DOES AN ATTRACTIVE WOMAN DO TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AND REMAIN FEMININE (IN ANY OC

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/07/on-being-an-attractive-woman-and-being-taken-seriously-in-philosophy.htmlWHAT DOES AN ATTRACTIVE WOMAN DO TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AND REMAIN FEMININE (IN ANY OCCUPATION) WITHOUT DRESSING ‘DOWN’ or DOWDY?

Other commenters left very strange advice, to what common people on the street would consider a very strange question. 🙂

Confusing separate issues:

1) The rather strange idea that you’re different from any other woman. The fact is, you’re MORE DESIRABLE so you’re going to attract more attention, and more ENTHUSIASTIC attention.

2) Femininity is attractive to males and that won’t stop – if it does, extinction is a possible consequence. 🙂

3) The rather strange idea that you want to SIGNAL femininity to yourself, or to others, but not produce an equivalent RESPONSE.

4) The rather strange idea that the problem is something in society rather than in your understanding and behavior – a strangeness that is pretty common in the feminist movement.

5) What do you SIGNAL to males, in ADDITION to your physical attraction, femininity, and intelligence? Does that include ACCESSIBILITY? AVAILABILITY?

6) How do all the other capable and beautiful and feminine women in the world handle this issue? Do they complain about the fact that if they SIGNAL desirability that they produce the appropriate ACTION in the population?

As an practitioner of economic philosophy, incentives are what we deal with (in addition to prices.) And any micro-economist or behavioral economist would say this: you want X,Y,and Z benefits without paying A,B,and C, costs. In your case, it’s likely that you want to attract attention, including the heightened self image that comes from attracting attention, but you don’t want to pay the cost of rejecting the unwanted attention. (In the extreme interpretation, ethically, this means that you’re a thief, or fraud, so to speak. 🙂

And it isn’t necessary (and it’s probably counter-productive) to ask this question of successful women in business (there are plenty). Or politics (the entertainment industry for unattractive people.) Instead, there are ready research subjects everywhere. If you were to go to high end restaurants and clubs in any major city, on the west coast, but more so in Europe, and certainly in eastern Europe, and ask the attractive female waitresses and bartenders how they deal with SIGNALING femininity, desirability, without signaling accessibility or availability, they’ll tell you – the same craft that women have used since the dawn of time. It’s how you interact with others. You do not need to dress dowdy. You might consider wearing a rock of an engagement ring – fake stone included. You do have to learn how to live as a human being in a world that is unfortunately peopled by human beings. And the honest thing to do in any social circumstance is not to advertise something then say it’s not for sale – so to speak. Or to wish that the world was not peopled by a pair of genders that have competing reproductive strategies because of asymmetry of costs and desires.

But then, trying to commit micro thefts – get discounts as we call it in economics – is as natural a human behavior as being attracted to more fit genes. 🙂