Well, I’m going to approach this as friendly as possible. But you need to be aware that a lot of what you said in your post is just bad thinking, and there’s no way to answer it without making that point. It may feel like an attack because it’s essentially all saying that you’re wrong, but that’s not the intent. The intent is to guide you towards healthier thinking.

First, leagues are all in your head. They always have been and always will be, so long as where you live allows people to date/marry freely. Like, if you’re somewhere with a caste system of some kind where you literally aren’t allowed to be with someone of a different caste. I’m not talking about simple social pressures.

It is true that some people think in terms of leagues. They have their idea of what league they’re in, by whatever criteria they have, and they’ll make their decisions bases on that.

But that has nothing to do with you, or me, or anyone that chooses to ignore the fuck out of that kind of stupidity.

It is also true that attraction within your sexual orientation isn’t something you can choose. It is, however, something you can change. I’ll come back to that in a sec.

First though, our attraction to people within our orientation is not the same as orientation. Full stop, no bullshit, it isn’t something that is even remotely debatable at this point because there’s just too much evidence of it being the case. Being attracted to men, women, both, and (most likely, though there’s a lot less understanding of the whys and hows) neither is something that happens before you are born.

It cannot be changed, period. The most that can occur is someone realizing that their orientation isn’t as simple as they thought it was, then accepting that new awareness. Example: a gay dude may eventually realize there are very limited situations where he may be sexually attracted to a woman. This isn’t a change in his orientation, it’s simply a greater awareness of it.

So, please do absorb that and in the future avoid comparing your preferred looks/social status/whatever to sexual (or romantic) orientation. It’s just going to cause you problems, and in a way that will make it harder for you to find help with questions like this.

But, southsamurai, you say; how is it possible to change the rest? And, why did I have the attractions I have if it wasn’t a choice, but it’s changeable?

That’s a big hurdle to get past. Seriously, it’s hard.

Our ideas of what is and isn’t beautiful/attractive are formed before we even have the brain development to be attracted in any real way.

Now, there’s a limit to how much I’m willing to do in the way of explaining how I came across this all because it’s been in pieces over decades. I can’t link you to studies and publications because a lot of it came pre-internet on paper. So you’ll have to dig into it on your own if you want to connection or disprove any of this. I’m too damn old to do free reports, you dig?

Part of attraction is ingrained. We humans have a universal preference for two things) symmetry and adherence to the golden ratio. The Golden ratio is a little number that represents an ideal relationship between objects and their size. For example, if you look at someone’s ears, the ratio of them compared to their face width. The closer that ratio is to the golden ratio, the more attractive that face will be.

The symmetry is usually left/right, but it applies to other things too.

Now, you’re born with that level of preference. Even babies prefer looking at faces that are more symmetric, and closer to the golden ratio

But that says nothing at all about any of the other features.

So, what about things like hair and eye color? Where do our preferences for that kind of thing come from.

We learn it. Our exposure to other people when we’re very young influences it the most. We form our ideals of beauty by seeing our family, our neighbors, and eventually our teachers and peers. This all happens without conscious thought. It happens before we have the ability to even realize it’s happening.

It can even be formed inverted, where we reject some traits because of those early exposures. As an example, let’s say your aunt is mean as fuck. She’s blonde, so you end up not liking blondes. That’s over simplified, but that’s the idea of inverted beauty standards being formed. It doesn’t have to be that severe though.

There’s another aspect where familiarity is more likely to generate attraction. What you see most gets laid down as safe and constant. So you’re more likely to end up attracted to the familiar on average. It isn’t as universal as other aspects, and it can be inverted too, but it’s the norm. People tend to pick faces that resemble their early childhood exposure as being more attractive than otherwise.

Which means that if you’re surrounded by all blondes growing up, you’re more likely to find blondes attractive. Again, it can be inverted where you reject the familiar, and prefer everything else (which is supposedly about preventing inbreeding).

So, by the time you hit puberty, you’ve got this set of templates in your head that say “pretty”. Any person you meet gets placed against that template, and the closer they are to it, the prettier you think they are.

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Okay, so how can we change that? If we start out only attracted to dwarf albino Basque women, we’re kinda SOL if we can’t change our standards of beauty. There just aren’t that many matches in the first place.

We change it the same way we formed it. We expose ourselves to variety. Given enough time, it will happen anyway. But you can speed it up by exposing yourself to images of other “types” in a controlled way. Get on the internet in a relaxed setting, with some comfort foods, or have a drink, or smoke a joint, or all of the above. The point is to set yourself up to be relaxed and feeling good. As you look at faces that don’t match your current preferences, you’ll be building up new layers of association.

This doesn’t apply just to faces. Works the same with bodies. Into super buff ladies? Do the same thing while looking at thicc ladies, super skinny ladies, or whatever, and you’ll eventually expand your tastes. Perhaps not to the degree that you’re as attracted to a skinny lady as you are to the gym goddess, but you’ll find that if you actually find a skinny lady and interact with her and it goes somewhere, that it will actually end up being your new preference, so long as you’re genuinely interacting with that person.

You can’t force attraction. But you can change your overall range. If you then act on that expanded range, and you get enough of those wonderful reinforcements like kisses and hugs and the holy grail of cuddles, your brain gets a massive dose of chemicals and positive experiences that rewrite everything.

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But, how far does that go?

As far as you’re willing to take it. Truth is that even someone massively deformed, so that they aren’t anywhere close to the golden ratio or symmetry can be attractive to anyone. No bullshit, no being idealistic. Our brains are perfectly willing to ignore those facets so long as there are positives that counter them.

You ever see someone objectively unpleasant looking with someone that’s traditionally gorgeous? It happens. If you’re willing to abandon preconceptions, you can find anyone attractive. It’s all a matter of having those positive interactions that generate the right brain chemicals.

Leagues are imaginary. They’re lies we convince ourselves are true.

But, southsamurai you asshole, I’m ugly! How the fuck does that help me?

Well, you have to be able to interact with people in a way that generates those good feelings. The way to do that is to not treat people like a goal. You don’t think of them as something to gain or achieve. You don’t think of them as something at all. You discover who they are, while being a decent human being.

Part of that means abandoning entirely any concept of leagues. You have to eject and reject the concept that a person’s value is in their attractiveness at all. That means for yourself as well. If you’re thinking of things the way you are in your post, you have zero chance with anyone because you’ll only be capable of surface interactions. You could find the hottest model in the world, and get with her, but you’ll eventually lose her because you think of her as a hot model instead of “Jessica, this lady that is awesome”.

I promise you, if you abandon the concept of leagues, if you cut off the idea that “hotness”, beauty, sexual attraction, is important to long term happiness, you’ll be more attractive to everyone. You’ll have more friends. You’ll have partners. It may take longer to find a partner the more you diverge from symmetry and the golden ratio, because you have to encounter people that have gotten past the idea of looks being the center of attraction. But you will find them.

One of the great secrets of dating and sexual “success” is that the more you chase it, the less you’ll find it. The act of looking at other people as a goal to be achieved makes everything you say and do less likely to be attractive. At best, if you fake it well enough, you’ll fool people long enough to become someone they regret.

So, there you go my young homie. The collected knowledge of half a century of living, loving, and looking like a sasquatch while doing so.

When people say “work on yourself”, they rarely give useful advice beyond that. They’ll talk about maximizing your appearance, staying clean and dressing well, exercising, whatever.

But the stone cold truth is that none of that matters. Assuming we don’t get cancer or run over by am elephant, we all end up wrinkled, with saggy skin and aching joints. Ending up that way alone is horrible. You want another wrinkled, aching, saggy person with you as close to the end as possible. Looks ain’t shit. Looks don’t keep you warm at night.