Making Oneself Attractive

There's lots of ways to make yourself attractive beyond physical means.  Context plays a large role, as well as the size of the market.  Consider market size first.  If you're from a small town you probably already know where I'm going with this.  But it need not be argued too strongly that the most attractive people in small town are more than likely only slightly above average in a larger town or city--as with money, there's a greater distribution where a higher population exists.  So, first lesson is that if you want to appear more attractive, you can move to a smaller town.  But, there's a problem. The problem is your solution: the dating pool just shrunk proportionately, so you're likelilhood of meeting up with Mr. or Ms. Right, which I'll define as meeting threshold attraction requirements for now, is also diminished.  Bummer.  Perhaps a little census research can show you the small towns with high levels of the opposite sex who are not yet wedded (okay, suffice it to say that getting gainful employment in the same small town may be a bit of a problem).

Another way to increase attractiveness is to stay put, but increase your status.  Rock stars, athletes, professors (the hot shots), business folks, and others all understand the allure of this, and the benefits, and probably, the costs that they didn't expect.  There are ways to carve out your own unique image that increases status, like traveling a lot, but it must be signaled to the outer world in some way to be effective.  Like in a car, for instance, or initials after one's name.  Or a company name. 

The relationship between image/status and actual quality is specious, but we fall for it every time, or most times, and, I think that most people, given the opportunity to increase their attractiveness, will do so.  The issue perhaps is that there's a lot of ways to increase your attractiveness while telling yourself that you're "really" doing something else, like saving the world, or greening america, or writing the hit novel of the century, or starting the band to end all bands, or, you know, maybe you just love Foucault and Derrida, right?  When it comes down to it, we're all much more similar than we are different, even though we think that we're all much more distinguished than we are similar, and are willing to work to prove it--in fact, short of outright verbalization of our stature, we'll do just about anything to indicate it.

Edit Added: Of course when you try to increase your status and move to a new location at the same time, you are often faced with a bewildering experience: you've stayed relatively the same, because, although your position increased in stature or income, the relative buying power of your income or the relative girth of your stature, have been watered down in the bigger market you now occupy.   Beware of moving to larger cities to increase status for the sake of attracting someone, unless you plan to then move back or other variables impact your decision (e.g. standard of living is better).

Here's the killer.  First, you happen to adjust to new situations as well.  So, even given a new position and a new car, let's say, you get diminishing returns (of subjective excitement). Stated otherwise: often, the transition to something better is the best part of getting it, not the actual possession of it.