guy who spends a lot of money by spending time looking for bargains or something that’s very close to, something that looks expensive but it’s not. And we actually found that in our study. Is that women if a dude shows up on a date any decent leather shoes she’s going to be happy. Do you remember the difference between timberlands which are fifty bucks? And like the Zanea shoes?
Geoff::
Oh and the Allan Edmonds.
Tucker:
Right, the Allan Edmonds which are like five hundred was basically no difference.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
No fucking difference between fifty and five hundred dollar shoes.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
Which doesn’t mean that with all women if you show up in all leather they’re all going to care? This is an average of five hundred women but the point is I think for most women if you look like you care, wearing leather shoes tells her he cares enough to think about what he’s wearing and wear something nice, right? That’s what matters for her not he spend five hundred fucking dollars on a pair of shoes.
Geoff::
Yeah and in fact the worst rated shoes. Almost the worst were the most expensive they’re a pair of $600 black cowboy boots with red skulls on them right? And that’s basically a signal that says I am a sleazy psychopath.
Tucker:
Well what it says I have more money than taste.
Geoff::
More money than attracted to women. And that I’m basically buying this for myself without any understanding of females.
Tucker:
I’m buying these to show off.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
Which is the same thing as huge muscles for most guys. That’s why women like muscular men, not body builders.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
So, what else should we go over with clothes. These are the important points. Look like you care. Wear relevant things for your social group. Look like you care, right and make sure they fit. Spending money, you don’t have to do it, but if you have money spend it, that’s great. If you don’t you can get 90+% of the way there without having to spend that much money.
Geoff::
Yeah you can substitute time and taste for money often.
Tucker:
Absolutely.
Geoff::
Even if you go to thrift shops they often have higher quality stuff at the bigger thrift shops. And you can often find really pretty cool clothing for like five bucks a shirt or eight bucks for trousers.
Tucker:
Or go to places like TJ Maxx or Filene’s Basement or Neiman Marcus like off the rack or whatever. Those places have the same stuff in the department store and it’s like just sixth months later. Let me tell you something. If we are fucking worried about wearing what’s cutting edge in GQ or Esquire, you got another fucking problem. If you’re gay that’s a different discussion. If you’re a straight dude looking for a woman, you don’t need to worry about it. Men’s fashion does not change quickly.
Geoff::
Yeah and men’s haute couture, serious men’s fashion, is by gay man for gay man. It’s not for women right? Women typically want guys to have a classical look anyway not sort of up to the minute.
Tucker:
Don Draper, everyone thinks Dan Draper’s hot. Classical, he’s dressed from the sixties. He looks timeless. Alright cool. I think we covered close. We’re going to do I think a whole set of podcast. This set of podcast is just about our clothes later on. We’re going to be very specific about this whole thing but that was actually pretty specific. You should be able to take everything you need from that. Now all those assessments we just talked about. That’s about five or six things. They happen to be essentially instantaneously second or last. Most of the evaluations are unconscious. Now I think we start to move in to more conscious sort of things that women think about. And the things that might take a little bit more time. And again it doesn’t mean it’s hours, it’s few seconds. These are all pre-conversation too. Right we should talk about ornamentation meaning jewellery and stuff. So what are some of your takes on ornamentation? Jewelry, accessories.
Geoff::
I think generally women like to feel like the more visually ornamented sex among humans. But that’s culturally dependent. There’s lot of tribal people where the guys go around really flamboyantly, with their headdresses, their penis sheets and their red ogre body painting and all that.
Tucker:
Right.
Geoff::
Most women seem pretty happy though if you just basically have a decent classical watch. And if you wear glasses, you know, well selected stylish glasses and not much else, typically more is worse in terms of ornamentation for guys.
Tucker:
Like if you got earrings, rings, bracelets and things like that. It’s not that they can’t work on a guy but you better make sure you know what you’re wearing and it’s very appropriate for your social group, otherwise it’s going to look fucking stupid.
Geoff::
And do a sort of body check. Ask yourself okay if I’m wearing this little necklace or something. Do I feel more confident and comfortable with it or without it?
Tucker:
Right.
Geoff::
If you feel more comfortable and confident with it, well it means wear it. And then ask some female friends and say hey what do you think of this? Get some objective opinions.
Tucker:
Gold chains make sense in some circles but not many.
Geoff::
But don’t wear stuff that makes you feel in the pit of your stomach self-conscious about it or uneasy or the like. So most guys are pretty well calibrated, most guys don’t ornament themselves and they shouldn’t.
Tucker:
Right.
Geoff::
I would just suggest learn about watches and if you wear a watch.
Tucker:
If you wear a watch.
Geoff::
If you wear a watch. Tucker doesn’t, I do.
Tucker:
Below the certain age, smartphones replaced watches.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
But if you’re going to wear a watch, know what you are wearing. Don’t have a fucking, you know, mickie mouse’s watch from thirty years ago. Unless like that’s your style is kitchy cool things like that or kitchy old school things, then it makes a little sense.
Geoff::
Yeah, and most watches at least nowadays are too complicated for women’s tastes. Guys tend to get this runaway with this techno thickish thing or like oh if my watch is really thick and huge and has lots of dials that’s really manly. Women don’t think that. Women think that’s like driving around in a hummer, it’s over compensating.
Tucker:
Women think it’s another gadget guys. Oh great another fucking gadget guy.
Geoff::
Yeah, he’ll be more into his computer than into me. And so just anything classical, plain and simple, it doesn’t have to be expensive. It just have at least to be just tasteful. And like you put a little bit of effort into selecting it.
Tucker:
Right, exactly. Alright let’s move to less instantaneous things. So these are I think the next thing a woman sees you, she’s thought: size, shape, body language, grooming, body ornamentation and clothes right? Those are basically instantaneous. At this point now, these are things that a woman sees in less than a second of assessment. At this point what would you say and clearly you know there’s no hard and fast rule. How much of her attraction has been determined at this point? At least 50%.
Geoff::
She’s probably pretty clear on whether she wants you to come up and talk to her or whether she definitely does not want you to come up and talk to her.
Tucker:
Right.
Geoff::
And there might be a little gray area which she’s kind of mildly intrigued maybe, but you’ve kind of set the whole tone before you approach her.
Tucker:
Right, this woman has decided unconscious and immediately if you are even eligible for her to be attracted to automatically. And remember we’ve talked about signaling before and we’re going to talk about it again. These are all signals – whether you are making these signals conscious or unconscious is a different question. Everything you wear, everything about your size, shape, height, etc. signals something about you to the outside world and the best thing you can do is understand what those signals are and make sure they’re on purpose, because for most guys they’re not. So at this point let’s say you walk into some social situation. The girl sees you. She makes all these immediate assessment. Let’s say you know, you’re in the gray area. Well maybe or maybe not, I don’t know, very rarely are people still reserving judgment. People don’t reserve judgment. Everyone judges everyone else immediately and they judge books by the cover. They judge completely even before you talk to them.
Now those can change of course but now the next thing I think that women think about is the social context. So that’s where she’s seen you and has she heard of you before. Where she’s seen you, who are you with and has she heard about you before. Those are very very important because at this point now, instantaneous now she’s placing you into base on what you’re wearing on social groups. So if you got cargo short or like tank top that says “America, 2 and 0 in world wars” and flip flops and a backward hat, you are a frat boy. And if she’s not a girl who’s into that, generally a young girl, then you’re automatically out. Nothing else really matters right, unless you are Justin Bieber and she’s into that or something right. So that’s what I’m talking about the decision’s already been made when talking about attraction. You are a category that she doesn’t even consider in terms of meeting potential, right. Like I said frat boy can be great if you’re in college and have a really great college that’s fantastic, that’s a very optimal strategy and it’s like overall. Now social contact, normal situation, normal, normal girl, normal guy in America whatever that means you, who you’re with, where it is and how she’s heard of you are supremely important at this point. So what’s going through a girls mind in that point? Like how was the mind interacting to sort of appearance and everything?
Geoff::
Well she’s trying to figure out how popular are you? How much status do you have?
Tucker:
What’s your status?
Geoff::
What’s your social network like? And bear in mind when a woman’s choosing potential boyfriend she’s not just choosing you as an individual. It’s your whole life that’s she’s kind of signing up for, all your friends and your social contacts. And remember she’s instinctively evaluating you all of that not just in terms of how much fun they will be but can he protect me? Right, does he have protectors?
Tucker:
Does he make me look better?
Geoff::
Yeah, does he increase my status among my peer group? Are his friends going to be interesting? Not just him.
Tucker:
These assessments – I want to be clear about this again. This is even for short term mating. This assessment is still going on either consciously or unconsciously, correct?
Geoff::
Yeah, because if you’re a fun guy with fun friends, you’re going to be fun in bed even if it’s only for twenty minutes.
Tucker:
Alright, so social context is super important. Another example I think where you’re meeting the girl is very important, where she’s seeing you. If the girl’s in a gym, her headphones on and she’s on a treadmill then clearly this is not a situation where, she’s still…when she sees you she’s still making the assessments immediately – it’s unconscious and automatic for all humans. But this is not a situation or it’s a very unusual situation she’s not really open for approaches. Right, this is not where you are going to be talking to her.
Geoff::
Yeah. The best she might do she might make a little mental note. “Oh I hope that cute guy comes up and talk to me later.”
Tucker:
Right of course.
Geoff::
Not now, later.
Tucker:
In some points. Oh wouldn’t it be cool if I met him on a parking lot or maybe not on a parking lot because you don’t walk up to girls when they’re way on their car because that’s what rapist and thieves do. But like oh that guy is cute, I’d like to meet him out or whatever. Absolutely, but that context is very different than when you’re in a salsa class or in a bar or you’re in a party or anything like that. Very different social context right. And also who you’re with reflects very much. And that can mean a couple of things. If you’re in a group of dudes and you’re clearly a leader you’re going to look better. If you’re in a group of dudes where all are who she thinks are all good looking or cool, you’re going to look better because you’re in this group. Or maybe you might be a leader but it might be a group of fucking losers, maybe it’s going to make you look worse. These are all in her eyes of course. Now the big thing I guess is does she know who you are? Because if she’s heard of you, I’m not even talking about fame, fame and popularity and being famous is whole separate kind of thing. Which we’ll do a whole podcast on being famous I think because there’s so many weird things, excuse everything. But meaning has she heard of you like meaning are you in a group that she knows? Meaning like a fraternity, you do Crossfit, you’re member of a gym like we talked about. You work at some place where she’s seen you before. Are you known to her or not? Do you have friends in common? Something like that. If she’s heard of you, in any way, shape or form, unless it’s negative, it’s always a benefit because you’re safer. So immediately on an unconscious instinctive level, you’re safer. The second thing is if she’s heard good things about you, that’s fantastic. So let’s talk about a little sort of, is there anything else to cover about social context?
Geoff::
Yeah, even if she’s just seen you before. She doesn’t even know your name but if she’s seen you around, you’re in her apartment building. She’s seen you around campus. That woman automatically is at least a little bit of a cue of safety and reliability and it also means you’re not just a drifter kind of passing through right, because one of her key fears is being seduced and abandoned by kind of drifter trick.
Tucker:
Or killed and rape then seduced and abandon. Both are far more likely to people that have no connection, total strangers.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
Again, on the unconscious level there’s automatically happening. To some extent now we’re getting to conscious sort of thing you know. Right so the next thing, let’s just assumed your social situation where some sort of contact makes sense. In a bar which again is not a great place to meet woman you know it doesn’t matter. Intramurals sports, improv class, whatever.
Geoff::
Grocery store.
Tucker:
Grocery store, right. Next thing as you approach or you get close to her you start to smell or you already smell. Everyone has a smell. The best case scenario is you smell good, it’s totally fine if you have no smell. If you smell bad that’s terrible. That’s the worst case scenario. Have you ever heard a situation where a girl is like “Man, I really love my boyfriend but he has really bad breath” or “I can’t stand his smell”?
Geoff::
That doesn’t last long.
Tucker:
Doesn’t work. It’s crazy, like on a deep genetic level. Literally on a genetic level you can’t work. The repulsion factor for people who smell bad is extremely high. I’ll never forget man this one girl I hookup with. So hot and her breath is like fucking worm death. I couldn’t fuck her. I fucked her once I had to turn around and then I could kiss her afterwards she’s kind of got discharge. She thought I was about bobbing and leaving her or whatever. And like I really like this girl, I thought she was kind of cool and I would love to have kept hooking up with her the very least right. Even to this day when I think of her breath I want to vomit. And I don’t know if she just had bad breath or you know she was eating shit or there was some genetic… There’s a lot of studies of this, I’m sure you know, where the more genetically similar to someone the worst they smell or something like that, right.
Geoff::
Well I had a PhD student that did a dissertation on this. She had a bunch of guys wear t-shirts for 3 days and had women rate those shirts in terms on how they smell. And the kicker was, she recruited some of the women’s own brothers as subjects and what happens is women rate the shirt of their brothers warm and reassuring but a total sexual turnoff. Right, as they should. Right they’re relative so you should feel safe about it.
Tucker:
Well are they genetically designed to repel to incest.
Geoff::
Yeah, they don’t want to sleep with them. The guy is genetically dissimilar, they’re strangers, some of them smelled great, some of them didn’t. So even just from those scents, those pheromones, women can judge how attractive are you and how related to them are you? But I’ve this same experience with women whose breath was horrible. Imagine their point of view. Most women take much better care in their oral health, their teeth than most guys do. And every woman has that experiences, she’s meeting a guy and he seems cute and talks well and then oh he just smells like something crawled down his gut and died.
Tucker:
I’ve actually had a girl said to me. She’s like “I’m really into you but your breath smells”, and I’m like, what are you talking about? No girl has ever, and she like this girl, I’ve never really except some onion of course. But like one girl, one girl. She said I can’t do it. I was like I wouldn’t even upset because I got it okay I get it. It’s not my breath but I don’t brush my teeth whatever. She’s like no it’s still there the smell is like whatever. Other women might think about that she was the only one who was honest about it and I actually think that’s cool.
Geoff::
Another little anecdote. I have friends in New York, women who did a lot of online dating and a couple of them said, you know even before the first date if I have a bunch of email with a guy, I’ve seen a bunch of pictures of the guy even before I met him I kind of have an idea whether I want to have a second date. The main thing I assess on the date is his scent.
Tucker:
Well, does his profile match up to who he is?
Geoff::
Is he lying? But mainly if he’s not lying does he smell good to me?
Tucker:
You actually had women say that to you.
Geoff::
Yeah, yeah.
Tucker:
Wow!
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
Now it’s huge. Scent is one of the things you don’t think about and when it’s wrong no making up for it.
Geoff::
And bear in mind, women have more acute sense of smell than average men do. Especially when they are pregnant which is probably you shouldn’t be hitting on pregnant girls but whatever that’s a different sort of thing.
Tucker:
So then smell is very important. At the very least this tie back in to grooming, take a fucking shower right, and do something with your breath. Brush your teeth, maybe floss once a week or something at least. Put some gum on your fucking mouth, don’t go straight from a garlic dinner to hitting on girls, it’s not going to work well. Unless they’re Italian girls, then they’ll probably smell garlic too. Then the next sort of thing, then we get in to now is initial contact which can be a whole accumulation of things. These ties back to body language. What mood are you in, what’s your attitude, how do you initially approach her. Or initial contact is not just meeting and walking up and the first thing you say but really the first thirty seconds to a minute of interaction. So many guys say “what’s the sort of thing I can say to a girl to make her like me?” and I look at them and think have you ever talked to a girl, are you retarded? There’s no fucking magic thing to say. That’s ridiculous. It just doesn’t work that way, unless you’re famous and you can say hey I’m George Clooney. That will work well because you’re George Clooney – it’s not the fucking sentence, right? Same sort of thing.
Geoff::
And you can get this when you ask women you have boyfriends. Hey how did you guys meet? A woman will talk about the context. Where it happened, maybe she’ll talk a little about her impression of him, what he was wearing. She will never say “oh, he got me because the first thing he said was this awesome pickup line.” Women never say that, right. That’s not part of the story.
Tucker:
There might be a story about they met and interacted and part of it can involve a thing the guy said that was really funny, witty and genius. But it’s always a full story, it’s not like she’ll just say some line and that’s it.
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
Never, never. The line, the thing you say is part of an entire story right. And that’s the thing she’s pulling out of the story but again leading up to all of that she already found you attractive or whatever. You know of all the things, all the elements of attraction were already there. The sort of thing she talks about is what she understands consciously right?
Geoff::
Yeah.
Tucker:
Which is again – same problems with guys this is not just a girl thing. I think we’re going to talk about in another podcast very deeply about sort of how that approach sort of pans out but only after that initial contact. I think here’s the big take away. In initial contact, you need to interact with a girl on a way that’s normal, natural, that’s not aggressive or threatening and that allows for a conversation to develop right?
Geoff::
Yeah, you don’t need to attract her in the first minute. All you need to do is to reassure her that you’re not a psychopath.
Tucker:
We will talk about that deeply in the next podcast, let’s say that. But I think here’s the culminating point on this episode. Now the conversation starts. How many things have we gone over? Like fucking ten thing or whatever, this is all before the conversation that basically determine whether there’s even is a conversation. And they determine in many ways how that conversation may go. So it does not matter how good you are in conversation. If you are fucking up everything before that, you are not getting any ass. To put it very bluntly, right? Would you agree?
Geoff::
Unless you approach a woman from behind and she’s never even seen you before talking to her, then she’s going to be shocked and frightened.
Tucker:
And she’s going to turn and look at you and by the way all these assessments actually happen, she has less time to make it. That’s actually the worse approach. Trickery and manipulation is pretty much never… There are fringe ways that trickery and manipulation maybe might work in certain circumstances, we’ll actually address those to because we’re trying to teach guys everything, not advocate a position. Well there are ways you can get to women and get them to sleep with you. They’re not moral, some of them aren’t legal. They do exist but if you’re a good person on you want the most effective way, trickery and manipulation are not a part of it ever. Correct?
Geoff::
Yeah, and so the key point is when you go up to a woman, she already has a strong sense in her gut whether she invites you to talk to her, right? She’s never made the decision “oh yeah, he’s so cute I’m going to fuck him.”
Tucker:
Right.
Geoff::
But she’s made a mental note. “Oh it would be cool if he talks to me, I would like that.” Or if she made a mental note, “oh god I hope he doesn’t come up to me.” Oh good I hope he stays, I hope he find somebody else. She already has an attitude about you.
Tucker:
Well there’s also extremes and there’s the middle too. Where just like whatever. And you can overcome “oh god I hope he doesn’t talk to me.”
Geoff::
Almost impossible to overcome.
Tucker:
It’s not impossible but that’s really hard. The “meh, whatever”, in some ways, that’s the worse position to be in. In difference that