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- Hacker News
- > "If it's going to make me more money to paint my face, clown me up," she said.
Oh you're already a clown
by flashman - 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.by glimshe
- Indeed, men on average look worse than women.by codedokode
- I think there are studies that analyze height vs. career achievement.
- 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.by kixiQu
- I think people often tend to treat drastic deviations from standard appearance as an indicator for undesirable character traits.
If you are badly groomed as a man, you tend to be perceived as careless.
In my experience if you are obese, people think you lack will power and discipline.
Changing how people view you for the better always has an influence on your personal success.
by niemandhier - first sentence is one step from outright discrimination even if not everyone recognizes it. if you’re visibly transgender/queer, have noticeable accent, visible disability, and on and on and onby ausbah
- 1782491881 | GLP-1 drugs increase women's marriage and employment rates | https://hu-my.sharepoint.com/personal/rdiamond_fas_harvard_e... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48688670
1783008484 | GLP-1's help women find work, and men to leave their partners | https://www.ft.com/content/a7a9bfbf-9743-473b-897f-6a91ad3fa... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48763588
1784040287 | GLP-1: no improvement in (mental) health, employment, and marriage [pdf] | https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35198/w351... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48907726
1786017110 | The Labor Market Impacts of GLP-1s | https://www.nber.org/papers/w35475 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49195399
- Stop spamming with these unwieldly lists. If there's no significant discussion, there's nothing.
- 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.by modeless
- The original paper is quite readable and interesting in how the researcher works through a number of alternative hypotheses.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w35387/w353...
An tangential part of the paper is partnered men:
Among baseline partnered men (which is where partnership dissolution is well-defined), I find a 6.8pp increase in men leaving their baseline partners (s.e. 2.9), which rises to 12.1pp after 1.5+ years (s.e. 6.1). Unlike women, partnered men leave existing relationships with weight loss.by adolph - Do you find this finding surprising? I do not.
- 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.
by nemomarx - > Lookism
Pretty privilege
by mettamage - 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.by cbsks
- 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.
by tgv - 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... =/
by gavinray - 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?"
by itishappy - Relevant sequence from 30 Rock - Jon Hamm lives in "The Bubble"by jaggederest
- The halo effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
I was gonna say "this is decades old", it's over a century old.
by Izkata - 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”.by theplumber
- 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...
- The best analogy I have heard about height and men: Height is a proxy for strength, and that is why it is so advantageous in economics, politics, and dating. I fully expect serious medical research in the near future for a childhood genetic treatment to increase adult height, as the advantages are just so enormous.
- in an era when interviews are done by zoom, is there a height effect for men?by dnautics
- 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.
by rayiner - The study also paints this as "kind of unfair against women", but didn't include men at all.by stephbook
- 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.
by WarmWash - 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!
by kixiQu - Nah I see this as a bald dude. When I wear a cap people smile at me, make conversation, etc
Not when I’m clearly bald though
People treat you better when you look better it’s sad but true
by simmerup - I'm close to B. In the 80's they tested how appearance affects people. Some women were given a facial scar and went to interviews while others were left as is. The scar group reported higher levels of discrimination than those without the scar. Tricky thing was none of them had scars in the interviews. The women that thought they had the fake scars had a "touch up" and the testers removed it.
Link: https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/what-a-1980s-facial-scar...
by normalaccess