Practicalmadness

Steven Levitt posts to the Freakonomics blog, relaying a (possibly apocryphal) Craigslist exchange between a “beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25-year-old girl” in NYC very open about looking to marry a guy making at least $500K/year, and a respondent who followed her lead and pointed out some of the flaws in her plan.

From the girl’s post, the passage that sticks out for me is this one:

I dated a businessman who makes average around 200 - 250K. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000K won’t get me to Central Park West. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

This just reminds me so much of the folks who think they could just be the next internet mogul if only they can somehow get 4 million users for their stupid social dating startup, or bad filmmakers who think the only reason they’re not bigger than Spielberg is because of some massive conspiracy of Jews.

As for what this woman in her yoga class is doing that makes her more of a catch than our dear heroine, the question I really want to ask is what they both do with their lives besides marrying rich men (or try to) and doing yoga. For most men (shallow beasts that we are) tend to marry women we could see living with for kind of a long while. That often means they’ve got something more going on than surface beauty.

If you’re looking for how this relates back to something nerdy, here it is: in the marketplace of love, this girl is competing on her looks alone. Now, let’s imagine for a moment that what this girl is selling isn’t her spectacularly beautiful body, but rather a spectacularly beautiful product — say, a hot new music player that, if looks were everything, should be an “iPod killer.”

The trouble is, looks (while certainly relevant) are not the only thing, nor even the most important thing. The reason why the iPod bests the Zune, or why the Wii is kicking the asses of both the Xbox 360 and PS3, is because those products provide a better overall experience than the competition. They’ve all got beauty and charm, but the winners are the products that have beauty, charm and brains. They’re the girls who’ll keep you up until 4 AM talking about French films, or sharing stupid jokes about whatever nonsense.

Ultimately, it’s the difference between saying you’re better and being better. ‘Cause if this girl really were prettier, wittier and classier than some schlub in her yoga class, she wouldn’t have to think about how to attract her sugar daddy. The moral of the story here is: in marketing as in dating, you’ll always do better if you can actually bring something to the relationship besides a snotty attitude about your looks.