How you present yourself in public affects how people act and react to you!

[Robertcw]

I’ve been experimenting with my appearance lately out of curiosity to see how people in my local community of both sexes might treat me differently depending on how I look or present myself.

Surprisingly true.

I have tinkered with the following aspects of my appearance:

clothing choices and styles or archetypes

hair styles — I’ve had literally every hairstyle imaginable at least once, except for cleanly bald

shoes

facial hair — clean shave, soul patch, gotee, full stubble, currently growing a beard

And any combination of the above mixing and matching.

Interestingly, my altercations change a lot of how people treat me in public. They also reveal in some level how little other people obsess over little details of my appearance that I notice in the mirror as imperfect.

I have been traditionally self-conscious about growing facial hair because of how much better my skin looks after shaving. Shaving creams and exfoliation from the razor make a difference.

Playing with my appearance has reduced my self-consciousness in this department by realizing that I still get flirted with when I have stubble, and actually probably a little bit more and in a different way than when I am clean shaven.

Now growing a full beard I am realizing how silly clean shaven people look, and how even more silly people with patchy facial hair look.

It it just seems so unnatural to shave away facial hair cleanly. It’s like putting a muzzle on a dog.

Another thing I’ve been self conscious of in the past is the fact that I essentially received failed orthodontic treatment, and that I’ve had the same braces for ten years, and no recent adjustment in the past few years. During this time, my teeth shift dramatically and cause my face to change in subtle ways that I notice in the mirror. Imagine having a slightly different looking face every week — it wears on you after a while.

Recently I’ve decided to allow my teeth to move back to their natural position — I’ve forgotten how I look without the adjustments my orthodontist wanted to make. I literally can’t remember how my face is supposed to look as determined by my genetics without some guy with a metal wire changing it. This troubles me.

As I remove my old orthodontic equipment and allow my teeth to go to their genetically natural position it is very calming and empowering. Even moreso when I see other people don’t react negatively to my natural face shape and tooth position.

Much in the same way women sometimes cut their hair completely short to ‘start over’ I’ve decided to remove my old braces and grow a beard to ‘reset.’ And gain appreciation for how I am supposed to look.

Okay, so that’s the back story. Here’s what I have seen so far.

When I had the archetypal ‘skater hair’ from the mid 2000’s style I was treated by people as a little kid. I cleanly shaved my face and dressed in t shirts and shorts often, with skate shoes.

Just before that I had long hair and occasionally did a pony tail or a man bun. I had always wanted to do that once, so I grew it out at 22. It took about a year. With this hair I also shaved cleanly, but grew a soul patch on the tip of my chin. This was accompanied by the same clothing as the skater hair. This was well received. I was not treated like a kid, but I also wasn’t really treated as a man. More like somewhere inbetween.

I eventually cut the sides and back off down to a tight buzz. Then I got square layers on the top and ended up looking like a jar head. I noticed I started getting attention from different types of women than I normally did, and lost some of the attention I received from those other women I was used to getting it from.

Then I grew stubble with the same jar head look. This seems to be a universal popular look. I get attention out and about.

What I’ve learned from doing this is that women express interest in men depending on what they wear and how they present themselves to the world. They also expressed interest differently than I would have expected. It’s almost as if I’m a sight to notice on the side. They seem to go about their lives regardless of their surroundings, and then when something interesting pops into view they’ll notice and take a few glances, perhaps smirk or start a casual conversation while grinning like school children. Sometimes they’ll fumble their work and blush, and then go back to whatever they were doing. If there are no attractive guys around that catch their eye, they seem to continue what they were doing completely unfazed. It’s actually kinda interesting to observe. Needless to say, I got more enjoyment out of changing my appearance and then paying attention to how people reacted than I expected I would.

The jury is still out on how a longer full beard will fare. However, other men treat me with more respect now that I have facial hair that isn’t patchy. This makes a little sense, research shows that facial hair makes men appear more dominant. Stubble has been chosen as most attractive for casual sex by women and full beards have been chosen as best for long term partners by women given the choice with a control that’s cleanly shaven.

Link and evidence: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513813000226.

Intuitivly it seems to make sense. Women don’t grow facial hair the way men do. So doing so magnifies a natural difference between biology and sex, effectively amplifying one’s masculinity by making it clear that he is not in fact female. I’m sure women have ways of signaling via outward appearance that they are not male, and part of the feminine gender’s utility seems to be making those elements of their bodies clear from far away so that people can discern such differences without a great deal of effort.

It’s certainly interesting.

Alas, I like how my face looks cleanly shaven. So unless I love my full beard after growing it out I’ll likely shave it off in the end despite how funny I now perceive others with clean shaven faces. Why? Well because so can grow stubble back in a few days.

Beards take months, so I’ll see how I feel about it then. But if my changing hairstyles are any indication, there will come a point where I just have to shave my face and change things up again.

Ultimately, I’m a little bit of a perfectionist and so this motivates me to try new things and then compare and evaluate how they size up with other alternatives. Eventually I go with the one I like the most. In this case, I’m trying out all the different possible facial hair combinations and hair styles before sticking with one for a while. I’ll probably do this again and again.

I wonder how I’d look with blue black hair 🤔. That’ll be next for sure.

[RussianNestingDoll]

Ever try growing a porn Stache? I’m not saying you should but I would like to know what would happen if you did. I like experiments like this.

[Robertcw]

🤣

I have not, no. Lol.

I agree, that would be quite amusing. Maybe I’ll give it a try.