Two pictures of the same woman taken in the same year.
I talk a lot about transforming your presence by using confidence and outcome independence, assuming a confident frame, moving commandingly, slowly, lowering your voice, etc. However I often tend to forget the pure physical side of appearance. In fairness to me, I do devote an entire chapter to it in one of my books, but beyond that I don’t talk about it much. I’ve had a few experiences lately reminding me I probably should.
A few weeks back I saw the movie “Sucker Punch” starring the 22 year-old actress above (Emily Browning). I tend to like women with curves so when I first saw her on screen, I didn’t think too much of it. Then they did a closeup on her face (as the girl on the left) and my blood started pumping. Big full lips, perfect dark eyes, and platinum blonde hair. All things I like, and all things that turned me on, at least for a few seconds.
Here’s the interesting part. Logically, I knew what I was looking at was fake. Makeup, fake hair, fake lighting, camera tricks, etc. But I didn’t care. My body and brain still reacted positively. The facts didn’t matter, only the perception did.
When fake breasts really caught on in the 1980’s, there was an old joke repeated in lots of movies, TV shows, and stand-up routines, where a bunch of guys are gawking at a woman with big tits, another woman notices the men, glances at the woman, and says “Ugh. Those aren’t real!” The men all reply in thunderstruck unison, “Who cares?”
It reminded me of an important lesson. As long as the fake looks good, the mind doesn’t care. It still likes it, even if it knows it’s fake. Just look at all the guys who masturbate to Japanese anime porn. Can’t get any more fake than that.
When the fake looks really fake, then it matters. I’ll prove it. In your mind, compare the breasts of Hally Berry, which are fake, with the breasts of some silicon-filled DDD-cup porn actress, which are also fake. Notice the difference you feel in your body when you envision both women? You see my point. Halley Berry is just as fake as Ms. Porno, but I’ve never seen any man complain about Hally Berry’s tits. Ever.
Now let’s take this same dynamic and switch the genders. Men don’t have the option of wearing buckets of obvious makeup (unless you follow Mystery Method…ba dum dum TISH). Over the weekend I watched the original 1963 “The Nutty Professor” starring Jerry Lewis. If you’ve never seen this movie, you should. The transformation he makes between the nerdy professor and the Alpha male is pretty astonishing when you first see it.
As far as I can tell, all he did was take out some fake teeth, remove his glasses, darken his eyebrows a little (this is important…dark, full eyebrows are an attractive, masculine trait), and change his hairstyle. The rest was voice, attitude, body language, clothing, etc. Jerry Lewis was a master, but the actual changes to his appearance were very minor, yet extremely effective.
Another less-known example of this was the 1990 movie “Don’t Tell Her It’s Me” starring Steve Guttenberg. The movie sucks, but halfway into the movie they take Gutenberg, a very plain-looking guy, and they completely transform his look, for the better, by growing out his hair, having him grow facial scruff (another important point, one Paul Janka recommends highly and one that I have seen a difference in when I try it), and a few other little tweaks.
The great thing about being a guy is that a few very small changes to your appearance make a huge difference (whereas women really need to go-all out to achieve a big change). Notice I haven’t even mentioned changing the way you dress, and that’s a huge one as well.
There is so much you can do! It does make a difference.
