Looks Aren't It: How to Be More Attractive to Women

Figuring out how to be more attractive women actually respond to starts with one distinction most men miss: being attractive and creating attraction are two separate skills. The first is about your face and body. The second is about what happens in her head and gut while you talk to her, and it is the one the seduction community has spent decades mapping, testing and teaching.

That is good news if you are not a model. Looks help, but they mostly keep you from getting rejected on sight. The real answer to how to be more attractive women feel in their gut lies in how you carry yourself, how you speak, whether you need her approval and whether you are fun to be around. All of that can be trained, the same way you train a deadlift.

How to Be More Attractive Women Notice: Attractive vs. Attraction

David DeAngelo built much of his teaching on this split. Plenty of men decide they “just aren’t attractive,” and conclude they cannot make a woman feel attraction. That is the mistake. Attraction is an emotion. Being attractive is a trait. You can create the emotion without winning the genetic lottery.

His second foundational idea is captured in three words: attraction isn’t a choice. A woman does not sit down and decide to feel it. It fires automatically, at gut level, usually within the first minutes of meeting you, in response to how you behave. Two consequences follow:

• You cannot argue, persuade, gift or nice-guy her into it. Logic does not reach the part of her that decides.
• If it does fire, she cannot easily talk herself out of it either.

So learning how to be more attractive women respond to becomes a practical question: which behaviors trigger the emotion, and which ones quietly kill it? DeAngelo’s own advice was to stop doing the “I’m courting you” things early on and “start by being attractive, interesting and sexy.” Courting creates affection: friendly liking that ends in “let’s just be friends” (LJBF, the polite rejection a woman gives a man she likes but doesn’t desire). Attraction comes from something else entirely.

Vin DiCarlo frames the same idea without the nice-guy-versus-jerk debate: “Start thinking of attractive versus unattractive behavior, and you won’t have to worry about being a jerk.” That’s the lens for the rest of this article.

What Actually Makes a Man Attractive to Women?

Every major school built a model of what triggers attraction. The labels differ, but they converge on the same short list. DeAngelo names six drivers: means, power, fame, looks, exclusivity and personality. Only personality is fully under your control, and he treats it as the most powerful of the six. Mystery’s routines are built to demonstrate eight “attraction switches”: health, social intuition, humor, wealth, status, confidence, preselection (other women already wanting you) and challenge.

Savoy organized those switches into tiers, which is the most useful way to think about your own development:

Neil Strauss (Style) added a point system that explains why one great trait is never enough. Even maxing out a single trait, such as perfect looks or a fat bank account, cannot reach most attraction thresholds alone. You stack traits. In his scheme status outweighs looks, and the energetic stuff, passion, a “life spark,” seductive empathy, carries more weight than men expect.

That is the real lesson in how to be more attractive women notice: you are not trying to fix one thing. You are trying to move several dials a little, and the cheapest dials to move are confidence, humor and challenge.

The Physical Baseline: Looks as Rejection Insurance

The community’s position on looks is consistent: Savoy says good looks mainly prevent rejection based on appearance and rarely create attraction by themselves. So the physical side of how to be more attractive women notice is simple: do the cheap 80% and stop obsessing about the rest.

Grooming and clothes

• Fit beats fashion. Shoulders that sit right, sleeves that end at the wrist, trousers that don’t bunch. A well-fitted plain outfit beats an expensive baggy one.
• Grooming is a health signal. Clean nails, a deliberate haircut, trimmed or intentional facial hair, fresh breath. Health is a foundation switch.
• Peacocking, used lightly. Peacocking means wearing one eye-catching item (a ring, a distinctive jacket) that gives women an easy reason to comment. One piece is enough. A costume makes you look like you’re trying.
• Train. Fitness changes posture, energy and how your clothes hang, and it raises your own state.

Body language and voice

David Wygant puts attraction in body language, voice and self-confidence rather than looks. These are the physical traits you can change this week:

• Take up space. Shoulders back, chin level, slow movements. Lean back in conversation instead of leaning in to catch her every word.
• Eye contact rhythm. Voice coach Roger Love teaches an 8-to-2 ratio for one-on-one talk: about eight seconds of eye contact, two seconds looking down, then back. If direct eye contact makes you freeze, look at her forehead or chin; it still reads as eye contact.
• Slow your voice down. Rushed speech sounds like you expect to be interrupted. Finish sentences at a lower pitch rather than lifting them into questions.

Do this, then let it go. Once the baseline is handled, every extra hour in the mirror buys less than an hour spent talking to women.

Inner Game: The Part Nobody Can Fake

Inner game is the community’s term for your beliefs, emotional state and self-image. Every serious answer to how to be more attractive women respond to runs through it. Most generic advice stops at “be confident.” The community explains what confidence is made of and how to build it.

Lock in your state

Your state is your emotional condition in the moment. The first step in every attraction model is making sure your state doesn’t depend on her decisions. DiCarlo puts warm dominance at the base of his five-level Attraction Hierarchy: you stay friendly, but her comments and tests don’t rattle you. If she says something sharp and you shrug, smile and keep going, you’ve just shown more confidence than any line could.

Outcome independence

Outcome independence means not caring whether a given interaction ends in a number or a kiss. Mystery is blunt about it: if the outcome of an approach becomes important to you, it subtly poisons your game. “You really have to not care.” Treat each conversation like a round of a video game. If it goes badly, you hit restart. The fix is volume and process goals: count approaches, not results.

Selecting, not being selected

One of the biggest internal shifts DeAngelo describes is moving from “I need to do things so she’ll select me” to acting as the one doing the selecting. You stop auditioning and start screening. Is she fun? Does she have something going for her beyond her looks? That frame (the meaning you set for the interaction) changes your posture, tone and word choice without you having to think about any of them.

A life she isn’t the center of

DeAngelo devoted a whole program to the idea that natural attraction comes from maturing into a man with a purpose or path, so it shows through without technique. Practically, that means goals, a social circle and things you’d rather be doing. It is hard to look needy when you have somewhere better to be.

How to Create Attraction in Conversation (Step by Step)

This is the core of how to be more attractive women feel drawn to in the field. DeAngelo’s checklist, the 5 C’s, works well as a sequence:

1. Control. Don’t let her responses throw you. If she ignores a joke, move on as if nothing happened.
2. Confidence. Project it in tone and carriage, and walk in assuming she’ll like you. DeAngelo argues your attitude in the opener matters more than the words.
3. Challenge. Don’t smother her with attention. Be the one who ends conversations first, and keep her slightly unsure whether she has you. Uncertainty about whether she can get you raises your value.
4. Comedy. Be cocky-funny: arrogant-sounding humor delivered with a smile, so it’s obviously play. Tease her the way you’d tease a bratty little sister.
5. Charm. The combined effect: a man who is relaxed, amused and a little unpredictable.

Pick emotional topics over résumé topics

Job, salary and car feel interesting to men and land flat with women. Talk about music, travel, fashion, what she’d do with a free weekend, or tease her about something in front of you. Avoid sincere debates about work, politics, religion and family early on. If the conversation stalls, hand it to her playfully: “Okay, tell me something interesting about you. You’ve got thirty seconds.”

Demonstrate value, don’t claim it

A DHV (demonstration of higher value) is anything that shows a trait instead of stating it. Mystery’s line: “Demonstration is the secret key to a woman, not languaging.” Saying you’re adventurous is nothing. A quick story about getting lost on a motorbike in the mountains shows it. Stories, your friends greeting you warmly and a light neg (a playful tease that signals you’re not dazzled by her) all count. If negs are new to you, read our breakdown of what negging is and where the line sits before you try one; the point is banter, never insults.

Push-pull and qualification

Push-pull means alternating interest with mild disinterest: “You’re cool. Too bad we’d never work, you’re way too organized for me.” Then, once she’s showing interest, flip the dynamic by making her qualify herself. Mystery’s go-to line: “What do you got going for you more than your looks?” When she starts listing things to impress you, attraction is already there.

A sample interaction (illustration)

Him: Quick opinion. My friend says pineapple on pizza is a crime. I need a tiebreaker.
Her: (laughs) It’s good, actually.
Him: Wow. I was starting to like you. (half-turns away, smiling)
Her: Oh come on, you’ve never tried it.
Him: I have. I’m a man of standards. Okay, you seem fun. What’s your name?
Her: Jess. What’s yours?
Him: Dan. So, Jess, besides questionable pizza opinions, what’s the most interesting thing about you?

Note what’s happening: a spontaneous-feeling opener, a playful take-away, a quick return of warmth, then qualification. She asked his name back, which is an indicator of interest. That small exchange is how to be more attractive women remember in miniature. For more opener and flow material, see our guide on how to talk to women with banter and eye contact, and if the first approach is your sticking point, start with approaching a woman for the first time.

Attraction before comfort

Savoy’s rule: hold back on deep personal questions and visible interest until she shows interest first. Comfort (trust, rapport, real connection) is essential, but it only converts into romance once attraction exists. Romance and gifts are spice on a meal that’s already cooked.

Preselection: Why Women Notice Men Other Women Like

Preselection is the most underrated part of how to be more attractive women notice. It is the attraction switch triggered when a woman sees that other women already like you. Mystery compares it to animal mating behavior; DeAngelo calls it the harem effect. A man visibly enjoyed by women gets filed as different from the average guy, and he often skips the usual tests.

You don’t need theatrics. Honest preselection is mostly about having a social life:

• Go out with female friends. Walking into a venue laughing with women, even platonic friends, changes how every other woman reads you.
• Warm up the room. Have short, friendly exchanges with staff and a few groups before you open the woman you’re interested in. By then she has seen you received well everywhere.
• Socialize with everyone. Talking to the whole group, men included, shows social intuition. Ignoring her friends to fixate on her shows the opposite.
• Light references, not bragging. A passing mention of a female friend in a story is enough. Never talk about your failures with women, and never invent exes or a reputation you don’t have.

Teachers agree preselection works best when it looks accidental. Engineered jealousy that she can see through backfires instantly.

Common Mistakes and Sticking Points

A sticking point is the stage where your interactions reliably stall. Men who ask how to be more attractive women keep turning down usually hit one of these, and the community has a fix for each.

Leading with nice-guy behavior

The nice guy tries to win women through compliments, favors and accommodation before attraction exists. DeAngelo calls these “filters”: they lower attraction. His fix is translation, swapping each affection behavior for an attraction counterpart:

None of this means being cruel. It means your kindness stops being a payment for her attention. Our piece on putting attraction first covers the shift in more detail.

Being predictable

DiCarlo explains that a woman’s mind wants to categorize you and move on. If you act like every other guy, she files you and stops paying attention. Stay unpredictable and her attention fixes on you while she tries to figure you out. Cliché compliments (“you have beautiful eyes”) and stock topics are the fastest route into the “nice, forgettable” folder.

Blending attraction and rapport

Banter suits loud, high-energy settings. Sincere eye contact and vulnerability suit quiet one-on-one moments. Switching abruptly between the two reads as sarcastic or fake. Match the mode to the setting, then shift gradually.

All comfort or all attraction

Pure comfort feels like friendship; pure attraction feels like a fling with no future. DiCarlo’s fix is to break stale comfort with attraction spikes: a tease, a challenge, a moment where you step away. DeAngelo describes attraction as a wave that crests and recedes, not a button you hold down.

Trying to buy it

Expensive dates, drinks and gifts early on signal that you think you need to pay to be in the room. Trading status for her attention kills attraction faster than any physical flaw. Learning to stop chasing is often the single biggest jump a man makes.

Explaining the trick

If she calls out your teasing, don’t justify it logically. Laugh, own it, keep playing. Cocky-funny works because it bypasses her conscious analysis.

How to Tell Your Attractiveness Is Improving

The honest scorecard for how to be more attractive women give you is her behavior, not your feelings about how it went. Track IOIs (indicators of interest). Savoy’s list of attraction signs is a reliable guide:

• She asks your name, age, where you live or other personal questions.
• She disagrees with you but laughs while she does it.
• She plays with her hair, laughs, smiles and holds eye contact.
• She asks whether you have a girlfriend, or calls you a player.
• She introduces you to her friends.
• Passive signs: she stays with you when her friends go to the bathroom, or spends a long stretch talking to you in a busy venue.

Savoy’s own caveat matters: no single sign is definitive. Look for clusters, and treat IBIs (indicators of disinterest: closed body language, one-word answers, turning away) as real information. If she isn’t interested, thank her, leave on a good note and open the next set (the community’s word for a person or group you approach). Respecting a clear no is part of being attractive; persistence after disinterest is the opposite of outcome independence.

When IOIs show up, that’s your cue to lead: suggest moving somewhere quieter, introduce light kino (casual touch, like a high-five or a hand on the arm during a story) and watch her response. If she leans in and touches back, keep going at her pace. If she pulls away, ease off and build more comfort.

That’s the whole loop for how to be more attractive women respond to: handle the baseline, fix your state, run the 5 C’s, let your social life provide preselection, and read her signals honestly. Do it enough times and it stops being technique. Mystery calls that internalization: the skill set becomes automatic, and it becomes who you are. Keep building with the rest of the journal at the Gentleman Savvy blog, starting with our foundations in the Mystery Method’s nine phases.