Also bad: Men in our society are in a competitive hierarchy. You want to be taken seriously by your friends? Well, maybe they'd stop making fun of you if you had a hot partner. Again, this is something a lot of guys will not say, but a lot of "choosing" a partner is about what they think their friends (and powerful men around them) would say. They might be fine with someone chubby or trans or whatever, but a voice in the back of their head says "But I know Robert will make fun of me for this". This applies more the further down the hierarchy of masculinity you are, the further you are from being taken seriously in that sphere. While the first point applies to men pretty well across the board, this definitely has a classist ableist character. See the dating foibles of masc computer science students.

i feel like this also goes both ways in some way. i have family and people in general take me more seriously (both as a trans person and as a woman) when i have my bf, a masc hot guy, around. so in a way i can leech off of his hotness and our relationship to make people take me more seriously (re: doctors not listening to women except with a man in the room and so on). so bizarre.