This has been the case for a long time, even with attributes that you have far less control over, such as your height [1]. Given typical social prejudices, I would not be surprised if the height effect was greater for men and the weight effect was greater for women.
GLP-1 drugs seem to provide a (relatively) painless way to control the weight effect; the corresponding treatment for control of height [2] is much more painful, risky, and expensive.
I think there's a lot of just-world fallacy going around re: how I keep running across the following pattern online now that GLP-1RA drugs exist.
Commenter A (esp. often a woman, though of any age): I lost a lot of weight and people treat me radically better. I did not change my behavior in a way that explains this; it seems like stigma / prejudice.
Commenter B: I have never met you but it is probably the case that stigma is not relevant and in fact you did somehow become more confident or otherwise start behaving differently in ways that mean your prior and current experiences of the world were somehow deserved.
I'm sure being treated nicer by everyone might also increase my confidence tbh. I think the opposite order is more interesting for that though - people who become overweight and notice their coworkers and friends changing how they look at them and so on.
Mild counterpoint: a friend of mine, a professional woman, started on GLP-1 drugs some time ago. She has lost weight, but she also says she's had significant cognitive improvements, more focus, better sleep, etc. It would be great to have research which explicitly teases out these various effects.
This research already exists though. Obesity and being overweight increases the risk of sleep apnea, strokes, heart disease, diabetes, mental health problems, etc. etc
Causality is an issue there, I would suggest that genetic auto immune issues that are rather wide spread can cause all of the above. I think people are finding that GLP-1s help with auto immune issues.
The incidence rate of genetic issues generally doesn't change much over time due to how slow genes changes, so an increase in obesity rates from 5% to over 40% in just a few generations suggest the cause is very unlikely to be due to genetics.
The health problems that GLPs produce help people avoid are way more costly than the drugs will ever be. Especially now that the market is so competitive and will only get moreso.
> Nor do I find evidence of upward job mobility among incumbent workers. Already-employed women do not increase hours, income per household member, or job-to-job moves. If anything, employer changes decline, possibly due to a desire to retain access to health insurance that covers these drugs. These null effects help distinguish a new-match channel from a general productivity or well-being channel
This complicates the idea that it’s just people treating lighter people better. It could well be that a lot of people who take GLP-1s are obese enough where it affects their ability to go out in the world and do stuff, and losing the weight enables people to work.
I also snag on her not attributing it to any personality changes because people reported no change in life satisfaction, loneliness, or depression from taking GLP-1s. Which seems to run counter to the reasons why [overweight] people would take GLP-1s
I'm not about to dive into the literature, but I kinda just assumed that losing weight naturally would help all those things.
Lookism is pretty serious, folks. Or whatever you want to call it since that one sounds silly.
Maybe a makeover should be suggested more often in job search advice? Work on your hair and diet for a few months before you jump ship and you could have better luck.
I thought this has always been pretty obvious. It’s just human nature that makes people “judge” by appearances. As long as there is a face to face interview I don’t think someone could claim is not discriminating on appearance. It happens “naturally” and could go both ways but more often the “good looking” and “charming” is rewarded. It’s part of the “life’s not fair”.
Nah, gobs of people will insist to your face, despite direct evidence, that "I can look past it" when interviewing, or "I don't see color"
The world is made of HR departments and executive suites chock full of people who insist they are somehow special and immune to all the things we know about how fallible humans are at making decisions.
It's like how nearly everyone believes themselves to be an "Above average" driver, including the morons who get into an accident every single year because they text and drive constantly.
In my experience, improving appearance is already one of the top suggestions for job applicants. We're attuned the other way too, showing up to work in a nice outfit tends to be met with "got an interview today?"
If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero. It's also not clear what parts of "looks" actually have an effect. It's also not clear what effect GLP-1 has on other elements that might make someone more employable.
The study itself is certainly not conclusive. The control group were women who wanted to take GLP-1, but didn't. That can indicate all kinds of status/class differences. The study also seems to have been a fishing expedition, and is based on self-reports, so it's tentative at best. I wouldn't recommend taking GLP-1 for a job interview based on this article.
>If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero.
I'm not sure that's true. I think there's a baseline issue here. Regardless, even if it netted out to zero, you'd end up with a different order of who gets hired when, so for any individual it'd still make sense to try to improve your looks.
Same reason you shouldn't try to build skills or acquire unique relevant experience as part of your job search: if everybody does it, the net effect will be zero.
My mid-50's mother was on quite a long unemployment streak, and I suggested she use realtime ML models to replace her webcam face with a de-aged and improved one.
Ageism and being attractive are both real things, like it or not... =/
Might be different for programmers… my experience is that—broadly speaking—programming ability is inversely proportional to how well dressed you are. I wonder if that is still true, or if I’m just old.
Companies, certainly large ones, prefer people who can communicate and behave professionally, so that would favor well-dressed applicants. If we're thinking nerdy stereotypes: most programmers (by far) don't have to (and can't) solve tricky graph-theoretical algorithms or optimize intricate low-level stuff.
There might be a set of people for whom that might be true. There are a lot of people for whom that is not true and, fair or not, they will have an easier time to make things happen in the world
The study compares people who actually started GLP-1 treatment to people who say they want to but didn't. It sure seems to me like people who say they want something but don't take action to get it would also be less likely to get jobs, independent of what the thing they want is.
It puts a finger on the scale. Which unfortunately lasts as long as the person takes the drug. What happens when they stop taking it, unless they were on some serious strength trailing, is that they will have lost all the muscle they need to burn the extra calories they will start to eat when they transition off the drug. Which means the weight comes back even faster.
The body has no mechanism to break down fat cells like it can muscle cells. So every fat cell they had before taking the GLP-1 will still be there after years of taking GLP-1. Like deflated balloons, just primed to absorb any extra calories.
It just changes the baseline. Maybe weight stops being an easy discriminator, but we go back to clothes, styling and make up quality. The lookism still exists even among the prettiest, as we can see in the eating disorders and other issues among people in Hollywood. Many of the prettiest women on the big screen see themselves as on the edge of not getting any more work.
I wonder how GLP-1 treatment would affect men's employment. I think in the case of women, if there's an effect for appearance increasing employment opportunities, it's not surprising that losing weight would help too.
I am trying to re-find it but there was a study I'd read that was saying that in general if you don't break it down, there's a massive amount of weight stigma impact on women's employment but not men's. However, if you do break it down, you see that that impact doesn't exist for blue collar men, and does exist (if in a mediated form) for college-educated white collar men. If anyone can help turn this up (or something contradicting it) it seems useful.
My experience is for men that it's not just white collar/blue collar, more it's appearance gives a halo that helps people progress in domains where there's a human, interpretive aspect to advancement. General contractors are rewarded for being attractive and fit, the plumber they contract to is rewarded for getting the work done on time/budget. Attractive men get promoted to prominent public facing and leadership roles more for this reason, while dumpy unattractive men tend to be stuck in (typically lower level) roles where competence is enough.
Unlike 100 years ago, the bald thing is only a negative if you're fat/weak looking. The bald tough guy has been so established in modern lore that even older men can ride the wave if they look/dress the part (through the 50s anyhow, once you're saggy and loose it looks try hard).
Are you for promoting obesity and unhealthy behavior? It's not because you want to promote people being healthy (aka having a normal body weight) that you are "fat-shaming".
If looks are important for employment how then men find a job? Men are mostly unattractive even compared to not a perfect woman. In terms of looks and style, average man loses to an average woman. Or employers require only women to be attractive?
I'd be surprised if there wasn't a similar dynamic for men. While men probably have a wider range of "acceptable" physical flaws as compared to women, that doesn't mean there isn't a range. A morbidly obese man is probably going to have a tougher time finding a job than a similarly skilled fit and trim man.
Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
> Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
More like stereotypes.
For some reason I took both GLP-1 and Ritalin everyday, having moderate exercises despite throwups, only see myself gaining weight rather than losing. I have no idea why both drugs that claims to lose weight only to do the exact opposite, and perhaps I'm the kind of people who can only get fat and not losing it despite some joint efforts.
Perhaps it is not enough and I have to go full aerobatic and ketone mode. Money money money.
Was GLP-1 oral? Those off-brand lozenges don't do anything.
A real GLP-1 slows down digestion so much that if you try to overeat you'll regret it. You'll still be uncomfortably full and ready to throw up on day 2 after that big meal.
Men get the same effect through things that are traditionally masculine. Off the top of my head, things like height, ruggedness, and for clothes you want straight lines (such as with suits, which a well-fitting one has a lot of and a badly fitting one curves around the body and breaks the straight lines).
"Based on the meta-analysis, we found evidence that the height premium varied by context: the height premium was smaller in the U.S. and Australia, and larger in Latin America and Asia. Within geographies, there appeared to be a larger height premium for men than for women."
Well you kinda said it yourself? If men are generally unattractive then a man should be less likely to lose out to a better-looking man, simply because there's fewer of these to go around.
Men tend to work in less public facing/social career fields. Your appearance doesn’t matter much if you’re a linesman or a welder; it matters more if you’re doing sales or supporting clients. Probably not the entire story, I think people do have different expectations for men and women, but certainly part of it.
you know a pretty fair majority of men are working in white collar office work, which is directly comparable in terms of public facing and social careers?
real loosely, something like 1/3, 40% are in these blue collar fields, and even in those fields there are enough sales and similar roles that prefer better appearances.
Not exactly sure why this is downvoted - seems like a genuine question.
Here's a random Internet troll's theory (mine): there's a kernel of truth to the whole "patriarchy" thing. It's just that most men aren't part of it.
Hold that pitchfork for just a moment! What I meant was: the entire economy is controlled by a very small number of people. Most of them are men, and they have very particular preferences. Assuming the majority of them are straight, it would make sense that they prefer women they see as pretty, and don't care much about men. If anything, a good looking man might be a competitor.
I don't think this idea is completely nuts. Think of the few times in history when a woman had real power. For example, Catherine the Great. Who was suddenly promoted to positions of influence? Sexy men, her "favorites" (yes, that's an actual term).
Maybe to you, I personally find both the average man and woman attractive. Women spend more time taking care of their bodies though, given societal pressures
This has been the case for a long time, even with attributes that you have far less control over, such as your height [1]. Given typical social prejudices, I would not be surprised if the height effect was greater for men and the weight effect was greater for women.
GLP-1 drugs seem to provide a (relatively) painless way to control the weight effect; the corresponding treatment for control of height [2] is much more painful, risky, and expensive.
-------------------
[1] https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/us/height-surgery-limb-le...
in an era when interviews are done by zoom, is there a height effect for men?
I think there's a lot of just-world fallacy going around re: how I keep running across the following pattern online now that GLP-1RA drugs exist.
Commenter A (esp. often a woman, though of any age): I lost a lot of weight and people treat me radically better. I did not change my behavior in a way that explains this; it seems like stigma / prejudice.
Commenter B: I have never met you but it is probably the case that stigma is not relevant and in fact you did somehow become more confident or otherwise start behaving differently in ways that mean your prior and current experiences of the world were somehow deserved.
Which is kind of wild!
I'm sure being treated nicer by everyone might also increase my confidence tbh. I think the opposite order is more interesting for that though - people who become overweight and notice their coworkers and friends changing how they look at them and so on.
Mild counterpoint: a friend of mine, a professional woman, started on GLP-1 drugs some time ago. She has lost weight, but she also says she's had significant cognitive improvements, more focus, better sleep, etc. It would be great to have research which explicitly teases out these various effects.
This research already exists though. Obesity and being overweight increases the risk of sleep apnea, strokes, heart disease, diabetes, mental health problems, etc. etc
Causality is an issue there, I would suggest that genetic auto immune issues that are rather wide spread can cause all of the above. I think people are finding that GLP-1s help with auto immune issues.
The incidence rate of genetic issues generally doesn't change much over time due to how slow genes changes, so an increase in obesity rates from 5% to over 40% in just a few generations suggest the cause is very unlikely to be due to genetics.
OTOH, these other effects could have been directly caused by weight loss. Being overweight isn't exactly healthy!
I really wish these weren’t forever drugs. I would be next in line.
Do you have the same concerns about water or food? Why does it matter that it stops benefitting you if you stop taking it?
Oh god… if only I could quit food, too.
No but like... why is it a concern? Money?
The health problems that GLPs produce help people avoid are way more costly than the drugs will ever be. Especially now that the market is so competitive and will only get moreso.
uniquely among maintenance drugs some people report saving money on GLP-1s, they spend less on food than the drugs cost... But think of the farmers!
why not both?
The article has a bunch of speculation that’s not in the paper: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35387/w353...
One key point:
> Nor do I find evidence of upward job mobility among incumbent workers. Already-employed women do not increase hours, income per household member, or job-to-job moves. If anything, employer changes decline, possibly due to a desire to retain access to health insurance that covers these drugs. These null effects help distinguish a new-match channel from a general productivity or well-being channel
This complicates the idea that it’s just people treating lighter people better. It could well be that a lot of people who take GLP-1s are obese enough where it affects their ability to go out in the world and do stuff, and losing the weight enables people to work.
I also snag on her not attributing it to any personality changes because people reported no change in life satisfaction, loneliness, or depression from taking GLP-1s. Which seems to run counter to the reasons why [overweight] people would take GLP-1s
I'm not about to dive into the literature, but I kinda just assumed that losing weight naturally would help all those things.
Lookism is pretty serious, folks. Or whatever you want to call it since that one sounds silly.
Maybe a makeover should be suggested more often in job search advice? Work on your hair and diet for a few months before you jump ship and you could have better luck.
I thought this has always been pretty obvious. It’s just human nature that makes people “judge” by appearances. As long as there is a face to face interview I don’t think someone could claim is not discriminating on appearance. It happens “naturally” and could go both ways but more often the “good looking” and “charming” is rewarded. It’s part of the “life’s not fair”.
Nah, gobs of people will insist to your face, despite direct evidence, that "I can look past it" when interviewing, or "I don't see color"
The world is made of HR departments and executive suites chock full of people who insist they are somehow special and immune to all the things we know about how fallible humans are at making decisions.
It's like how nearly everyone believes themselves to be an "Above average" driver, including the morons who get into an accident every single year because they text and drive constantly.
The halo effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
I was gonna say "this is decades old", it's over a century old.
Relevant sequence from 30 Rock - Jon Hamm lives in "The Bubble"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQoXOLlvT0
I like "pretty privilege."
In my experience, improving appearance is already one of the top suggestions for job applicants. We're attuned the other way too, showing up to work in a nice outfit tends to be met with "got an interview today?"
If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero. It's also not clear what parts of "looks" actually have an effect. It's also not clear what effect GLP-1 has on other elements that might make someone more employable.
The study itself is certainly not conclusive. The control group were women who wanted to take GLP-1, but didn't. That can indicate all kinds of status/class differences. The study also seems to have been a fishing expedition, and is based on self-reports, so it's tentative at best. I wouldn't recommend taking GLP-1 for a job interview based on this article.
>If everybody improves their looks, the net effect will be zero.
I'm not sure that's true. I think there's a baseline issue here. Regardless, even if it netted out to zero, you'd end up with a different order of who gets hired when, so for any individual it'd still make sense to try to improve your looks.
Same reason you shouldn't try to build skills or acquire unique relevant experience as part of your job search: if everybody does it, the net effect will be zero.
My mid-50's mother was on quite a long unemployment streak, and I suggested she use realtime ML models to replace her webcam face with a de-aged and improved one.
Ageism and being attractive are both real things, like it or not... =/
Might be different for programmers… my experience is that—broadly speaking—programming ability is inversely proportional to how well dressed you are. I wonder if that is still true, or if I’m just old.
Companies, certainly large ones, prefer people who can communicate and behave professionally, so that would favor well-dressed applicants. If we're thinking nerdy stereotypes: most programmers (by far) don't have to (and can't) solve tricky graph-theoretical algorithms or optimize intricate low-level stuff.
There might be a set of people for whom that might be true. There are a lot of people for whom that is not true and, fair or not, they will have an easier time to make things happen in the world
> Lookism
Pretty privilege
The study compares people who actually started GLP-1 treatment to people who say they want to but didn't. It sure seems to me like people who say they want something but don't take action to get it would also be less likely to get jobs, independent of what the thing they want is.
Pretty privilege exists.
But if everyone takes GLP-1 ... its a level playing field again
It puts a finger on the scale. Which unfortunately lasts as long as the person takes the drug. What happens when they stop taking it, unless they were on some serious strength trailing, is that they will have lost all the muscle they need to burn the extra calories they will start to eat when they transition off the drug. Which means the weight comes back even faster.
The body has no mechanism to break down fat cells like it can muscle cells. So every fat cell they had before taking the GLP-1 will still be there after years of taking GLP-1. Like deflated balloons, just primed to absorb any extra calories.
It just changes the baseline. Maybe weight stops being an easy discriminator, but we go back to clothes, styling and make up quality. The lookism still exists even among the prettiest, as we can see in the eating disorders and other issues among people in Hollywood. Many of the prettiest women on the big screen see themselves as on the edge of not getting any more work.
I wonder how GLP-1 treatment would affect men's employment. I think in the case of women, if there's an effect for appearance increasing employment opportunities, it's not surprising that losing weight would help too.
I am trying to re-find it but there was a study I'd read that was saying that in general if you don't break it down, there's a massive amount of weight stigma impact on women's employment but not men's. However, if you do break it down, you see that that impact doesn't exist for blue collar men, and does exist (if in a mediated form) for college-educated white collar men. If anyone can help turn this up (or something contradicting it) it seems useful.
My experience is for men that it's not just white collar/blue collar, more it's appearance gives a halo that helps people progress in domains where there's a human, interpretive aspect to advancement. General contractors are rewarded for being attractive and fit, the plumber they contract to is rewarded for getting the work done on time/budget. Attractive men get promoted to prominent public facing and leadership roles more for this reason, while dumpy unattractive men tend to be stuck in (typically lower level) roles where competence is enough.
I think there are studies that analyze height vs. career achievement.
Also baldness.
Fuck. Good thing I'm self employed.
Unlike 100 years ago, the bald thing is only a negative if you're fat/weak looking. The bald tough guy has been so established in modern lore that even older men can ride the wave if they look/dress the part (through the 50s anyhow, once you're saggy and loose it looks try hard).
Indeed, men on average look worse than women.
How much of this is confounding due to access and economic segmentation?
Someone who is able to getting and sustaining a prescription for GLP-1 is likely in a higher income bracket than one who does not.
Causation or correlation?
So uh, this is just trying to promote fat shaming and lookism using science as a judgement tool. How cool is that? /s
Are you for promoting obesity and unhealthy behavior? It's not because you want to promote people being healthy (aka having a normal body weight) that you are "fat-shaming".
Your reading comprehension is off.
Oh! I thought this would be about migraine.
Shocking news. Humans like attractive people.
If looks are important for employment how then men find a job? Men are mostly unattractive even compared to not a perfect woman. In terms of looks and style, average man loses to an average woman. Or employers require only women to be attractive?
I'd be surprised if there wasn't a similar dynamic for men. While men probably have a wider range of "acceptable" physical flaws as compared to women, that doesn't mean there isn't a range. A morbidly obese man is probably going to have a tougher time finding a job than a similarly skilled fit and trim man.
Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
> Part of this is probably unconscious, but another part is probably explicit assumptions about the person's self-discipline, e.g. the fit guy must get up at 6am every morning and go for a run, and the obese guy probably sleeps in, eats trash, etc.
More like stereotypes.
For some reason I took both GLP-1 and Ritalin everyday, having moderate exercises despite throwups, only see myself gaining weight rather than losing. I have no idea why both drugs that claims to lose weight only to do the exact opposite, and perhaps I'm the kind of people who can only get fat and not losing it despite some joint efforts.
Perhaps it is not enough and I have to go full aerobatic and ketone mode. Money money money.
Was GLP-1 oral? Those off-brand lozenges don't do anything.
A real GLP-1 slows down digestion so much that if you try to overeat you'll regret it. You'll still be uncomfortably full and ready to throw up on day 2 after that big meal.
Exercise basically doesn't do anything for your weight.
Have you reduced your calorie consumption?
Men get the same effect through things that are traditionally masculine. Off the top of my head, things like height, ruggedness, and for clothes you want straight lines (such as with suits, which a well-fitting one has a lot of and a badly fitting one curves around the body and breaks the straight lines).
People look for different things for "beauty" in men and women.
Taller people--an area where men have a very distinct advantage--make more money and have an easier go of things.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X2...
"Based on the meta-analysis, we found evidence that the height premium varied by context: the height premium was smaller in the U.S. and Australia, and larger in Latin America and Asia. Within geographies, there appeared to be a larger height premium for men than for women."
I don't think anyone can objectively judge the attractiveness of both genders on one scale.
Well you kinda said it yourself? If men are generally unattractive then a man should be less likely to lose out to a better-looking man, simply because there's fewer of these to go around.
Men tend to work in less public facing/social career fields. Your appearance doesn’t matter much if you’re a linesman or a welder; it matters more if you’re doing sales or supporting clients. Probably not the entire story, I think people do have different expectations for men and women, but certainly part of it.
you know a pretty fair majority of men are working in white collar office work, which is directly comparable in terms of public facing and social careers?
real loosely, something like 1/3, 40% are in these blue collar fields, and even in those fields there are enough sales and similar roles that prefer better appearances.
Just go to a fast food place. There's a strong tendency to have guys in the back cooking, girls in the front at the register.
Not exactly sure why this is downvoted - seems like a genuine question.
Here's a random Internet troll's theory (mine): there's a kernel of truth to the whole "patriarchy" thing. It's just that most men aren't part of it.
Hold that pitchfork for just a moment! What I meant was: the entire economy is controlled by a very small number of people. Most of them are men, and they have very particular preferences. Assuming the majority of them are straight, it would make sense that they prefer women they see as pretty, and don't care much about men. If anything, a good looking man might be a competitor.
I don't think this idea is completely nuts. Think of the few times in history when a woman had real power. For example, Catherine the Great. Who was suddenly promoted to positions of influence? Sexy men, her "favorites" (yes, that's an actual term).
Maybe to you, I personally find both the average man and woman attractive. Women spend more time taking care of their bodies though, given societal pressures
> Men are mostly unattractive
Could it be that _you_ are simply be not as attracted to men as you are to women?
Studies show that hetero women tend to agree that most men are not attractive.
> If looks are important for employment how then men find a job?
This feels very fallacious. Attractiveness can be important but not the only factor that matters.
Height is a way that men are judged as attractive. Likewise, tall men tend to do better than short men on income and promotions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest
Go to the barber, to to the tailor, go the gym...
All these things help.
It's attractiveness all the way down
yes! i still wondering why feminism had to be created /s