>but worrying about looks is not?

Social pressure is so strong! I don't know if you are a woman or not but from my perspective (as a woman) I am truly grateful for each year I live, as I become less and less worried about my appearance in detail, and more about the expression on my face and my body language - how happy and welcoming I look when I greet people. This knowledge wasn't obvious as a young woman.

Lol, as I am getting old I care less and less whether I look happy and welcoming :). I am increasingly less and less concerned about projecting socially expected emotions when I don't have them.

Through, I do care also less about how I look, through I am trying to force myself to care bit more.

Maybe it's a bell curve - when we do reach 70 we'll not care about either, much as we did as toddlers!

funny i read this on the chicago subway and there was an ad right in front of me that 65% of males "suffer" from hairloss and there is a "treatment" available in form of monthly delivery.

Being male is now a disease.

There's a similar dynamic for men. We can also "feel free from the tyranny of worrying about our looks". For one thing, I'm old enough that there's no point in trying to hide it.

But I do get to hide much of my sagging face under a beard. And in my case, it's a totally untrimmed beard (but clean and well brushed). I can pass for old hippie or Duck Dynasty, with just a little tweaking of clothes and language style.

And there's another aspect. I'm also "free from the tyranny of worrying about" what employers and clients think of my looks. Because, for the most part, I don't have or need any. And for the few clients I do have, I'm just some ~anonymous guy who does stuff for Bitcoin.

> But I do get to hide much of my sagging face under a beard.

Why do you do this? Have you experienced discrimination due to your looks?

No, it's just that I hate the way it looks.

When I was young and stupid, I was very careless. I didn't keep my teeth clean. And I smoked hand-rolled cigarettes (unfiltered) using a tasty but extremely tarry Turkish/Virginia blend (Balkan Sobranie).

Anyway, after I finally quit the tobacco habit, I gained considerable weight, going from 68kg to 91kg over perhaps 3-4 years. And then I became a total workaholic, with no time for exercise. So I stayed at ~90kg for maybe two decades.

Over the past few years, I've been gradually doing more and more weight training and aerobic exercise. So I'm down to ~79kg, with a relatively low fat to muscle ratio. And I've been thinking about getting back into whitewater kayaking. It'd be a rush. And from my experience with hypothermia and near-drowning, it'd be a great way to die.

But anyway, given that I've lost lots of fat, and gained lots of muscle, my skin is a few sizes too big. And it shows little sign of shrinkage. I can deal with the flaps on my gut, arms and legs. But my face, you know, is just too much in my face :(

Worrying about looks is not a choice if it has real consequences on your career, especially when young. Women are especially pressured to maintain their appearance along many axises that are difficult to manage. This pressure presumably fades as one gets older according to the writer.

Citation needed. I know many not so pretty women in successful careers.

Your anecdotal experience isn't an effective counterpoint though. Here's a citation in the neighborhood: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/12/05/americans-see-diff...

What does "society values" mean, though? These women in their 70ies supposedly don't care about being attractive. So the only thing that matters is could they get decent jobs if they were unattractive. They supposedly don't care about societies evaluation of their attractiveness anyway.

And we were talking about "pressure to be attractive". What form does that take. What happens to you if you are unattractive?

I worry about the code I write, but for some reason some people comment about the piece of cloths I have on my skin while the choice is most often utilitarian.

At job interviews I also need to adorn a choker, so that they know I can code in low oxygen environments.

I guess that is appropriate for large open plan zoos.

My wife worries about her looks, but only really in the sense of 'Am I going to get harrassed in the streets by skeevy dudes if I wear this?'

For me, it's really about finding a balance, especially in the work place. Trying to look presentable without looking "sexy". Trying to look old enough to be taken seriously, but not so old I can't learn new things.

I don't think worrying about it is exactly a choice, when how I look will have real-life effects on how I'm treated.