You can be the most beautiful woman in the world, but if you can’t even look people in the eye, what good is it?
By Luna Salinas Apr 5th 2023 4 min readBookmark for later
There are thousands upon thousands of articles, videos, and blog posts on the internet that explore the answers to the age-old question: How can I become more beautiful? A lot of focus is on the physical aspects of beauty, like how to exercise to get an hourglass figure, how to contour your cheeks, how to do your hair. There’s even been a resurgence in the “science” of dressing and styling yourself on the basis of color analysis, with extensive guides on how to figure it out yourself.
While taking care of yourself and styling yourself well are important aspects of beauty, they are definitely not everything. TikTok user @butterflyfountain brings up another aspect of beauty that’s often overlooked, despite it maybe being truly important: siren energy.
It may be weird to think about how energy can change our own attractiveness. It’s easiest to explain it in terms of how we perceive others to be more or less attractive than us.
Imagine the most physically attractive guy of all time. Now picture him yanking a toy away from a child, or shoving a wheelchair-bound elderly person down a ramp, or talking down to a service worker for a small, inconsequential oversight. All of a sudden, he becomes someone you don’t want to be around, let alone date (or at least, he should).
While the provided examples around Mr. Physically-Perfect are certainly extreme, it’s absolutely true that no matter how beautiful or handsome someone is, if they’re cruel or rude, it takes away from their physical beauty.
No matter how beautiful or handsome someone is, if they’re cruel or rude, it takes away from their physical beauty.
Imagine a beautiful woman. If she’s always going on about how her features aren’t perfectly symmetrical, or how she thinks she’s fat, or how her hair looks weird, she becomes someone who’s draining to be around. If others have expressed they think she’s beautiful, but she constantly talks down to herself, they’ll wonder, “If she’s ugly, then what am I?” and then possibly come to the conclusion that she thinks less of them, or is just fishing for compliments.
Now, think of someone like Pete Davidson. In terms of looks, he’s not the textbook definition of a physical Adonis. Yet, he has been the boyfriend of numerous beautiful women to the point where it’s a meme that if a beautiful woman becomes single, people half-jokingly look to Pete Davidson to see if they’ll become a couple. The reason for this? There’s almost certainly an energy about him that compensates for whatever he’s lacking in physical attributes. He’s reportedly lovely, has a good relationship with his mother, is funny enough to have made a career as a comedian, and certainly has a sense of humor that allows him to poke fun at himself and his struggles. That’s enough for many women to find him quite attractive.
When you think of what a siren is, you may think of the enchanting, ethereal beings that lured men to their watery deaths. We’re not in the business of condoning the murder of sailors, so instead, we’ll focus on a more harmless version of that imagery: an alluring magnetism, where people are naturally drawn to you, and they’re interested in speaking with you.
Now, how do you accomplish that? Your focus has to shift away from the physical and focus entirely on your behavior and mindset.
For starters, a siren looks people in the eyes. When have you ever heard of a siren luring a sailor while looking down at her feet or her hands or fidgeting? That’d just make the sailor survival rate a lot higher. When does a siren slouch? While she doesn't make it a point to take up as much space as possible, she also doesn't shrink herself. She's open, with just the right amount of inviting, while letting her behavior do the rest.
In lieu of drowning, we’ll focus on how you want your impression on others to improve. Maybe you feel like you’re a bit awkward; it could be that you dominate conversations and don’t hear much from the other person, or it’s the other way around and you don’t contribute much to conversations. These two struggles are opposite sides of the same coin. Embodying siren energy entails knowing how to strike the perfect balance.
If you struggle more with letting others talk about themselves and contribute, think of the kinds of questions that can invite deeper discussion. For instance, if someone says they’re a writer, it’s natural to ask who they write for or what they write about. Those questions, for someone who’s more closed off, warrant a simple answer that is either the name of their employer or the subject they write about most. Instead, you could ask, “How did you become a writer?”, “What’s your favorite thing you’ve written and why?”, “Did a love of reading inspire you to become a writer?” or “What is your dream writing project?”. These questions deviate far from the path of expected pleasantries and small talk that people can easily get tired of, and it can show that you’re interested in them beyond just their job description and workplace.
Siren Energy takes physical beauty off the pedestal and replaces it with more timeless attributes – knowledge, attentiveness, openness.
If you struggle with speaking up, it could be a sign that you need to expand your experiences or your mind in order to contribute to conversations. Think about what interests you, and become well-read in those subjects. Maybe it’s interior design, psychology, horror movies, or economics. Maybe it’s something weirder or more outlandish, but that’s not always a bad thing! It could be a neat party trick to pull out some fun trivia and teach your guests something new.
While it’s important to be well-read, it’s also important to get out and try new things, and also to invest time in thinking about how you tell stories. It’s one thing to say, “I went to the farmer’s market,” when someone asks you what you did this morning, but a more expansive and opening answer could be, “I went to the farmer’s market, and I saw a booth for the new coffee shop that opened last month. I really like it, have you had a chance to go there yet?”. Find ways to elaborate on your experiences and invite others to talk about theirs. Maybe you’ll find you have more shared experiences than you realized!
When thinking about how to be welcoming toward others, it’s important to do away with the notion that you’re trying to impress someone. It’s not common to hear of siren’s tales where they just bragged or otherwise tried to impress their victims. When an interaction is insincere or it’s a means to an end, it generally comes across very clearly. It’s important to focus more on making a connection, and on being sincere and down-to-earth.
Beauty is arguably the thing that makes life worth living. Constricting it to just physical attractiveness is very limiting though. While it’s important to focus on your health and well-being (that translates into beauty, after all), siren energy takes physical beauty off the pedestal and replaces it with more timeless attributes – knowledge, attentiveness, openness.
You can be an “average” looking woman, but if you’re warm and inviting, inquisitive, with interesting stories to tell and ideas to share, people will be more attracted to you than they will be to a supermodel who acts all aloof and like she really doesn’t want to be there.
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