All these n count discussions always have guys talking about how they would never seriously date a high n woman and when questioned about how they could ever possibly know for sure how many men she's slept with, they'll pull out some absurd list of tell tale slut signs (tattoos, hair colour, revealing clothing, piercings, smoker, hoop earrings, swears, wears yoga pants... to list a few I've seen on here).

It's got me thinking about myself and all the women I know that fall on various ends of the slut-spectrum, from virgins to strippers and I try to see whether these signs hold any merit. They usually don't. I have a virgin friend that fits most 'slut' stereotypes (but she is saving herself for marriage), I have a very slutty stripper friend who (outside of work, obviously) dresses and looks like a literal 50s housewife. She even has a baking channel on YoutTube where she wears pink aprons and makes cakes and cookies and cute little muffins.

What holds true though, is that men treat them very differently based on their looks. These tell-tale signs of being a slut means my virgin friend keeps getting very sexually aggressive guys hitting on her, none of them believe she's a virgin, the dates these guys take her on are all cheap, she'll get called a slut occasionally. Stripper friend on the other hand got classy men, expensive dates, no one pushing her for sex. When she dated she told them she's a stripper on the third date and none of them have an immediate problem with it, they still didn't push sexual interactions on her. She's now 26 and engaged to a 30-something year old plastic surgeon. She's still stripping because she loves her job

I noticed this by myself from my own life experiences as well. I was a virgin into the alternative scene and checked off most things on the slut lists. I am now all natural and have a new found love for girly, feminine clothing and wear heels often, long skirts, pink accessories, flowers weaved in my hair. The change in type of male attention I started receiving was mind blowing. And I am definitely not an innocent virgin anymore. Since this appearance change, I haven't had a problem with any man waiting a while for sex because from the get-go, they assume that I am the type to make them wait. There has been no asking to split bills. The quality of dates increased. No questions about my sexual history.

I don't think that men have an aversion to sluts - I think men have an aversion to women who look like sluts. Men want to date women who appear pure and innocent because it boosts their status to other men - they know what/how other men think and if she has the Madonna look going, other men are going to assume that she has been patiently waiting for the right man, that she was hard to get and that this guy must be great to be able to land her. A woman that looks slutty signals to the other men that she was easy and hey they could probably get her with minimal effort so this guy must be quite low value/desperate that this was the best he could get and he chose to commit to her.

Basically, an innocent looking woman is a status symbol for men in the male social matrix. Give a guy the choice between a slutty looking woman with an n count of 2 OR a classy, modest looking woman with an n count of 20 and I guarantee he'll go for option b.

Men make a lot of judgments based on appearance. A woman who looks right will receive a lot of lenience in things he considers deal-breakers/red flags as opposed to one who has every single green flag in the book but gives off the wrong impression with her appearance.