Measured By Looks

I once read an article about how to get to be a top Stumbler on StumbleUpon and part of the winning scenario included creating an account that was for a college aged girl, with a picture borrowed from some dating site for some foreign country and making sure to stumble photography.

I know that when I was IM’ing back in the late 1990’s that opposite sexes would randomly IM each other more than than the same sex.  So it doesn’t surprise me that when a man pretended to be a college-aged blonde girl using a picture from a Russian Dating website that his “Libertarian Girl” blog became more popular than it would have been if he blogged as himself.

This effect no doubt carries over into the real world. Whenever I see an attractive woman with a successful career, I’ll remember the experience of this blog and assume that she didn’t really get there on merit, just her looks.

(Libertarian Girl)

So what do you think?  Is this another example of an overly sexualized society, or just another manifestation of the concept that we look at the outward appearance?