Here's my 2 cents:
women are just as shallow, selfish, materialistic and dishonest as guys, the only difference is, men can't restrain themselves as well as women can when it comes to sex, giving women the ultimate upper hand.
Playing it cool and ignoring a girl only works AFTER you've banged her, because that's when the girl wants emotional reassurance, not wanting to feel used like a whore. Her sexual gratification is one thing, but her emotional need to fulfill the little princes syndrome is a completely different game.
If you just ignore her say at a club or party were there are TONS of other guys slobbering all over them, 99 out of 100 girls will not even notice you're ignoring them, much less care about it.
Men don't seem to realise that women think like us a lot more than we care to accept. A really hot girl who's looking to hook up at a club doesn't need the hassle of chasing after the one guy disciplined enough to ignore her bratty attitude. You're much better off hitting on her obviously less attractive friend, that will make her insane!
Anyway, I'm no Casanova, but I've had my fair share of girls during my university years, and I realised that so much is dependent ENTIRELY on your immediate surroundings. People can delude themselves into thinking that individuality is somehow an attention-magnet or chick homing-beacon, but the truth of the matter is that it's not.
Being different usually results in all people, not just the opposite sex, feeling uneasy around you and opting for something less troublesome to understand and get to know. People are intellectually and emotionally lazy these days; they prefer some tried and tested, paint by numbers relationship rather than REAL soul-searching.
I personally consider myself to be in a vastly disadvantageous position having grown up in two VERY different cultures (Greece and the UK) and therefor never really fitting into either of them without making some SERIOUS compromises on my part, which results in a massive chip on my shoulder, which people can spot from a mile away.
Add to that that I can't stand to be with women I find stupid, shallow and uninteresting (examples would be former conquests of mine which I broke up with exactly for those reasons, much to the shock of my friends) so I'm pretty much left with either dumbing myself down just to get laid more often, or being myself and being alone for 11 months out of the year, each year.
I'm slowly becoming less and less of an individual and more like a run of the mill kinda guy; formulaic, repetitive and predictable. I even started drinking socially after getting advice on the subject (ie I was being too much of an individual and that's not appreciated very much) and I have noticed a dramatic change in people's behaviour towards me.
To sum up my cynical view:
Being yourself only works with someone who also just being their self and happens to be similar to you. The odds of this happening are very slim.
Women make snap-judgments about guys (if they're hot, would the sleep with them etc) just like guys too, so don't kid yourself into thinking that attitude or ignoring them works, cause it doesn't. If a girl WANTS to bang you, she'll bang you, whether you' re Brad Pitt or that creepy fat guy who still lives in his parents basement at 35.
Life and relationships are hardly ever real or meaningful; they're just 2 people who out of fear of being alone made enough compromises to tolerate each other for the emotional stability and sens of self-worth they provide for each other.