This is the age old question of whether you can be confident if you are not attractive or deemed attractive.... I know you are going to say the fact that you believe you are unattractive means you have no confidence. But this is just feel-good cop-out. Like it or not, there is a heirachy for attractiveness for men. If there wasn't, online dating would be so biased against certain profiles. We know for example that physical height is a huge factor for women. In certain countries or with certain demographics, your race and ethnicity also factors into it. Asian men for example are notorious for getting poor results online. Maybe you are not in great shape, or just average shape, and you are achieving mediocre results with improving this.

So if there is a standard of attractiveness, can confidence really make up for it? Say if you walk into a bar, well-dressed, great smile etc. You know you don't have profile of a typical attractive guy. Could you still get results through confidence alone, not caring what others think about you. Is self-confidence genuinely intrinsic to oneself, and not a function of what others believe of you?

The catch-22 in the title highlights the circular "hell", that a not-so-attractive man lacks confidence, which makes him even less attractive, which reduces his confidence even more... And so on! If the two things are no intrinsically linked, or need not be, then one could be free of this spiral.