Attractiveness by Age

This is the second of three images on attractiveness. The Hot or Not web site gives people the option of rating women of all ages or of seeing only a specific age group. I collected photos of women who scored at least a 9.5 average and created multi-morph composites (see some details how here).
The only thing I noticed was that the attractiveness standard people use is more lenient the older the subject. Good for me! I have a chance to appear less ugly as I age ;-).

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Comments

ManonManon says:

Interesting!:)
Posted 42 months ago. ( permalink )

Bogaugon says:

Maybe I'm too old already, I find beautiful women them all!
Very interesting your job.
Posted 36 months ago. ( permalink )

cmk53 says:

Without a doubt, she's hot at ANY age.
Posted 35 months ago. ( permalink )

kian esquire says:

it'd be really interesting if you ran this experiment again, but using photos of men.
Posted 35 months ago. ( permalink )

Heroin Smurf says:

"The only thing I noticed was that the attractiveness standard people use is more lenient the older the subject."

Are you sure that's not a result of the same age filter you were using being used by others ? If most people have high standards they would only rate young people attractive, whereas a smaller percentage would have lower standards and give 9s and 10s across the board. That majority, with tougher standards, would only bother to look at the 18-25 or 26-32 categories, while the less picky audience might browse all age groups. So less unattractive older women (and men?) get a somewhat less harsh audience.

It's just a theory, but it makes sense. I'm hardly breaking new ground to suggest attractiveness is partly a perception of fertility and genetic calibre, both of which degrade with age. (Genetics does so less directly than fertility, but think cancer.)
Posted 35 months ago. ( permalink )

error27 says:

The official rating is isn't the average or or the median. I believe that hotornot uses a complicated bell curve system instead. I don't know if takes age into consideration though...

My guess is probably we'll get less and less attractive as we age. It seems hard to imagine it now, but someday even the awesomest plaid disco outfits will go out of fashion...
Posted 35 months ago. ( permalink )

Natodd says:

I think you might find that the older people are being rated by older people as well, thus indicating that they aren't as picky as the younger folks. :)
Posted 35 months ago. ( permalink )

Tiara says:

They all look like the same person!
Posted 35 months ago. ( permalink )

:: Wendy :: says:

The differences in lipstick colour, thickness of eyeliner and amount of visible hair that do not appear to vary systematically with the face-shape - I think you've got some confounding varaialbes here - nice quasi experiment:-)
Posted 34 months ago. ( permalink )

Tom King in New Mexico says:

We know from your first image study that fat is not attractive. People, Americans at least, get fatter as they age. Could that explain it?
Posted 27 months ago. ( permalink )

Morbit Photography [deleted] says:

nice :)

--
Seen in the group"Views: 25,000" (?)
Posted 16 months ago. ( permalink )

AntrygR says:

The younger faces look "blank" & the older ones have some "definition" to 'em: more "someone" there.

Obviously, it usually takes someone with experience to value someone with experience...
Posted 15 months ago. ( permalink )

zoe-delay says:

Hallo, ich bin Zoe, die Administratorin der Gruppe 40.000 Views, und wir würden uns freuen, wenn Du dies zu unserer Gruppe hinzufügen würdest.
Posted 12 months ago. ( permalink )

Rania11 says:

I have to say I don't think hotornot is really measuring the beauty of peoples faces. I mean I know a guy who put an amazingly beautiful pic of the actress Rachel Weisz on and it scored a 6.7 because she wasn't pulling a sexy pose and just looked very cute. I think audience on that site not only mainly rates to what extent you look up for sex but also it's a certain type of beauty that gets rated highly. There are some really pretty girls on that site with average to low scores who just have softer features or are not doing sexy poses. So I wouldn't say that hotornot scores are really accurate when it comes to how beautiful someone is facially. Although that is obviously a factor.
Posted 7 months ago. ( permalink )

The Blasphemous Fiendess says:

very depressing and making me feel old and ugly
Posted 4 weeks ago. ( permalink )

ConceptJunkie says:

Raina11 is right. Hot or Not also gives enormous "bonuses" based on the amount of skin showing. I've seen women I thought were very UNattractive getting 9s and 10s because they are wearing skimpy clothing. Skimpy clothing and the proper "endowments" are worth about 3-4 points easily. On the other hand, I've rarely seen women I thought were attractive that didn't get high scores. Of course, I only checked out Hot or Not back when it was new and have only rarely seen it since.
Posted 2 weeks ago. ( permalink )

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