Both Men And Women Experience Pretty Privilege—They Just Get Different Perks

Pretty privilege is the advantages those who are perceived to be attractive experience that their less attractive counterparts don’t. Both women and men experience pretty privilege, but in different ways. 

How Women Experience Pretty Privilege

Not to toot my own horn, but my female friends and I have experienced pretty privilege in our lives. Most of us rarely paid for our own drinks in college, and getting into parties or bars was never an issue. As we got older, we learned people were more likely to give us courtesies in public, like making room on public transit. While you could attribute this to female privilege, many of us also noticed that we’re treated better when we’re dressed well and wearing makeup, making us believe that it is, in fact, pretty privilege.

Pretty privilege extends beyond college bars to the college classroom. A 2015 paper from the Metropolitan State University of Denver found that more attractive women earned higher grades than their less attractive female peers. The researchers asked outside observers to rate tens of thousands of female students' attractiveness based on their student ID card photographs and then compared those ratings to their grades. The researchers also found (not surprisingly) that male professors were more likely to give attractive female students higher grades than female professors were (log that helpful tidbit away for when you sign up for your classes next semester).

The researchers then took their project one step further and examined what happened when classes were moved online. They discovered that when classes were remote, pretty privilege disappeared (another helpful tidbit to keep in mind for next semester). 

This erasure of pretty privilege was confirmed in a 2022 study that also showed attractive female students earned lower grades when their classes were moved online. 

In the study, the grades of the more attractive female students dropped when they switched to remote learning, but the same didn’t happen for the more attractive male students. This suggests that the more attractive female students got preferential treatment when professors recognized their looks, similar to how attractive women are often treated better by strangers in public.

Alongside getting better grades, attractive women are more likely to be perceived as good people, receive more opportunities to advance at work, and have an easier time finding matches on dating apps. 

This also comes with downsides, as the likelihood of matching with a guy who only wants a casual hookup is higher simply because there are more matches and the men swiping right may be doing so out of attractiveness alone rather than truly feeling aligned with what the woman's profile and values displayed entail. It can make it more difficult to find love and a genuine connection with a man when some simply see you as a sexual object because you’re pretty.

How Men Experience Pretty Privilege

Pretty privilege among women is a common talking point, but very few understand that men can experience it too, particularly when it comes to social mobility. According to a 2023 study in Social Science Quarterly on physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility, “Physical attractiveness matters both for males’ and females’ intergenerational social mobility outcomes, but it is more important for males, even when childhood characteristics, such as various aspects of parental socioeconomic position, individuals’ health, a proxy for IQ, neighborhood conditions, and interviewers’ fixed effects, are accounted for using imputed data for observations with missing information. Across three measures of social mobility – education, occupation, and income – physically attractive males are more likely to be socially mobile than males of average attractiveness.”

The study also concluded that “physical attractiveness is associated with better health,” while “physical unattractiveness, on the other hand, is shown to be linked to various adverse outcomes, such as a greater propensity towards criminal activity and being perceived as materially deprived.”

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Some wealthy men are unattractive, unhealthy, and are criminals (*cough* Alex Murdaugh), and some poor men are attractive, healthy, and follow the law. This is because human beings are individuals and complex, but it’s still interesting to look at this study and how physical attractiveness can impact intergenerational social mobility in males.

Another recent study found that more handsome men are more likely to get hired at better jobs and to make more money, even when compared to similarly attractive women. The study was conducted over 20 years and followed more than 11,000 Americans. At the beginning of the study in 1993, the participants, age 12-18, were rated by volunteers as very attractive, attractive, unattractive, or very unattractive. Then, 20 years later, researchers examined the career success of the participants, now in their 30s. They found that those who had been ranked as “very attractive” as teenagers had climbed the corporate ladder the most quickly and were earning the highest salaries. 

Researcher Alexi Gugushvili said, “This suggests that for men, being attractive plays a significant role in your professional success, whether it’s getting a raise, a promotion, or access to more competitive jobs.” 

Sometimes Though, Pretty Privilege Isn’t Pretty

Unfortunately, pretty privilege isn’t always a good thing. Pretty people – of both sexes – are assumed to be more trustworthy. This assumption of trustworthiness can cause trouble: Sometimes, it allows those who are attractive to get away with horrible things or be excused for toxic behaviors. This is known as the “halo effect,” and it’s often the reason some women overlook red flags in relationships with attractive men. Even more extreme, it’s also how handsome narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths, and criminals are romanticized. 

Daisy Grewal of Scientific American writes, “The initial appeal of the narcissist or psychopath may be hard to resist. Physical attractiveness is often automatically associated with a host of other positive traits – a phenomenon known as ‘the halo effect.’ When we perceive someone as physically attractive, we automatically assume they are also kinder, smarter, and more confident. Therefore, creating a physically attractive veneer is a highly effective way of creating an advantageous first impression. Combining physical attractiveness with confidence and humor is even more effective, and it appears that people with exploitive personalities are more successful at this as well.”

For example, serial killer Ted Bundy still has a popular female fanbase simply because he was attractive, and these fans ignore that he brutally raped, tortured, and murdered dozens of young women. Other serial killers like John Wayne Gacy don’t have fan bases like this, and you could argue it’s because he was unattractive.

In a similar vein, the past few years have seen the rise of a movement on TikTok to free Lyle and Erik Menendez, two brothers who murdered their parents in 1989. Their fanbase also consists of young women, and many admit they find the brothers attractive. This isn’t new – they had legions of female fans when their trial became a media sensation in the ‘90s. Many of their defenders argue the brothers didn’t deserve a sentence of life without parole because they claimed to be severely emotionally, physically, and sexually abused by their father (recent evidence shows the brothers were likely telling the truth) and feared for their lives, but their attractiveness still plays a role. 

A recent Netflix series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, details the horrific abuse that the boys endured at the hands of their father, and it’s no coincidence that the actors who play the brothers (Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Lyle and Cooper Koch as Erik) are just as handsome. While we can argue over what the motive for the murders was and which factors have contributed to this case still existing in the cultural zeitgeist today, we can all agree that they wouldn’t have a large female fanbase if they were ugly.

The uncomfortable truth is that we typically associate beauty with goodness, often giving a pass to good-looking men who commit heinous crimes. This represents the dark side of the halo effect and pretty privilege, allowing attractive men – and women – to be excused for crimes that their unattractive peers would never get away with.