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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

Why exactly are there so many attractive women? Is it something to do with NY being popular among women, or the culture of the east coast, or the presence of Ivies, or...?

edit: To clarify my question- why are there more women in NYC? Is there a clear cause?

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The explanation is quite simple: male/female ratio in NYC is ~0.9 and in Bay Area it's about 1.03 http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/a_gender.html

The reasons for migration to cities are always economic. There are more jobs "for women" in NYC.

'Why?' is almost certainly industries and culture attracting young migration differently by gender. New York has more media, entertainment, fashion, art. Also, NYC has more rigid and easy-to-read hierarchies of male success -- in finance, law, big corporations, media fame -- for women looking to land conventional 'big game'.

I have never seen anybody describe the Ivy League as being known for having attractive women.

In one of John Taylor Gatto's books he brings up that Ivy League schools base part of their admissions process on the attractiveness of the applicant because they want to project a certain image. I'm not sure if this is true or not, and I can't find a citation, but it was in Weapons of Mass Instruction [1] I believe, but possibly Dumbing Us Down [2]. It was in his letter to his niece at the end of Weapons, if I recall correctly. I have also been told by a friend that is going to graduate school to an Ivy that it was part of the admissions process, though I'm not sure how she knew this (I believe told by a previous graduate).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Mass-Instruction-Schoolteacher... [2] http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Sch...

NYC specifically has a large number of attractive women for the same reason LA does: a lot of industries based in the city which employ and are built on attractive women. There are people working service jobs (waitress, bartender, etc.) who really want to break into those industries, too.

In LA, it's movies and music. In NYC, it's music, modeling, fashion.

That said, I'd prefer a "6" who is super-intelligent and interesting, to a "9" with whom I have nothing in common.

Read: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Artists spend their whole lives on the awareness of seeing. When you fall for someone you truly see them, much like an artist does. There is more beauty in that than a roomful of 10's at a wet T-shirt contest.

I like Tyler Cowen's theory: "[the two variables are] income inequality, and the willingness of wealthier men to marry beautiful women from the lower income and social classes. Women then compete for lucrative marriage prizes." http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/11... NYC has both variables.

I live in NYC and can think of three reasons.

(1) There are a lot of colleges and non-engineering schools traditionally skew in favor of women

(2) NYC is very gay friendly

(3) The women here are exceptionally beautiful, setting the standards very high, messing up market efficiency

I bet it is a variety of factors, all adding up:

1. with all the skyscrapers, there's a very high-density need for secretaries (and their variants), which are roles that are disproportionately historically filled by women (for whatever reason -- please nobody launch into PC gender flame fest here)

2. lots of rich and/or high "status" ambitious men in suits -- draws many kinds of women like flies (not all, but many)

3. maybe also the high-density concentration of art, dance, advertising, book publishing industries -- all of which seem to disproportionately attract women rather than men

... plus many other factors. I just doubt it's one thing.

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