Als Teenager so unattraktiv zu sein, ist für Frauen mit einem früheren Tod verbunden, nicht jedoch für Männer. Körperliche Attraktivität könnte als beobachtbarer Indikator für die zugrunde liegende Gesundheit und physiologische Belastbarkeit dienen.
Being seen as unattractive as a teen is linked to an earlier death for women, but not for men
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**Being seen as unattractive as a teen is linked to an earlier death for women, but not for men**
A recent study published in the journal [*Applied Research in Quality of Life*](https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-026-10616-4) suggests that physical appearance during adolescence might predict long-term survival rates into young adulthood. The research indicates that individuals who are perceived as physically unattractive during their teenage years tend to have lower odds of survival over the next few decades compared to their more attractive peers. These findings provide evidence that physical attractiveness could serve as an observable indicator of underlying health and physiological resilience.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11482-026-10616-4
Yes being attractive makes your life much easier
Isn’t this the general concept of how „attractiveness“ evolved into being?
see also: mental health has a lot of affect on our general well being.
The takeaway in the headline has to be a joke
I feel like this is probably related to how perceived attractiveness affects an individual’s mental health and therefore decisions regarding physical health, diet and exercise
Edit: imho the disparity between the sexes highlights the need to teach girls that their value doesn’t come from their physical appearance, but from the content of their character. Whether or not they are conventionally attractive should not be the foundation of their self worth
“You accept the love you think you deserve” maybe applies in other areas too (career outlooks, habits).
Read the article and some of the actual paper. This study was pretty careful about controlling for preexisting health conditions, including mental health, BMI, socioeconomic status and other confounders like race and gender. They also had interviewers cooperate to rate the attractiveness rather than using surveys, which adds as much objectivity as one can in such a case.
To note, they found that the improvement in health is consistent between average and moderately attractive and from moderately attractive to very attractive. So in a way it’s „dose dependent“. So that helps rule out the possibility that the findings were skewed by outliers who likely had some unknown complication in utero or something that would both raise their risk of later health problems and also make them profoundly unattractive.
All in all I think they controlled as well as one can, and raised a host of valid hypotheses as to why each „point“ of attractiveness raises women’s lifespans whereas it doesn’t really affect it that much in men.
It’s because most men are treated as if they’re unattractive by default so of course being less or more won’t show up in those stats in any significant way.
I really want to know how they determined who was an ugly kid
It’s common that people say men age better than women. If you constantly hear this, it can be inspiring for an uglier man, but for women, I imagine it sounds like you’ll only get uglier.
Because attractiveness is an objective, quantifiable thing…
This is the beauty premium. Attractive people earn more and can then spend that extra income on looking good with fashionable clothes and a healthy diet. The beauty premium is especially so for women who tend to be given customer facing jobs. The more attractive they are the better job they can get.
The medical field is known to treat different types of people differently. For example, men’s bodies are studied more extensively than women’s. Women are expected to endure painful procedures without pain management. The maternal mortality rate of black women is greater than other races. Overweight people are told to lose weight instead of getting medicine for thing that thin people get meds for. Unattractive women are probably ignored by doctors more, which would account for why men are not affected.
Yeah that’s kind of how evolution works. Biological organisms are attracted to potential mates with outward markers of health and vigor.
Thats just too bad. Ime, many of the hot chicks in high school got ugly fast, and many if the pretty ladies my age today werent much to look at as teens but grew into their looks as they matured. Being attractive at one stage of life is no indicator how attractive you’ll be at other stages.
I’m pretty with makeup and ugly without, and there is a STARK difference in how people treat me depending on how I look. This includes employers, doctors, and romantic partners – all people who directly impact my physical health. It doesn’t surprise me at all that girls who are deemed unattractive face negative bias and neglect in a world that primarily values women for youth and beauty.
There are no ugly kids. They don’t see it when they’re going through the mess that is being a teenager, but as an older person it breaks my heart for them to see themselves as „ugly.“
Note to those in here talking about what is and isn’t attractive in a teen girl is gross and you shouldn’t be allowed near a school.
RIP the model for this article
Random men are much more likely to protect you and keep you out of bad situations. I suspect skin color is part of being attractive as well?
I think it’s partly because, from a young age, we men are taught to “suck it up”, “you’re a man.”
I had classmates in school who were really ugly, the kind of guys who, even if they got in the best shape of their lives, would still look like a shaved monkey, and they just laughed it off.
We need to teach girls from a young age that their worth as people doesn’t depend solely on how they look.
It’s because it’s normal for men to be considered unattractive and treated like they’re not worth anything by default, so it’s less othering and hurtful to men