In my experience, the biggest unspoken and often unseen social motivator is attractiveness.
Consistently, hotter people are treated better, even subtly, and consistently most people around me have either denied or ignored that they're treating/being treated differently.
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Hotter people are more confident, because they've been getting this boost from society that's invisible to them. In their world, people just like them more, treat them better, and they don't see how unattractive people don't get the same treatment.
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I've seen my male friends swarm an attractive women and describe her personality as glowing, her demeanor as confident and assured, when in my opinion she was not actually cool; they were blinded by her face and they were completely unaware to how blinded they were.
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I've also seen really attractive friends get treated well; people smile at them more, pay them more attention in conversations, ask them more questions, are kinder, get more favors, and those attractive friends never once acknowledge that being hot is why they're so confident.
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I'm not sayin all this is bad, that we should treat ppl equally, but I would like a greater acknowledgement and visibility. I'm not usually into 'privilege' conversations but this seems like the biggest unspoken privilege of our time, significantly greater than racial disparity
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Philosopher studies 'lookism' and has written a lot about our biases in favor of physical attractiveness: francescaminerva.com/publications
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Agreed, have observed it have an influence on people assessing artists in particular
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If you look at the hospitality industry it proves this statement to be true. The thing is attractiveness comes in many forms. At the core it’s about confidence. Ppl who are physically attractive have this advantage in confidence which makes everything a lot easier.
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I think that the popular belief is that unattractive people who aren't confident are kind of sad, while unattractive people who *are* confident are perceived as creepy or dangerous.
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It is true. It's no coincidence many high profile conservative women are hot.