The Volokh Conspiracy has a couple posts today on men's "underinvestment in social self-polishing." Basically, one of Eugene's friends is arguing that men (more so than women) can be sexy if they just want to, and that most of them don't try very hard.

There's a lot of interesting food for thought here... I've been thinking this afternoon after reading these whether I'm "underinvesting in social polishing" (oh how I love economics-speak applied to everyday life). Part of me really can't think of what I could do differently to make myself more attractive, but I'm sure I'm just wrong and that there are many obvious things which I either don't know about or conciously refuse to do. (An example of the latter being that I really need to learn to be more arrogant/assholish (oh wait, I guess the word here is "confident") but I don't want to.)

On the other hand I'm not sure that the points raised here are actually valid. For one thing I think that the idea that a man's intrinsic physical attractiveness is less important to women than vice-versa is a myth caused by: a) that it was historically true, since if women can't work and provide for themselves its more important that a man be competant and able to earn money rather than attractive, and b) not including height and age is part of "physical attractiveness" in men.

What do you all think? And how does this affect the immovable object/irresistable force discussion?