Spend money to look good?

[Riggerjack]

If you can't get laid in a T-shirt and jeans, the problem isn't with the clothes.

But part of gaining the confidence is feeling like you have something to swagger about. If clothes do it for you, awesome. The success will breed more success, until you realize that the clothes are an unnecessary crutch.

AKA the reason old men dress like it doesn't matter.

[James_0011]

Yeah if the jeans and t-shirt fit properly.

The confidence thing is a scam though. Looks are everything.

[C40]

The confidence thing is absolutely not a scam. Unless you're talking about some of the pick-up-artist style over the top stuff, confidence is a huge help in getting laid. That said, a lot of women also very much appreciate a man who can also show some vulnerability.

A whole bunch of different things are important when it comes to getting laid. Looks, absolutely. Clothes, yes (with the most important thing being that they fit you well, and second being that they don't look stupid in some way). These two are super important, but there's much more to it. Things like confidence, sense of humor, being a good conversationalist, having money or some sign of security - all of these matter. unless we're just talking about winking at a girl in a club with loud music

[James_0011]

@c40

I just meant that personally I think lifting weights + clothes that fit well is a way better route to getting laid than confidence. I guess you could argue that those activities build confidence though. And yeah I think about pua stuff when people talk about confidence.

I just feel that a lot of people try to sell confidence as the way to getting attention from the opposite sex while ignoring that a baseline clothing style + physical attraction barrier exists.

[C40]

Yeah, I'd say that looks (facial attractiveness, hair, clothing, and fitness/shape) are starters, and the other things add on top of that. If you look like shit, some confidence isn't going to help you out much, other than with women who also look like shit.

[C40]

Anyways, on the subject of getting laid in Asia, there are a few folks here who have lived or traveled there extensively, and they could probably advise. I can't remember who though. Did BRUTE?

[BRUTE]

brute has no advice.

[baska]

but...but you get laid with skanky dolls. Right?

[fiby41]

Smh blowup dolls are better tbh

[7Wannabe5]

I have a long history of allowing my physical appearance to periodically lapse due to combination of cookie addiction, the dysfunctional edge of frugality that is more like self-abnegation due to cheapness, and extreme absent-minded hyper-focus on other interests. Luckily, even worst-case scenario, it usually only takes me about 3 months maximum to pull myself back together to something reasonably presentable on the open-market, and suffering from this sort of yo-yo dysfunction has given me some more objective basis for analysis than some of my peers who always look about the same except somewhat older (Holly Hunter, for example.)

Whether or not clothes/fashion alone will give you much of an advantage depends a good deal on context. You will get more bang for your buck in some backwater where male fashion is not much followed, such as the entire Midwestern Region of the United States. However, you also run the risk of being mistaken for gay and/or d.b. if you push it too hard. For instance, a few years ago when my 16 year old Persian-American ex-step-daughterish-person first shared a video featuring Foster the People with me, I found the young male members of the band simultaneously rather attractive and repulsive due to their styling, but I figured that was due to the fact that I am old.

Studies show that when women are in the more sexually receptive phase of their cycle, they are more likely to be attracted to men who are more rugged/high-testosterone/dominant in their appearance and behavior, whereas they are more likely to be attracted to men who are more classically handsome/cute/or harmless looking when they are in a less fertile phase. Bodice-ripper vs. boy-band dichotomy. Also, females who are generally more concerned with aesthetics, SF or NF artistic-types, are more likely to be influenced favorably by a man who exhibits some fashion-sense, but not necessarily status-flashing variety.

For various terrible reasons not unrelated to why Light and Lovely skin cream is kept behind the counters in ethnic markets, White and Tall sells pretty well on the open global market, and styling yourself Classic without a lot of bright/shiny will promote your value/status if you can swallow the sick of playing those cards if you were born with them. It is easier to do if you pick a style-icon to copy. Leave originality to the more naturally artistic types. For instance, any time I wake up from a daze (maybe was thinking too much about systems theory to notice that I was eating too much pastry and that the bright orange free box t-shirt with a coffee stain was not very becoming, and my hair was now a black-rooted nasty Rasta clump on top of my head) that allowed me to once more lapse into looking something like Britney Spear's not-so-pretty Aunt who lives on corn chips in a trailer park in rural-blight Canada, I make an effort to steer myself towards the never-ever-to-be-attained goal of looking like a Hitchcock Blonde with a modern semi-retired weekend sophisticated yet casual lifestyle.

Because I am old, most of the men I date have some degree of paunch, but sometimes you can only really notice it when they take their clothes off, due to their favorable shoulder to hip ratio. Generally, if you transform your shoulders into a big enough hanger, and you have a cute ass or well-developed legs, deep voice, bit of rough stubble, and a confident manner, many females (but maybe not your doctor) will overlook some central body fat. I think Sean Connery would be a pretty good pick for style icon for an extra-large size white guy. It's pretty easy to find high quality Classic style clothing on the used market or inexpensively priced new. Mostly a matter of staying within a narrow range of colors and favoring simple cuts and natural materials, but as with most value/price maximization experiments it doesn't pay to be rigid. For instance, one of my wardrobe mainstays is a 100% polyester black and white polka dot Liz Claiborne two piece skirt/top ensemble which is hugely multi-functional and virtually indestructible. My point here being that asking yourself a question to which you will have to rough intuit an answer, like "Would Sean Connery wear this if he were to find himself in my current lifestyle?" will give a better systems based solution than sticking to a bunch of rules or tips.

[Jean]

I started getting laid when i stopped buying clothes.
And yes, confidence is shit.
I don't know what attracts women, but nice clothes and confidence aren't a miracle solution.

[slsdly]

I wear nice clothes to work sometimes because I want to. I wouldn't do anything to hope for a positive reaction from women -- they might make positive noises, but I still couldn't get a date to save my life. I think my time is better spent trying to become dead on the inside .

[slowtraveler]

I have since changed my opinion in regards to the original post. Wool sucks in hot, humid weather. Light threaded cotton or silk for the tropics. Do not use Merino here, you will likely get heat sick until you either take it off or get into an ac room. Thin plastics are better but seriously, cheap cotton is great here.

I second Riggerjack about getting laid. Jeans and a decent shirt have always been enough. Clothes won't fix your issues there. If you can't confidently tell a woman, "I'm going to xyz, you should come", because you don't believe you're of value and she'll genuinely have a better time than whatever else was going on for her, nothing external can fix that in and of itself.

[fiby41]

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[7Wannabe5]

@Felipe: Your last sentence above (trying not to use quote function) was very well put. If I had a penny for every time I had told myself I was off some man, but then he made me another offer I did not possess the will in the moment to refuse. (sigh) OTOH, it is odd how very small things can sometimes work against a particular man with a particular woman. For instance, you better be damn-good looking otherwise if you are sporting a seriously preppy or golf-course look when attempting to date me, but my mother and daughter both seem to like it.

[Riggerjack]

Yeah. I am old, so the earlier reference to polo shirts creeped me out, but my fashion sense is as old as I am, but less experienced. So I'm hesitant to advise on specifics to youth today.

But "confidence is shit"? Nobody rewired women in the last 20 years. If confidence doesn't get it done, you are using the wrong definition of confidence.

It's like hunting. Yes, the realtree onesie, 20x Leopold scope, scent deadening laundry soap, the Cabela's cooler full of freeze dried stroganoff and an ATV may be nice accessories for the hunt, but if you can't read deer sign, and know your quarry's habits and preferences, every success is just luck. Not repeatable, and each success is entirely unrelated to the next hunt, so there is nothing to improve upon. All the gear in Cabela's won't help you find a deer in San Francisco, and the kid in the woods with grampa's 12 ga is going to put more meat on the table than the fully outfitted "Hunter" back in camp.

If you are young, you are coming out of an artificial, homogeneous background, where everyone is the same, except for minor variations that get emphasized to differentiate yourself from your nearly identical peers. In this environment, fashion is vital. You are trying to summarize everything about you in your appearance. Worse, nearly everything about you CAN be summed up in your appearance.

But those days are over, or soon will be. You will move out in the world, make your own path, and soon, your favorite band will be something you talk about, rather than how you define yourself. Then, you will find better, more interesting things to talk about. Then, one day, you will realize you haven't heard a new band in years, but you have no shortage of things to talk about, and feel a little silly for ever having based your identity on something as trivial as liking/disliking something popular.

At least, that's the better way. I work with some people who went the route of success by projected image. Vacant is the word that comes to mind. Find an image, conform to it as best you can, pick through the herd of people attracted to that image, cut off relationships before they see there's a man behind the curtain, watch as the herd shrinks, then choose between being the guy rocking the hopelessly out of date image, or find a new image to cling to, and be the old guy in a new crowd.

When I was young, I thought the art teachers, and cool older folks who still "got it" we're cool. Now, I see them and know how broken and lame they are. Hanging out with kids, because they can't stand the competition coming from hanging out with their peers. This is what comes of putting all your efforts into projecting an image, rather than developing yourself. This is were a fashion only approach lands you.

To the OP, you are a Westerner going to play in Asia. You already stand out. You don't need your wardrobe to do that for you. Dress simply and comfortably, and focus on being who you want to be. The rest will come on it's own.