23 April 2005

Relative attractiveness of men and women in academia

Following up on my entry about the dressing habits of women physicists, I spotted an entertaining writeup by Sean Carroll. In his original post, Sean said that women physicists are, on average, more physically attractive than male physicists. Unfortunately, due to a barrage of comments (which are fun to read), the original post was taken down.

Some people found Sean's opinion offensive, but I thought it was quite insightful. When I look around at my graduate student colleagues (across all fields in the academy), the number of really attractive women is much higher than the number of really attractive men. I hope it's not the case that male mentors encourage more attractive women to attend graduate school over less attractive women. That is not to say that a great mind is not attractive either. As Sean comments in an earlier post, women really like Nobel Prize winners.

In general, I find that most science/engineering professors (of both genders) aren't very attractive, but the few who are good looking really stand out. What can be better than a guy/gal with a great mind and body?

Before I get attacked, let me say that I rarely think about the looks of my colleagues on a daily basis. But just because we're intellectuals doesn't mean we should stop being human.

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