An Interesting Hair Experiment...

I want you to help me conduct an experiment.

For a couple of years now I've realized just how much I am attracted to the hairstyle that most women call "half-up, half-down" or more simply, "half-up." Whatever it is called, I love it when girls wear their hair the way the women in these pictures are wearing it. It is extremely sexy and elegant at the same time, and immediately draws me to a woman. It is almost uncanny how much it affects my judgement of a woman's appearance. I find myself checking out bigger girls who are wearing their hair that way, or losing interest in (previously) attractive women once they change from that hairstyle to another, or else staring at a picture of a normal girl, not understanding why I am attracted, only to eventually realize that her hair is half-up.

I've thought a lot about why I like it so much, but nothing makes sense. I've never dated a girl who wore it that way often, or even had a crush on one who did. My mom or sisters never really wore their hair like that, my babysitters didn't, my teachers didn't - no one did. The only semi-believable reason I can think of is that some of the female Disney characters (who for most men my age were the first icons of female beauty) wore their hair like that, and maybe left an impression on me; though I don't remember being particularly attracted to one more than any of the others. It isn't an overly popular hairstyle in the United States. In fact, it is practically never worn in comparison to, say, Turkey and Italy or Lebanon (and probably other Mediterranean countries), where it is extremely popular.*

In any case, this has puzzled me enough that I've started asking my male friends what they think about this hairstyle; and I've been surprised to hear how much they agree that it is really attractive. In other words, maybe it isn't just my personal taste.



So here is what I would like you to do: the next time you go out, wear your hair in some variation of the "half-up" style depicted here, especially if it is not a style you usually wear. Go out like you normally would and pay attention to what happens. Then, in the comments of this post, report your findings. Let me know what comments you receive - positive or negative - and let me know if you had more or less (and better or worse) attention from men. You can also comment on the type of men if you notice a trend. Get your girlfriends to do the same on another night (so that you aren't all wearing the same hairstyle - awkward) and see how it works for them, or have them leave their own comments.

As motivation, here are some thoughts about how participating in this experiment could benefit you:

1. You might discover a hairstyle that looks good on you.
2. I've been told it is an "easy" hairstyle to make and wear.
3. By taking a fashion risk, you will better understand what hairstyles look good on you.
4. You will expand your comfort zone, and therefore your confidence.
5. Because this hairstyle is not very popular in the countries that most of my readers are from, you will most likely stand out from other girls - in a good way.
6. You will contribute to the pool of knowledge about what men like.

I'll look forward to seeing the results.

_______________________________

* The fact that all of these countries are more sexually polarized than the United States is another hint at what I suspect might be the reason why men find it so attractive.

Related Posts:

1. The Importance of Hair

2. How to Improve Your Hair

3. Hair and Makeup Variety

Your Skin Color Matters

If you want to make yourself more attractive, you need to focus on three things when you are choosing your clothes: style, fit, and color. The need for a suitable style is obvious to most people - your clothes should reflect or magnify your personality. Simple enough. The need for the right fit should be obvious, but it is apparently less so to many women (and men). Too many people don't wear clothes that flatter their figure. However, color is the most misunderstood and neglected of the three, and it is arguably the most important.

In the same way that your clothes need to work with your shape and personality, they also need to compliment your color, or more specifically, your complexion, which is the combined appearance of your skin tone, eye color and hair color. Have you ever noticed how Latin and Mediterranean women almost always look amazing in red and black? or how middle eastern women look far better in the deeper shades of most colors (navies, olives, maroons, etc. as opposed to blues, greens and reds)? If so, you've noticed the effect of color working well with complexion. This effect has been studied, broken down, and rebuilt into a science for more than 100 years by students of fashion and cosmetology.

Here are a couple examples. Note how Courtney Cox and Katherine Heigl look better on the left, where they are shown wearing colors that work well with their complexion. The effect is subtle but it is strong.

If until now you've chosen colors based on something you saw a friend wear, or colors you "just like," there is a good chance you look bad in them. Men notice this, even if only subconsciously. If you haven't taken the time to learn what colors make you look best, you are throwing away potential attractiveness, and therefore undercutting your chances with men. I've observed in many instances that a woman is far more radiant and attractive due to her choice of a color that magnifies her natural beauty. The effect is significant.

I won't tell you how to choose your best colors, because there are other resources that can tell you far more than I. My main goal is to simply to convince you that color matters. But I can point you in the direction of a couple of those resources...

The best book I've found for women about color is called Color Me Confident. I bought a few different ones for men and women, and this one blew the others away (as did its counterpart for men). I like it because it uses modern celebrities as examples, does a good job of explaining the categories it uses to group complexions, and also has sections about the fit of clothes and makeup as well.

This book could reliably be your only resource. However, I have one other suggestion. Find a female celebrity that has your complexion (including eye color, which makes a lot more difference than you'd think) and spend some time looking at images of her on the internet, paying close attention to the colors she wears. Try the following: do an image search for her name and a color, and scan the results. Pay attention to how many instances there are of her in that color. Just as importantly, pay attention to what doesn't come up when you do these searches - i.e. the colors for which you cannot find many instances. Take Penelope Cruz for example. Click on each of the following image search links and notice how the results show whether or not the respective color (and what shade) works for her, based on the collection of images that appear in the search results:

Penelope Cruz Red 
Tons of instances of her wearing red, and she looks smoking hot in it (Latin women...)
Penelope Cruz Blue
Plenty of instances of her wearing blue, but notice how in most it is navy rather than a lighter shade
Penelope Cruz Orange
Basically just one orange dress, and notice how it is a burnt orange rather than bright

There are also a ton of websites out there that either describe how to choose colors that work for you, or else offer online (or in-person) consultations. There are some good videos on YouTube as well. While searching for some of the pictures above I bumped into a few good blogs, which have a lot of examples of color done well, as well as explanations of the theory. Take a look:
http://seasonalcoloranalysis.blogspot.com/
http://12blueprints.com/
http://www.prettyyourworld.com/

While it should only take an hour or so to learn the principles and figure out what are your best colors, it can take much longer to implement them in your wardrobe. It won't be easy to overcome some of your misconceptions. Someone may have told you once that pink was your color (for example), and you've worn it ever since, convinced by the confidence of their compliment that it made you look good. But their statement may very well have been wrong, in part or completely - even if you thought they knew what they were talking about when it came to fashion. Maybe they just wanted to make you feel good. Treat every color (or color combination) as suspect until you know it really does work on you. Be prepared to throw some of your clothes away.

I know these things because I paid no attention to my own color for years, and my appearance suffered because of it. Sometimes I would put on a shirt and recognize that it looked good on me, but I would never know why. Frankly, I never really wondered - I was just content that it did look good. And when I finally learned about the need to address my complexion and learn what looked best on me, I started to realize why those shirts had looked good. In fact, my memory of those instances eventually served as examples in figuring out which complexion I had and what would work well with it.

So if you aren't up to speed on your color, go buy the book, do some research online, and hit the mall. Men notice, and it will make a difference.

All Men Have Different Taste

I am strongly convinced that it does more harm than good to give a compliment when it isn’t deserved, or to give handouts that haven’t been earned. So I wouldn’t write this post if I didn’t honestly believe every word of it. I am not trying to tell ugly girls that they have a chance with Gerard Butler, or suggest that fat women don’t need to hit the gym and diet like their life depends on it, but I am also not interested in watching a perfectly attractive girl despair when she gets rejected or called unattractive by a guy she likes.

The fact is this: all men have different tastes, and the variety of tastes is surprisingly large. I could summarize this whole post by saying that my experience has shown the standard deviation of men's ratings of women on a 10 point scale to be ± 25 %, but since most women don’t like getting information in such cold and concrete terms, I will do my best to elaborate.

While every man wants a “beautiful” woman, no two men have the same idea of beauty, and the variety of taste among men will surprise most women. I am friends with some very good-looking, intelligent and accomplished guys – in other words, guys with options when it comes to selecting women. When we go out and one of us sees someone he likes, he will usually point her out to the rest of us. Invariably, we disagree about how attractive the girl is. Only rarely do two or more of us agree that she is very attractive (above an 8). More often than not, one of us thinks she is drop-dead gorgeous and the rest think she is mediocre at best. I cannot count the times I have had this conversation:

“Dude, you see that girl over there?”

“Which one, the girl in red? Yeah she is cute. I think I…”

“No, no, the one further back, in the blue dress and heels, the brunette. That girl for me is at least a 9.  I gotta go talk to her.”

“In the blue?? Dude, no way man, I’d say she’s a 6 or 6.5 at best. I like her friend though.”

“Alright, well that works for me, let’s go talk to them, I call the blue girl.”

“Haha you can have her, I got the cute friend.”

We tend to think of physical attractiveness as an absolute thing. This tendency is reflected (and reinforced) by Miss Universe-type pageants and lists bearing titles like “Hottest Women of 2010,” which suggest that attractiveness is highly objective. However, it clearly is not this black-and-white – any guy can tell you this after watching one of these pageants or looking at the girls on the lists; no man agrees with the rankings. The women that appeal most to any given man are those with a look that resonates with him personally, and the factors determining a man’s “type” are innumerable, which leads to an extremely varied concept of feminine beauty. This is an extremely good thing for men because it means we aren’t all competing for the same women, which would mean an order of magnitude more bar fights – probably wars too. I suspect the same variety exists for women’s taste in men, but I haven’t asked around enough to know if this is true.

I’ve also found that when I agree with a friend that a girl is extremely attractive, her attractiveness tends to lose its initial effect quickly. The same thing happens all the time with music. The catchiest songs, the ones that appeal to a large number of people, are the ones that you grow tired of most quickly, while the ones that you end up listening to ten years later are the ones that were more unique to your personal taste, and took some time to appreciate.

The upshot is that a girl should not get discouraged if a specific man isn’t drooling over her; there are probably other guys that will – or would, anyway, if she presented herself at her best.

It is worth noting that this variety of taste applies primarily to a girl’s style, ethnicity, dress style, or complexion – most of which are interrelated in some way. It applies to a lesser degree when it comes to body type and age, but there is a surprising variety in taste there as well.