You’re an UGLY MAN.
Sorry, gents – somebody had to tell you.
Worse still, it’s partly your fault. You’ve got ugly man habits and you need to change.
Okay, so maybe I’m being a bit dramatic. But here’s the thing — when a guy asks me what makes a man unattractive, he’s braced for me to say something about his jawline or his height. Almost none of it is that.
Most of what’s working against you is habit. How you sleep. How you stand. How you talk about yourself. And what you put on your body every morning.
That last one gets underrated the most. I’ve watched a jacket that actually fits do more for a man’s face than any grooming routine — and it takes an afternoon instead of a year.
So let’s get into the 16 things that are making you unattractive… and how to STOP doing them. Most of them you can fix this week:
- Stress Could Make You An Ugly Man
- Not Getting Enough Sleep
- Bad Table Manners
- Bad Grammar Makes You An Ugly Man
- Poor Oral Hygiene
- A Bad Attitude Is An Ugly Man Habit
- Not Being Creative
- Not Smelling Good
- Your Asymmetrical Features
- Dishonesty Makes You An Ugly Man
- Your Clothes Look Like You Gave Up
- Grooming That Stops At Your Teeth
- You Stand Like A Question Mark
- Trying Too Hard
- You Only Talk About Yourself
- You’re Always On Your Phone
- Do Beautiful Women Get Attracted To Ugly Men?
#1 Stress Could Make You An Ugly Man
Relax. Take it easy. I’m not telling you to be a couch potato – just don’t stress yourself out. Stress raises your cortisol levels – and a 2011 study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B found that men with higher cortisol got rated as less attractive. People pick up on it without knowing what they’re picking up on.
Sure, nobody looks at you and thinks, ‘Ugh, that ugly man has a cortisol level that’s off the charts.’ But when people see a stressed-out man with higher cortisol levels, they instinctively rate him as less attractive.
#2. Not Getting Enough Sleep
What is enough sleep? That depends on the individual. It also depends on the quality of your sleep. You need quality AND quantity. Many people go through life sleep-deprived, and it wreaks havoc everywhere.
A 2013 study in the journal SLEEP found that sleep deprivation could make you an ugly man. Researchers photographed the same people rested, then again after a night of restricted sleep. Strangers rated the tired versions as less attractive – and they could name exactly what they were seeing: hanging eyelids, red and swollen eyes, dark circles, paler skin, droopier corners of the mouth. Make sure you get enough sleep, gentlemen.
In addition to getting a good night’s sleep, to maintain healthy attractive skin you need to drink plenty of water, eat healthy foods, protect your skin from the elements, and use skincare products that work.
#3. Bad Table Manners
A Match.com survey of more than 1,500 British singles found that 86% of women would turn down a second date with a man if on the first date he showed bad table manners. Now, that’s a dating company’s own survey and not peer-reviewed research – but 86% is a big enough number that I’d take the hint.
Why not? Because bad table manners suggest other bad qualities. Maybe you’re rude in other ways. Maybe you’re a slob in other ways. So make sure that you know and practice good table manners to avoid looking like an ugly man to potential romantic partners.
#4. Bad Grammar Makes You An Ugly Man
Big surprise, right? I thought so too. Who would have guessed grammar was that important? But it is. In a 5000-person study by Match.com, bad grammar outranked everything. More specifically, it was by far the most frequent answer to the question ”What really makes a profile look bad?” Even the researchers were surprised.
Of course, not every guy is a natural grammar nerd. That’s what spellcheck is for. And we’ve all got that one friend who points out rogue apostrophes on random signs. Ask him to take a look at your profile. He’ll be happy to help.
Don’t have good grammar? Learn it, gents. It matters.
I also suggest reading your own dating profile out loud. It’ll help you spot mistakes and give you a sense of how you ‘sound’ to the reader.
#5. Poor Oral Hygiene
I know you don’t want to go to the dentist (who does?). But you need to. If somebody gets up close with you and you have bad breath, gum disease, and a gnarly-looking cavity… it’s quite off-putting. Worse still, it’s often a deal-breaker and makes you look like one heck of an ugly man.
A lot of things can go wrong with your teeth and mouth. Do your best to prevent them from happening. Take care of them quickly when they do. An ugly mouth makes an ugly man.
#6. A Bad Attitude Is An Ugly Man Habit
Being mean. Being grouchy. Being someone that no one wants to be around. If you’re an ugly man on the inside, your perceived PHYSICAL attractiveness is actually going to go down.
Skeptical? Let me back this one up. In a 2014 study out of China, researchers showed three groups of people the same set of faces. The first group read positive personality information alongside each photo. The second read negative. The third got nothing at all. The group reading the negative traits rated those faces as less attractive – and it held true for the good-looking faces, the average ones, and the plain ones alike.
Be nice, gents. Malice is an ugly man trait that you might find hard to come back from.
#7. Not Being Creative
No joke, this one blew me away. A 2017 study out of Abertay University in Scotland paired photos of men with samples of their creative writing, then had people rate them. Showing creative work raised how attractive those men were rated – and the lift was biggest for the guys whose faces were rated average to begin with.
Read that last part again, because it might be the most useful sentence in this article. Creativity doesn’t do much for the man who already won the genetic lottery. It does the heavy lifting for the rest of us.
Make sure to flex that creativity muscle every day, gentlemen. Like your physical muscles, it’ll get stronger if you work it. Keep a journal. Pick up a new hobby, perhaps a musical instrument. Learn a foreign language. Sign up for a cooking class. Do something that requires you to think creatively. You’ll be glad you did.
#8. Not Smelling Good
No surprise here, gents. Women don’t like men who smell bad. Do you have a signature scent? The truth is… we all do. Even if you wear nothing, you are still giving off a bit of odor. People will be able to that pick that up – especially if you don’t wash. And 99% of them aren’t going to be thrilled that you smell like a locker room. There’s a reason we use deodorant.
But scent is a double-sided coin. It’s not enough to simply stop smelling bad. Smell good. Do a bit of research on the best colognes for men. Find a great signature scent that works with your natural fragrance and learn how to apply it. As with so many other aspects of style, you can use scent to your advantage. I highly recommend that you learn how so that you don’t smell like an ugly man.
#9. Asymmetrical Features (And How To Dress Around Them)
We find symmetry attractive – when, for example the left side of a face mirrors the right. If you’ve got a little bit of a sloping shoulder, or one side of your face droops or is slightly different from the other, it’s perceived as less attractive.
How do you solve this? You can’t change your DNA, and I’m not going to recommend extensive plastic surgery. I’ve got a far quicker and cheaper solution for you: dress in a manner that minimizes that difference. If one shoulder is lower than the other, for example, get a little bit of extra padding there the next time you buy a jacket.
You might have asymmetries you’ve never even noticed, so look at yourself in the mirror and make that determination. Just make sure that you’re not using style to your detriment and accentuating something you don’t want to.
#10. Dishonesty Makes You An Ugly Man
Once again – an ugly man on the inside is an ugly man on the outside. The most offensive example of this is a man who’s a liar. In fact, lying makes you BUTT ugly. If people know you’re dishonest, you instantly become far less attractive.
This conclusion, which really shouldn’t surprise you, is based on a 2006 study along the same lines as the Chinese research back in point #6. People read a short personality description first, then saw the face. The faces paired with an honest description got rated as better looking than the exact same faces paired with a dishonest one. And here’s the part that got my attention: the researchers tested intelligence and independence too, and neither one moved the needle. Honesty was the only trait that changed how a man’s face was rated. Moral of the story: be an honest person. Follow through on your commitments. Keep your CV free of lies. Don’t over-commit. And for crying out loud, if you work at Starbucks, don’t say that you’re a corporate attorney on your match.com profile!
#11. Your Clothes Look Like You Gave Up
I run a men’s style company, so of course I was going to bring this up. I put it here rather than at #1 because it’s the fastest fix on the whole list – not the smallest one.
Nobody looks at a man and thinks “poor fit through the shoulders.” They just think something’s off and move on. That’s the whole game – people register the result and never diagnose the cause. A jacket an inch too wide in the shoulder makes your head look small. Trousers that puddle at the ankle cost you height. A shirt you’re tucking in every twenty minutes reads as a man who isn’t on top of his own morning.
Three things, in this order. Get the shoulders right when you buy, because that’s the one seam a tailor can’t fix cheaply. Take everything else to someone who does this for a living – a tailor charging twenty bucks to shorten a sleeve will do more for you than another new shirt. Then replace the shoes. Beat-up shoes undo an entire outfit, and a man is always the last person to notice his own.
And dress for the body you have NOW. Don’t put off wardrobe improvements waiting on that two-year diet plan.
#12. Grooming That Stops At Your Teeth
You brushed your teeth and you put on deodorant, so you figure grooming is handled. It isn’t. The things men skip are the things other people notice first.
Your fingernails. Look at them right now. Women bring up ragged or dirty nails constantly and men almost never mention it, which tells you how big the blind spot is. Clippers cost four dollars.
Nose and ear hair. It shows up in your thirties whether you agreed to it or not, and nobody is going to tell you about it. A trimmer handles it in thirty seconds a week.
Your hairline and the back of your neck. A haircut two weeks past due doesn’t read as a haircut, it reads as neglect. Same with the fuzz creeping down your neck. Same with a beard you’re “growing out” – a beard with no defined edge isn’t a beard, it’s forgetfulness.
None of this is vanity, gents. It’s the difference between a man who has his act together and a man who doesn’t, and people read it in about a second.
#13. You Stand Like A Question Mark
Here’s one that costs you nothing and almost nobody works on.
You spend nine hours a day curled over a laptop and your body learned it. Shoulders rolled forward. Head jutting out ahead of your spine. Upper back rounded. Then you stand up and wonder why you look smaller than you actually are.
Bad posture costs you real height, hides the chest and shoulders you earned at the gym, and – this is the part men underrate – it reads as low confidence before you’ve said a word. Nobody consciously thinks “his upper back is rounded.” They just clock you as uncertain and they don’t know why.
It also wrecks your clothes. A jacket is cut for a man standing upright. Roll your shoulders forward and the collar lifts off your neck, the lapels bow out, and a jacket that fit fine in the store suddenly looks borrowed.
The fix: shoulders back and down, ribs stacked over your hips, chin level instead of poked forward. You’re undoing years of habit here, so put in the reps.
#14. Trying Too Hard
Ask a woman what kills attraction fastest and this one comes up ahead of looks, money and height.
Trying too hard shows up in small, visible ways. Over-agreeing with everything she says. Laughing half a second early. Texting twice before she’s answered once. Name-dropping. The loud watch, the four-figure logo, the car payment you can’t actually carry. Explaining your accomplishments to someone who didn’t ask about them.
All of it broadcasts the same message: I don’t think I’m enough on my own. And people take you at your word.
The fix isn’t a line or a technique, which is exactly why it’s hard. It’s having something real going on in your life that isn’t her. A sport. A business. Some skill you’re currently bad at and working on anyway. Men who have something to go back to stop leaning in so hard, and that difference is visible from across a room.
Style-wise the tell is easy to spot: if the loudest thing in your outfit is a logo, you’re trying too hard. Good material and good fit read as confidence. Volume reads as need.
#15. You Only Talk About Yourself
Most men who do this have no idea they’re doing it. It comes from nerves, not ego – silence feels dangerous, so you fill it. But from the other side of the table, nerves and self-absorption look exactly the same.
The symptoms are easy to check. You answer a question and don’t ask one back. You wait for a gap in the conversation instead of listening for one. She mentions something and you top it with your own version instead of asking about hers. You explain things she didn’t ask to have explained.
Here’s a cheap test I use. Walk out of the conversation and try to name three specific things about her – not categories, specifics. Her sister’s name. Why she left the last job. What she’s actually worried about this month. If you can’t come up with three, you were talking.
Ask one more question than feels natural. That’s the whole skill.
#16. You’re Always On Your Phone
This one’s newer than the rest of the list, and it’s the one I see most.
Phone face-up on the table. Glancing down mid-sentence. Checking it at a red light with someone in the passenger seat. Answering a text while she’s in the middle of telling you something. You think you’re being subtle about it. You are not being subtle – that eye movement is obvious from three feet away, and the message it sends is that she’s less interesting than a notification.
The fix is embarrassingly simple. Phone in your pocket. If it has to be on the table, face down. Silent for the duration. Two hours, gents. That’s all anyone is asking.
The bar here is low, which is exactly why clearing it works so well. Undivided attention has gotten rare enough that simply giving it now counts as a competitive advantage.
#17. Do Beautiful Women Get Attracted To Ugly Men?
Short answer: yes, constantly. Walk into any decent restaurant on a Friday night and you’ll see it at three separate tables.
The part worth understanding isn’t that what women find attractive goes beyond a jawline – you already knew that. It’s the mechanism underneath it. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin studied couples alongside how long they had known each other before they started dating. The couples who got together soon after meeting were closely matched on looks. The couples who had known each other a long while first – friends, coworkers, guys from the same run club – were far less matched.
Time is the variable. When a woman meets you cold and has to decide fast, she has your face and your clothes and nothing else to go on. Give her three months of actually knowing you and the ranking scrambles, because now she’s weighing things nobody can photograph.
So yes – the so-called ugly guy wins the beautiful woman all the time. It just tends to happen on a longer timeline than the movies led you to expect.
Which points at two things you can actually do about it. First, if you’re not winning the ten-second judgment, quit optimizing for it and start putting yourself in rooms where people see you more than once. Join the club. Take the class. Volunteer for the thing nobody volunteers for. Time is on your side and almost nobody plays it.
Second – and you knew a style guy was going to land here – the ten-second judgment happens to be the one item on this entire list you can buy your way out of this weekend. Get the jacket tailored. Fix the shoes. Stand up straight. You can’t out-personality a first impression you never got to make.
And that’s a good thing because it means that there’s someone out there for everyone, no matter what they look like.
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| The habit | Time to fix | Your first move |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Stress | This year | Cut the one obvious stressor you’ve been tolerating. Twenty minutes a day of anything that isn’t a screen. |
| 2. Poor sleep | This week | Seven hours minimum, same bedtime, phone charging in another room. |
| 3. Bad table manners | This week | Learn the place setting, slow down, keep your elbows in and your phone away. |
| 4. Bad grammar | This week | Read your dating profile out loud. Then hand it to the friend who notices rogue apostrophes. |
| 5. Poor oral hygiene | This year | Book the dentist you’ve been putting off. Floss tonight, not Monday. |
| 6. A bad attitude | This year | Go one full week without complaining out loud. Notice who starts talking to you. |
| 7. Not being creative | This year | Pick one thing and make something badly. Keep making it badly until you don’t. |
| 8. Not smelling good | This week | Shower, deodorant, one signature scent applied lightly. Two sprays, not six. |
| 9. Asymmetrical features | Dress around it | The only one here you can’t change. Extra padding on the low shoulder and a tailor who balances you. |
| 10. Dishonesty | This week | Do the thing you said you’d do. Starting with the one you’re avoiding right now. |
| 11. Clothes that don’t fit | This week | Shoulders first, tailor second, shoes third. In that order. |
| 12. Grooming past your teeth | This week | Nails, nose, ears, neckline. Ten minutes and a four-dollar pair of clippers. |
| 13. Posture | This year | Shoulders back and down, ribs over hips, chin level. Daily reps, same as the gym. |
| 14. Trying too hard | This year | Build something in your life that isn’t her. Then stop explaining yourself. |
| 15. Only talking about yourself | This week | Ask one more question than feels natural. Name three specifics afterward. |
| 16. Always on your phone | This week | Pocket. Silent. Two hours. That’s the whole discipline. |
| Bottom line | 9 this week | Nine of these sixteen are fixed before next weekend. Exactly one of them you can’t fix at all — and even that one, you can dress around. |
Not a ranking. The fast ones aren’t the small ones — fit and grooming move the needle hardest and cost the least time.
Ugly Man Habits: Your Questions Answered
How do I know if I’m actually unattractive?
Most men who ask me this aren’t. They’re grooming-neglected, badly dressed and slouching, and they’ve decided the problem must be their face. Run the table above and count how many of the sixteen you’re guilty of. If you’re hitting six or more, you don’t have a looks problem – you have a habits problem, and habits are the fixable kind. Clear the nine fast ones, then ask yourself the question again in a month.
What makes a man unattractive instantly?
Smell, then grooming, then fit – in that order, because that’s the order people register them. Body odor ends an interaction before anything else gets a chance to matter. After that it’s visible neglect: dirty nails, a haircut two weeks past due, a shirt that doesn’t fit through the shoulders. None of that is bone structure, and all of it is fixable this week.
What’s the difference between confidence and arrogance?
Confidence doesn’t need you to agree with it. Arrogance does. A confident man states his opinion and lets it sit there. An arrogant one keeps pushing until you concede. It works the same way in clothing – confidence is good material and good fit, arrogance is a logo you can read from across the street. If you’re checking to see whether it landed, that’s your tell.
What physical things do women find unattractive?
The surveys keep landing on the same short list, and it’s almost never what men lie awake worrying about. Bad breath and body odor top it every time. Then dirty or ragged fingernails, greasy hair, and an unkempt neckline or beard. Height and jawline turn up far lower than men assume. Four out of those five are maintenance, gents – not genetics.
The post What Makes A Man Unattractive? 16 Habits Of An Ugly Man appeared first on Real Men Real Style.