(1) Beginner

Lately, a friend of mine has been bringing up a recently acquired belief that looks are everything, and everything else is nothing, when it comes to meeting and picking up women. I've avoided being drawn into the debate as best I can, but any time I mention anything women-related, I've been hearing it from him: “Oh, I don't even listen to that, because the only thing that matters is looks.”

Disagreeing with him gets one told one is in denial, and he cites a few examples of very good looking friends of his who get better results with women than anybody else he knows as evidence that only good looking guys can get good looking girls.

I've refrained from weighing in too much on this until now, because I understand why he's thinking this way and why he's trying to convince everyone that looks are all that matters. But I felt like the topic is a good one, and that it'd make for good article fodder and be something worth addressing here. The topic being:

Do looks matter to women, and if so how much?

And the answer I've got for you here will almost certainly surprise you, no matter which side of the fence you fell on prior to reading this.

Guys have been asking for a while on here for a piece on fashion for men. So I guess that makes this one a long time coming.

Fashion's important. How important? It's pretty important. It's not make or break always... but you know the saying: clothes make the man.

What you wear doesn't just define you as cool, sexy, or stylish. It also subconsciously affects how other people feel toward you.

Wear clothes that make you look amazing, and people will feel like you're amazing. Wear clothes that make you look different, and people will view you as different (good or bad as that may be).

Wear clothes that make you look ordinary, on the other hand, and people will view you as just that: ordinary. Boring. Not particularly noteworthy.

They'll hardly even notice you.

And thus, we have our focus on fashion: getting noticed, in a positive way. But not like what we discussed in the article on peacocking... the truly fashionable man picks clothes that fit him so well people don't even see the individual clothing items all that much.

Instead, they just look at the man himself and say "wow."

A reader writes in on the article "Staying Out of Auto-Rejection," about asking himself the question of "Are we just friends?" and giving up on a girl he was pursuing - only to have her pull him back in with an expression of her feelings:

“I wrote off a girl (well have tried to anyway with great difficulty) I felt strongly for about a year ago due to the fact that although she expressed strong interested in me, she moved onto another guy due to me moving too slow, being aloof etc.

Since then, as part of bringing closure to the whole episode, I read all these theories about escalation-windows and auto-rejection, and concluded that this was most likely what happened in my case, and thus put the whole thing to rest, reaching acceptance that anything we had was over (well at least trying my best with these steps), and resolving not to make these 'mistakes' again with the next someone special who comes along.

Lately I've been noticing a fair amount of guys discussing difficulty approaching women while looking smooth and effortless. Some of the time, they're ending up not approaching girls they like at all, because they can't find the "right angle" or they're waiting for the "right moment," and that moment never comes.

Approaching girls is a bit of an art, but how to approach a girl is not - that you can boil down to distinct bits, pieces, and learnable, repeatable steps.

However, it's also a topic that's shrouded in a lot of general, generic advice and scads of "Just do this [hard-sounding thing] and the girl is yours!"

Before we get into the mechanics on how to approach a girl, a few articles to recommend checking out if you haven't already done so (or, are in need of a refresher):

• Overcoming Approach Anxiety (combatting nervousness prior to approaching)

• Move Faster (a basic but under-discussed tenet of good game)

• Reactions vs. Results (a mistake loads of men make - confusing reactions from women for results with women)

• How to Get Girls: The Last Post You'll Ever Need (a broad overview of the mentality you'll need to have and the situations you'll run into in the modern dating environment)

• The Law of Least Effort and Sprezzatura (the big impact that the appearance of effort has on how attractive you are to women and the kind of results you get)

We'll be using and referring to these principles here - if you're vague or unfamiliar with any of them, make sure you give these a look.

That in mind, let's get you armed up with a process for approaching that takes advantage of the situation and the environment and has you meeting girls as easily as possible, as smoothly as possible, and with the best end point possible (the girls you meet wanting to meet up with you again and exchanging contact details with you - or better).

And we'll do all that with the 4 big mistakes that men make when approaching - and the 10 steps to take to have a near-perfect approach.

In "Guy Talk: Here's How to Kick Butt at Talking to Other Men," JFav (a commenter singlehandedly responsible for perhaps 20% of the "a reader writes in" type articles I've written here) writes in asking about how to make female friends:

“Hey Chase,

Was reading through this article again and it's great stuff! Can't believe I haven't been using it all this time. Though as I was reading though a thought popped into my head, could there be a companion article to this concerning women?

I'm not sure if what I'm asking isn't already covered on here but I thought I'd ask anyways. I've always been fascinated with those guys that just get women and can instantly turn them into a friend or ally. Much like the way you said you can turn any man into an ally I'm sure you can do that with a woman too.

So, I was wondering if you could a write up on this kind of thing. You talked about this subject briefly in Girls Chase ebook where you compared the female and male conversational style.

I'm asking about this because I'm in a spot in my life where being active in pick up difficult for me so having some female companionship in terms of having invites to parties or clubs is my best bet right now.”

And just the other day, Ryan had a similar question in the latest Carnival of Dating Advice:

“Hey Chase,
I was wondering if you could write an article about what to do if you want to be good friends with a girl. All your articles have been really helpful but i'm not sure how to apply the techniques to a girl whom seducing would be inappropriate, but you still want her to admire and respect you as a good friend. Could you write something about this please? Thank you :)”

JFav and Ryan are right - there isn't an article on Girls Chase yet about turning women into friends - so let's correct that situation.

In 2001, I set foot inside a nightclub, just off the seashore in Ocean City, Maryland, for the first time in my life. It was senior week, the week after graduation from high school, and I was 18 years old... and my efforts to get my life on track were sputtering out. I'd tried everything else I could think of to learn social skills, to make friends, to get girls; but none of it had worked. I was liked, in my way - most of my classmates thought I was cool, or a curiosity... something of a high school legend. But I had no friends to speak of. I kept everyone at arm's length, fearful of substantial social interaction. I didn't even know how to hold a conversation with people. And unlike almost everyone else in my graduating class, I wasn't going to college come summer's end.

No one understood why one of the best students in school wouldn't go to college, with no job, and no backup plan, but how could they. They had their normal lives. Friends, girlfriends, parties, fun. Walking into a nightclub alone - an environment I'd never been in in my life - and walking out with a girl was my last resort. While the rest of my classmates drank and laughed and talked and partied with their friends and hookups and paramours, I struck out into the night on my own, driven and determined, on one last, hubristic, quixotic quest that was only ever going to end one way.

One of the older pieces of writing of mine still floating around on the Internet is a newsletter I wrote for theApproach back in 2007 called "Becoming a Great Storyteller." Because I already wrote something on it back then, and because much of the emphasis I've placed on Girls Chase is on getting others to tell you their stories more than it is to get you telling yours, I never took the time to get a proper treatment up for how to tell a story.

If you've read through the other articles on this site, you've no doubt come across some of the more story-driven pieces here - one of the more classic examples of this being "Can't Stop Thinking About Her?" Storytelling is a key component of most things involving people - whether that's writing, teaching, or speaking; building connections with others, delivering speeches at political rallies, or shouting on high from the pulpit.

The best actors are storytellers.

The best bosses are storytellers.

The best authors are storytellers.

The best seducers are storytellers.

The best salesmen are storytellers.

The most powerful, compelling, magnetizing people from all walks of life are storytellers.

And if you'd like to join their ranks, to hold that candle up that flickers light onto the damp and dusty walls of intrigue and enchantment and fantasy and allure, to attract the minds of those trapped in lives of boredom and normality and sameness and deliver them a wake up call that snaps them at once to attention, then, to do that, you must know how to tell a story.

Welcome, friends, to the 17th Edition of the Carnival of Dating Advice, bringing you the latest and greatest articles in dating advice, seduction, psychology, relationship, and more from the four corners of the web.

Today we have on offer a couple of interesting pieces on psychology; a guide to one of the key elements of emerging from heated arguments unscathed ("Stay on target"); a reminder about smiling; and a short review on that new Facebook phenomenon, "Bang With Friends."

May I present, for your reading delight, our carnival...