Matchmaking experiences and dating app behaviour, unfortunately, primarily focus on appearance. Much against the idealistic ‘looks don’t matter’ discourse, the ground reality tells a different story. Physical appearance overrides strong biodatas, with how one looks in the picture taking precedence over personality and financial success.
Generally, this is assumed to happen only to women, where how they look becomes the first impression and acts as the determining factor, overshadowing everything else. But turns out, this appearance-based judgment is not entirely gender specific.
Arrange marriage expert Taksh Gupta appeared on Ranveer Allahbadia’s podcast on May 16, 2026, bringing in a riveting take on how presentation matters a lot in the matchmaking process, significantly outweighing several other factors, becoming the entry point for compatibility check. The matchmaker referred to one of the biggest male insecurities among men and, to explain it better, revealed the story of one of his own clients.
Which is the biggest male insecurity?
“If a boy doesn’t have hair in the photo, no matter how good that boy is, he can earn 5 crore, 10 crore, he can have MBA from IIM Ahmedabad or Harvard, but very few girls approach them,” Taksh explained on the podcast.
What does this mean? Physical appearance strongly acts like a filter in matchmaking. Among the many physical insecurities men may have, baldness stands out to the point that it can quickly overshadow their actual capabilities, whether academic achievements or financial stability. As a result, a profile may appear strong on paper, but the photo showing baldness may end up becoming a deal-breaker for many matches.
The expert illustrated this common problem in matchmaking business through a real life example involving one of his own clients.
Fixing insecurity to get matches
The example illustrated that client had to fix the insecurity for better hopes in matchmaking.
His client was bald and was repeatedly rejected despite having a strong profile. It reached a point where even Taksh admitted he felt ‘ashamed’ to tell him that although people liked the biodata, they rejected the profile after seeing the photograph. In response, the client decided to pause his profile for a few months and underwent a hair transplant. After returning, the response to the same profile but with a new picture of him, saw a major jump. The matches increased dramatically and drastically, with Taksh claiming that he received 70 to 80 percent more matches. To put the difference into perspective, the count reportedly jumped from an abysmally low 3 matches to nearly 200. The example was used to showcase how strongly appearance still matters, acting as the first impression, becoming the sole parameter for evaluation, and disregarding personality, career success or compatibility.
This is prominent on both sides. If women are judged for how they look, whether in terms of fairness, body weight or height, men, too, are evaluated in a similar manner, with male baldness being one of the superficial parameters.
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