
The (Real) Hot Girl Effect and Networking - sjtgraham
http://blog.shrewple.com/post/2520650113/the-real-hot-girl-effect-and-networking
======
brandnewlow
Ultimate Hot Girl Effect Evilness:

My 30-year-old uber lawyer buddy has a gorgeous blonde fiance. She's in med
school and is crazy smart. She's awesome.

My buddy decided at 27 that he wanted to get into chess. He got really into
it, hired a teacher and by 29 or so was moving his rating up pretty well.

As a newcomer though, he often finds himself competing against 13-15 year old
boys at his weekend tournements. In fact he's often the only person over 18
playing in some of these tournaments.

He has a good sense of humor about it, but some of these kids, he says, are
just total turds to the other kids they compete against.

When he learns he has to play against a kid who's mean to other kids, he calls
in the Fiance and has her sit behind him while he plays, just reading whatever
she has to read for med school. She'll spend a whole Saturday sitting there
behind him while he plays, her nose stuck in a book.

It just destroys the kids. He catches them trying to steal glances at her all
the time during the games. Just breaks their chess mojo.

For the cool kids, kids who are struggling to figure out women at that age, he
introduces them to her and she knows to treat them like the coolest guys in
the room. Meanwhile, the mean bully kids get ignored and seethe in the corner.

~~~
xenophanes
Bullies aged 13-15 are not, in general, bad people deep down. Especially not
the ones who go to chess tournaments. It is, in general, not really their
fault. Children this age have little control over their lives, so even if they
had some good ideas to fix their situation they might well be prevented from
doing anything. You can't really blame people for stuff they aren't in control
of. So have a bit more sympathy and stop being actively mean to them.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's liberal crap. Everybody is in charge of exactly one thing, and that's
themselves. The difference between good people and bad ones is dependent upon
exactly one thing, and that's how they treat others.

The idea that there's some truer "deep down" person vs what you see, is also
crap. Sure there's potential in everybody, but your true, real self is what
you show to everyone every day. That cool deep-down person you never show?
That's the imaginary you, not the real you.

------
stcredzero
I've been told by people who've been sent on corporate junkets to Gartner
shindigs/what-have-you, that they have lots of "high-status" (hot) women
wandering around. It was the same with that french psychologist who had the
Madison Avenue types eating out of his hand in "The Century of the Self"
documentary. Having beautiful women around is a signal of dominance. People
who want to project power use this, sometimes consciously, sometimes
unconsciously. Film-makers use this whenever they want to portray someone with
power.

The flip side: when you are hanging out with the other geeks, realizing you're
at yet another sausage fest, does this make you feel powerful, or not so much?

To paraphrase the opera Carmen: if you want any enterprise to succeed, be sure
you have women along!

~~~
melissamiranda
What you don't see here is the inherent double standard in this conversation
about women as accessories. The awesome blonde med school girl at the chess
game? Accessory. Hot Russian immigrants, accessories. Are women just decor?

What I find aggravating is needing to fight to get men to take me seriously
and see me as an intelligent, capable, human being. As long as we have an
environment like this thread, we won't have that many women in tech.

~~~
cap4life
In my experience, I have seen that very attractive women who want to be taken
seriously by men will have a man as a business partner. This seems to take the
edge off for other guys who may be too intimidated to approach the beautiful
girl or who assume that someone so beautiful cannot also be intelligent and
capable of doing business.

As a woman, what bothers me is that we have to constantly tow the line between
being beautiful and not taken seriously or being average/butch/unattractive
and judged to be too serious. It's a problem because even the most open-minded
men are still heavily influenced my a woman's appearance and will make
assumptions about her business acumen and character based on that alone.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
As a man, I never, ever worry about being beautiful at all. And it never, ever
causes any problems in my working life.

If you worry about 'towing the line' between beautiful and anything else,
maybe its your own priorities that are the issue? Why is 'being beautiful'
even in the equation? Because you put it there. So you have to deal with it.
But its absolutely not other peoples' problem.

~~~
cap4life
Written from a truly male perspective. Even girls who choose not to make
attractiveness a priority find that, eventually, it becomes a priority that
society imposes on them. Or at least a topic that's constantly brought up when
talking about a woman's abilities. How many articles talked about Elena
Kagan's "mannish, butch" looks when she was appointed to the SC? Or Michelle
Obama's fashion sense when she became First Lady?

------
3pt14159
This post depresses me. I'm a man and certainly no feminist, but posts on the
usefulness of attractive, female RoR developers leaves a really bad taste in
my mouth. I was going to comment on the nature of our field, but it's probably
the same almost everywhere, from banking to bricklaying to hacking.

I'll be in my terminal.

~~~
brandnewlow
That's how the world works. Deal with it.

I have a friend who works in the call center at a day trading firm in Chicago.
He's a sailor and the owner/founder of the firm has a boat so he gets long
stretches of unfiltered time with the guy outside of work. The guy regularly
affirms that they intentionally try to hire only HRI's ("hot russian
immigrants") when they hire women because it boosts morale, makes hiring
ambitious men easier and apparently exploits a small dip in the local hiring
pool where the the immigrant women have a slightly harder time getting jobs at
most places than the non-immigrant hotties they go up against elsewhere. My
friend's firm found that going the extra mile to help them with visa status
stuff meant they could get better looking women on staff than their
competition.

~~~
kabuks
> That's how the world works. Deal with it.

Really?

When I see any argument start with this sentence, I immediately mistrust it. I
suspect that world works in mysterious, complex, and ever changing ways, and
that I get to be a part of shaping it.

I prefer:

"That's how things seem to be going right now. If you don't like it, there are
probably others out there who feel the same. You could work with them to make
it a little better. As you're working folks will tell you to just deal with
it. Smile politely, ignore their advice, and keep working."

~~~
sliverstorm
I think you're being blindly optomistic. The only way to "make it a little
better" is to:

a: make it so that ANYBODY can get a hot woman, which makes having lots of hot
women about useless

b: flood the industry with women. This is happening slowly, but you can't
force it. Of course, if the balance tips towards women, then we'll just have
the opposite, and having hot powerful handsome men around will replace hot
women.

c: (myriad of ridiculous examples about fundamentally changing our species and
the nature of sexuality)

You have to remember this isn't _about_ sexism. _It may well be sexist_ , but
all it's about is having what all of your peers want but can't have makes you
look powerful. It just so happens the most common want-but-can't-have is
attractive women. "making it better" can only be achieved my removing the
want.

~~~
readymade
Slavery wasn't about racism, it was about cheap, unregulated labor. Pure
economics. It doesn't absolve the moral dilemma inherent to it, or negate the
racism that frequently underpinned public support for it. For what it's worth
I'm sure people defended human slavery by saying "that's just the way the
world works" then as well. You're not ethically tantamount to a slave owner by
glibly justifying using women as ornaments or pawns in your little networking
game, but it's a bit troubling that "treating women with the same respect
you'd expect from your peers" doesn't factor into your assessment.

~~~
sliverstorm
If you _treat_ them and _see_ them like pawns, then shame on you. (though odds
are if you see them like pawns, you see _everybody_ as a pawn, female or not.
An equal-opportunity exploiter, if you will).

Still, I'd observe this is tied to basic human nature & sexuality. Unlike
slavery, as best I can tell it _cannot_ be done away with, short of making it
illegal for a man to have a hot woman/entourage of women present ( _totally_
not a sexist law, btw)

~~~
readymade
Fair enough, but one can justify racism and ethnocentrism by appealing to our
animal instincts as well – we may very well be predisposed to seeking power
over others and reserving trust for those we perceive to be our own kind. Now
granted, I have no way of proving that there isn't some kind of misogyny gene.
But legally, slavery was done away with by passing a constitutional amendment
that makes no direct reference to race. Culturally, there was a large
precedent of underground and increasingly popular outrage against the
practice, founded in principles of human equality that had to be actively
argued for.

I bring up the parallel, again, not because it's an equivalent situation, but
to illustrate what I think is a common ethical trap we can fall into: what
good is it to see an injustice and wave our hands, saying that it's just the
way the things are?

You suggested that the grandposter is blindly optimistic for wanting to change
the way men relate to women in the workplace (or something like that), but
think about how much has changed culturally, that we can have this
conversation in 2010 and have it be basically a given that human bondage is
morally wrong? It took a law in 1865, and it was controversial at the time.
Today you have to be on the fringe of society in order to believe that it was
ever morally defensible, presumably. That's not a triumph of law, it's a
triumph of active social change.

~~~
sliverstorm
I had typed out a long and careful argument, but I think I'll just leave it at
this:

I believe this issue is fundamentally rooted in sexuality, and I am deeply,
_deeply_ fearful of the day we attempt to legislate the nature of sexuality.

~~~
readymade
On the latter point I agree with you, and I'm certainly not advocating that,
merely suggesting we can do a lot more on our own to be agents of social
change with the force of our moral convictions than would otherwise seem
possible.

As for the question of our fundamental nature, we'll just have to leave it up
to the philosophers. I appreciate your good natured debate, nonetheless.

------
readymade
Does anyone else find it comical that the author spends so much of his post
talking up the virtues of not being a people user, while simultaneously
offering advice on how to use women?

I guess if you're dating her that's one thing, but as a general strategy?
Replace "girlfriend" with "hot secretary"(or "athletic looking black man",
feel free to get creative here) – I honestly don't see how is this somehow
more tolerable than pitching to a potential investor without getting to know
them first.

~~~
sjtgraham
Probably no one else has found it comical, because I haven't offered any such
advice. The only thing I have done is highlight the apparent good will
conferred by being associated with attractive women. The girl in question was
not coerced or cajoled into doing what she did, she did so completely of her
own initiative.

Also using the help of someone you are dating someone is completely different
to 'pitching to a potential investor without getting to know them first' or
'being a people user' and I object to that. One does what one can to help a
SO, there are many ways in which favours are returned.

~~~
readymade
I have to concede here – by the time I wrote this comment I was responding
more to the general tone of the thread than to your article. I apologize for
making you sound like a douche. Touchy subject for many.

~~~
sjtgraham
Thanks man, I appreciate it.

S

------
bonaldi
He keeps people in his "repertoire" and gets to know them via the amazing
mutual interest in "hot women", then protests that he is completely different
from all those networkers because he doesn't use people and has shared
interests. Riight.

------
melissamiranda
Ha. I'm a hot girl who went to an ivy school with 4yrs in startups (yes I
code), and got completely dissed by Dave McClure when I tried to introduce
myself.

Do not approach this man cold. He is mobbed at every networking event being
one of the more visible people in the valley. Try to find one of his zillion
advisors in the valley, get them to know you, and make an intro. He's
completely different if you've been introduced by someone he trusts. Case in
point is my co-founder meeting him in Japan and having the best meeting ever.

------
swombat
I was at the same party and Dave was not surrounded by baying mobs of nerds,
far from it. In general, he had a couple of people from his entourage (who
arrived with him) that he spoke to most of the time. In fact, at one point he
was clearly looking for more conversation, as I saw him wandering through the
crowd alone and finally arriving at our group and joining the conversation.

Perhaps the baying crowds of nerds were in the author's mind.

------
gkoberger
I would argue there's a difference between this example and the original.

With someone like McClure or Arrington, the people approaching them want
something specific. Their businesses are on the line, and the unwritten
protocol is that you walk up to one of these men, give them your elevator
pitch, and they make or break you. (If you were desperate to keep the metaphor
going- maybe they're prostitutes? By this, I mean that when you walk up to
them, you know what you want and they know what you want: 5 minutes of their
time. Sure, they may be a hot girl, but it doesn't matter because it's a
business transaction.)

The CFO, on the other hand, is more like a girl you would potentially want a
relationship with. Very little good will come from pitching the CFO (or a
movie star, etc). An example for me is Tim Ferriss- a bunch of people were
standing and watching him outside at a conference he spoke at. I walked up and
introduced myself, and he was one of the nicest guys I've ever met. If Tim
Ferriss could make or break peoples careers, he'd have been mobbed, too.

------
mfukar
Wow. By far the most sexist thread on HN since I joined, huge props to us!

------
ohashi
mirror: <http://blog.shrewple.com.nyud.net/>

------
gabea
I would say that the rule one should live by is to utilize the talents and
physical attributes God gave you to the best of your ability, but use them in
the most humble of ways. At the end of the day you will taste true success.

------
wallflower
"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care"

------
flip
Brilliant observations and use of the "my guy." Made me feel all warm and
fuzzy.

I find that this is much more the norm for how successful networking. No one's
going to argue with the babe.

------
maeon3
I'm reminded of Socrates quote in "The Great Dialogues of Plato".

"Because in your talk you do nothing but lay commands on people, like young
society beauties who are regular tyrants as long as they are young and good-
looking. And perhaps you have found me out already; I can't resist the
handsome!"

The notion of young beautiful women in our society as having less attention
than certain less attractive ones is completely wrong. Socrates was calling
these beautiful woman tyrants because all men around them were showering them
with whatever they wanted. Nothing has changed in the last 2000 years. The
only hope for men is to join arms and completely ignore women, but this will
never happen, until then they will call the shots until they get old, then
they will be married to you, and then they will still call the shots.

[http://books.google.com/books?id=WMbS85Ijg2oC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=WMbS85Ijg2oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=great+dialogues+of+plato&source=bl&ots=hN5JL2x40o&sig=I1x9ngBntD0Y5JC19a4Jhp2zyFc&hl=en&ei=BP4bTYnAB4aBlAeh54jPCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&sqi=2&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=young%20and%20good-
looking&f=false)

~~~
jacquesm
> Beautiful women have the world by the balls, when I meet one of these women
> I remind them that they will get old and be in for a rude awakening.

That makes zero sense to me. Everybody gets old, beautiful women too, and for
_all_ of us it is a rude awakening. The relative difference between being
young and old and being beautiful and average is smaller for 'beautiful or
average' than for being young or old.

Do you berate the young too for 'being in for a rude awakening'?

Whatever you've got use your body to the best of its abilities, you'll never
be able to recover time that you've lost and don't begrudge others the bodies
they've got, after all you could have been even worse off, possibly lots
worse. It's just a giant lottery.

To berate people for attributes they did not choose is just another form of
jealousy.

edit: parent has removed the quoted passage

~~~
aik
It is a rude awakening for all of us, but I think the point is that one who
heavily depends on looks has a much tougher time than someone not dependent on
looks. Naturally not every beautiful woman has a heavy dependence on looks,
but in general people tend to flaunt whatever extra-ordinary attribute they
have, be it a natural and short-lived or learned and life-long.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm pretty sure that those that are beautiful are well aware of how fleeting
it is, I just can't see it is a justification to put them down like that.

Should people that are born in to money discard it so they can live an average
life in order not to offend? Should those that are beautiful spend their lives
in burlap sacks lest they give offense to those less fortunate (Burka's?).

People don't 'depend' on their good looks, people simply use the tools that
they've got and beauty in a society so focused on beauty is a very powerful
tool.

The interesting thing here is that everybody else makes it in to a powerful
thing, not the person having it, they just use the power granted.

~~~
mdda
It is well known that people rate the opinions of those that are
taller/prettier higher than others. So, to adjust for that natural bias it
might make sense to treat attractive people's opinions with greater scrutiny.

But maybe attractive people have better minds too? That's a possibility -
however (IMHO) outward attractiveness is more to do with genetic fitness (in
the procreation sense), than creative fitness (in the meme generation sense).
The evolution of ideas is whether the action is now... (at least that's what
I'd like to believe)

------
zackattack
This guy has it all wrong.

Here's a possibility: author feels especially confident when beautiful women
are around him. This confidence/happiness projects to other people (via mirror
neurons / the amygdala / etc.). People find him more enjoyable and
approachable.

To clarify, I don't claim that being surrounded by bad chicks isn't going to
make you feel better about yourself. I suspect that possessing other kinds of
cultural capital can do the trick.

~~~
brandnewlow
That's also a factor, I think. But it doesn't negate the argument that seeing
someone with an attractive woman deferring to them sends a strong signal to
people around you.

~~~
zackattack
I know plenty of club promoter douches who are "surrounded" by attractive
women. They seem to be the counterexample that destroys the rule.

Dating an attractive woman certainly implies that you have something going for
you. Social proof and all that.

------
huertanix
"I was introduced to the ”Hot Girl Effect” by a girl I dated once. This girl
is an absolute knockout, and very smart too."

Pics or it didn't happen.

~~~
HaloZero
I have no idea how to give you a negative rating (i only see a ^ button) but
yeah, -1

~~~
codexon
I don't understand why you guys are downvoting him.

Other than the "Pics or it didn't happen" meme, he is raising the issue that
the article is hugely anecdotal even though it seems like common sense. That
is a valid point.

~~~
cabalamat
> I don't understand why you guys are downvoting him.

Maybe they don't want HN to become Reddit; after all, we've already got one
Reddit, we don't need another.

~~~
huertanix
I think the "I am totes dating a hot chick check me out" submissions have
already beat me to the chase.

