
Attraction Inequality and the Dating Economy - LaserPineapple
https://quillette.com/2019/03/12/attraction-inequality-and-the-dating-economy/
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oraphalous
I wonder what studies there are on what features women find attractive in
order of priority. How many of those could men generally do something about?

How easy/hard would it be for a male generally to increase their
attractiveness through effort - sufficient enough to compete with the existing
top 20%? Or is that not possible - due to genetic fitness (or maybe
environmental vars only marginally in their control - diet as children etc)?

Assuming that men COULD increase their attractiveness to compete with the
EXISTING top 20% of men - would the size of the top cohort that 80% of women
compete for increase? Or not? I.e. are women looking for a particular level of
minimum quality that won't change much over time? Or if that 20% figure
remains constant - that their desire in this respect is a relative value;
relative to the overall quality of mate choices available currently.

Getting down to the brass tax questions I'm building too.

Does that 80/20 figure of women chasing men amount to a cultural fact that men
are lazy in terms of trying to appear attractive? Do men find more women
attractive - not because they are less choosy, but because women put more
effort into being attractive? Or are women just choosy and men easy?

What drives female choosiness? If that 20% figure stays constant no matter
what men do - then one explanation might be that mate choice for women is
highly status driven. But something must mitigate it generally right? Outside
of the tinder abstraction - women settle for less than the top 20% all the
time. Don't they?

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titanomachy
Intuitively it seems that it should be possible. Physical fitness, confidence,
kindness, empathy, social standing, even appearance: these things can all to a
large extent be improved through effort.

Facial attractiveness seems extremely important to both genders, and is rather
difficult and expensive to change. But certainly someone with a merely average
face could achieve overall attractiveness by pumping enough points into the
above areas.

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idDriven
It seems like the study discussed skewed in terms of the dataset was sites
that are picture-based primarily and thus generally perceived as geared
towards hook-ups. This could also be interpreted that guys are more open to
casual sex with whomever and women tend to be already compromising by agreeing
to casual sex therefore looking for a higher threshold of attractiveness?

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subjectsigma
Recently started using dating apps and also read the book 'Dataclysm', so this
is a timely article. I can confirm it's all true - men are treated like second
class citizens on these apps because that's just the way it is. Very average
or even ugly looking women will get hundreds of messages, some of them from
very attractive men, no matter what they do, so they don't do much of
anything. A man with no bio, only one so-so picture, and who doesn't respond
in a timely manner has literally zero chance but I see girls act that way all
the time. Very commonly you see girls with bios that are nothing but a list of
requirements - "6 foot, works out, nice, is funny, no hookups, follow me on
Instagram if you want to talk."

I don't think there's anything we can or should do to change but it is a raw
deal for guys. Also note that apps like Tinder seem very artificial and
surreal (e.g. like they don't actually matter) and I do believe this skews
behavior.

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skybrian
I'll just point out that attractiveness changes quite a lot over time, as well
as the importance people give to it.

Maybe whatever calculations they're doing should take age into account?

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Noumenon72
Is it valid to apply the Gini coefficient math to dating as they do?

> On a list of 149 countries’ Gini indices provided by the CIA World Factbook,
> this would place the female dating economy as 75th most unequal
> (average—think Western Europe) and the male dating economy as the 8th most
> unequal (kleptocracy, apartheid, perpetual civil war—think South Africa).

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sanxiyn
Why wouldn't it be?

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asdffdsa
Interesting, though I do think the author is somewhat callous. There is
something distinctly human, I think, about love and pair bonding and both the
idea of "love at first sight" as well as the tale of "Beauty and the Beast".
In my experience, there are certain women of varying attractiveness levels who
seem to like me just for being me, rather than because I possess an
extraordinary degree of some single quality like strength or intelligence
(which would assume we strictly follow polygyny).

Of course, the desire for polygyny exists, but to assume that that is all
there is to "mating" is somewhat Hobbesian. Then again, the inequality w/r/t
men is somewhat inherent across time keeping in mind the "average man" gives
the life vests to women & children, charges across the front into the enemy's
machine gun nest, and toils the fields for their master. Hell, if you lost the
war you became a eunuch and lived the rest of your life a slave. So I don't
think this inequality is anything new.

Ultimately, though perhaps there's still lots of inequality in the "dating
economy", I think it's better in our society than it has ever been. Most
anyone can work to get in shape, or pursue their hobbies. There's no caste
structure, and though some people have it easier than others (resources from
parents or genetics), it's more than possible with dedicated effort to change
oneself because that seems to be something people struggle hard to do.
Additionally, there's more variety in our culture than ever before. Women and
men can be attractive for different reasons, and so there's many groups people
can fall into. There's intelligent people, athletic people, social people,
creative people, spontaneous people, mysterious people, etc. Instead of there
just being one group -- royalty ala Madame Bovary -- there are many different
groups you can choose to be in which nets you much more opportunity than ever
before.

I'm glad I was able to think through this and come out of it with an honest,
optimistic take; it's too easy -- at least for me -- to be nihilistic when you
see an article like this

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ericmcer
The subset of people who go on swipe left style dating sites are not a random
slice of the population.

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xupybd
This really does poke a few holes in the equity of outcomes view.
Interestingly it also pokes a few holes in the unrestrained capitalism view.
As we've seen society in the past restrain individuals and produce more
equitable outcomes.

We've seen via enforced monogamy a society with more equitable outcomes. Was
it better or worse?

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crowdpleaser
It’s subjective of whether it was better or worse.

We better get sex robots quick or who knows what’s going to happen when more
guys are more frustrated.

