Why Aren't Men the Pretty Ones?
Source: Why Aren’t Men the Pretty Ones? Publisher: Cartoons Hate Her | Author: Cartoons Hate Her Published: January 7, 2026 | Archived: March 21, 2026
Human sexuality differs from the sexuality of other animals in many ways. First of all, humans are some of the only creatures to partake in oral sex along with our primate cousins and more distantly sheep, squirrels and (I have major questions about this one) spiders.
*great now i have “spiders eating pussy” in my search history*
But also, modern-day humans are largely monogamous, and while some people might criticize monogamy as “unnatural,” it is basically the best way for a civilization to function, especially a post-industrial one. As I wrote about [before](https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/there-are-only-so-many-women-to-go), polygamous societies are often more violent in part because of a huge number of sexually frustrated men. Yes, that’s right: pussy is a finite resource. Having multiple wives may be a fantasy for some men, but it is not “natural” for *men at large* because a society where some men have multiple wives is a society where many more men are horny, involuntarily celibate cannon fodder. And for gorillas, well, the incels just turn [kinda gay](https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/the-incel-gorillas).
But there’s one striking difference between humans and other animal species that I find perplexing: for many animals, it’s the *males* whose beauty is on display, while the looks of the females are unimportant. As a little girl, I was saddened to learn that all the beautiful teal-headed ducks I saw at the pond were boys, and the girl ducks looked like complete shit.
s_!He7K!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb171e3db-0a88-4705-818f-2ea18d240273_500x500.jpeg)
This is a stone cold looksmatch.
Peacocks are an even more obvious variation on this trend, where male peacocks are beautiful enough to inspire an entire aesthetic in 2009, complete with tiny fedoras on headbands adorned with peacock feathers, while female peacocks look like, how do I put it, the “Eileen Fisher version” of a peacock.
While less obvious, some mammals follow this pattern of the preening, colorful male and the dowdy female who selects mates. Take, for example, deer and their antlers as a show of male beauty. Or male mandrills, who display their bright red and blue facial markings, correlated with virility, to much plainer females. Lions’ manes display not only sexual maturity but attractiveness to females.
But modern-day Western humans are notably different—it’s not just that we don’t partake in this type of sexual dimorphism but we actually do the opposite. Women who want to be sexually attractive to men put far more time and effort into their appearance than men do. The more adorned, glamorous of the human species is quite obviously the female. And many are fine with this imbalance, even as the beauty gap has widened dramatically over time. People, especially men, will casually state that men’s value is in their status and resources, while women’s is in their looks, not giving this juxtaposition a second though (methinks it is more appealing to see yourself as attractive because of things you control, and therefore, most men understandably do not *want* to examine women’s physical preferences any further!)
But we have a severe imbalance now, in part because unlike birds, human females are *also the more sexually selective* of the species, making their primping and grooming kind of…extra. What’s the point of all this looksmaxxing if you’re already the sexually selective gender? Any bird who witnessed human sexuality would consider us crazy. And the weird part is: many olden-days humans might too.
How did we get ourselves into this ridiculous imbalance?
Women have more and more tools at our disposal to make ourselves more attractive. Of course, there are women out there who don’t wear makeup, don’t grow out or style their hair, and don’t wear nice clothing, but most straight women understand that finding a partner requires at least *some* of this, especially if you want a partner who has options. And as many single women will attest, there don’t seem to be *that* many attractive men out there, especially when it comes to looks and grooming. A single female friend of mine in San Francisco told me that “status” aside, she rarely meets a guy who has good hygiene, dresses well, and is even halfway decent-looking, and that’s not to mention social skills. Meanwhile, she knows many women who tick all of these boxes.
Before anyone brings it up, let me get ahead of it: this OKCupid chart gets dragged out whenever a man wants to make a point about how women are so much pickier than men are.
s_!uzO1!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4a85338f-78d0-4327-8052-fdd1131ae7d4_910x1198.webp)
But I offer an alternative suggestion, aside from the fact that a lot of men take horrible photos. What if women are genuinely just putting way more effort into their looks than men are? Moreover, what if men are actively shooting themselves in the foot when many appearance improvements would actually be pretty easy? We have backed ourselves into a biologically disadvantageous corner, where the more selective sex is also the more beautiful sex. The fact that women generally don’t need men for financial survival also means that we’ve basically got a lot of beautiful female ducks who can defend themselves and gather their own food, looking at drab male ducks. I think a lot of those female ducks would rather just go on their phones in light of the options available.
Without going to the extremes of looksmaxxing a la Clavicular, the guy who apparently hits himself in the face with hammers (?? not sure I want to know more about this) what if we, as a society, have really screwed up by normalizing the enhancement of women’s looks only (and encouraging maximum enhancements, more every decade) while increasingly associating masculinity with a lack of beauty, and stigmatizing men who make an effort as feminine (or at best, “metrosexual?”)
There is so much to unpack here, because a lot of things distinguish humans from peacocks (tfw she got that tight cloaca) so first let me address the fact that it’s “normal” for monogamous species (or even polygamous species who raise children together) to abandon the whole pretty-boy thing. Female and male gorillas aren’t drastically different when it comes to beauty, and in fact, male gorillas who mate do some selecting too! It stands to reason that the most selective female species are the ones who can expect to raise their offspring alone (so much for telling single mothers to “lower their standards,” at least if you’re a mallard.) So no, humans aren’t built for the type of sexual dimorphism afforded to birds.
But what’s different about humans is that for the most part, we are the only animal species who looksmaxx to the degree that we do (especially modern-day women). For all the talk about looksmaxxing men who get horrifying leg-lengthening surgeries or even something as “normal” as steroid use, women corner the market on basically everything cosmetic and fashion-related, from surgery to injectables to skincare to clothing. Women also just…worry a lot more about how they look. There is simply no animal comparison, because last I checked, walruses were, frankly, too stupid to figure out how to get tusk implants. Modern-day women have an unprecedented arsenal at our disposal to compete for the most attractive men, and the importance of using these tools has risen over the past several decades.
And now, some of you might be saying “Ah! Most attractive men! Alas, the masks slips! Women DO only want 6’5” Chads!” and I feel like this deserves at least some acknowledgement, because I don’t think “women only want 6’5” Chads” is true, but I do think it’s true that women generally compete for a smaller percentage of eligible, good-looking men (the “total packages,” if you will) in a way that you don’t see with the genders reversed. But it’s not because women are more shallow than men—quite the opposite! Men will consistently value looks more than women do, and when men talk about how to “attract women,” they are usually, by default, ruling out any woman over 30 or below a 7/10 in attractiveness. Rather, the issue is that there are just…very few men who care about their appearance as much as even your average woman does. Most women do have physical preferences, maybe not for extreme height, but at least for fitness, grooming, hygiene, and overall handsomeness. Most men do not put much effort into these things, sometimes out of ignorance and sometimes because they consider it effeminate to care. And thus, we have the problem, as I said before: the selective sex is also the one preening and grooming, not for the amusement of all of the opposite sex, but for the only ones who are equally or nearly as good looking (a limited selection, albeit not as limited as “6’5” blonde blue eyed rich Chad.”) That’s not even accounting for the fact that women now outnumber men in college, or the fact that women generally don’t need a man to provide financial security. Chaos ensues. We have a lot of men who want girlfriends but can’t get one, and a lot of women who want a boyfriend, but hate their options, and would rather just stay home and scroll.
To some extent, the problem is that women probably care about men’s looks more than men think they do, and more than they want to admit, but still less than incels think they do. As a young girl, I was told that the true princesses will kiss the frog, marry the ogre..fuck the minotaur, get tied up and be called a good girl by the vampire aristocrat for that matter (okay, I’ll calm down now). I felt ashamed that I noticed when boys were good-looking—that was shallow! A truly good girl wouldn’t care at all! At eighteen—and I was a cute eighteen!—I went on a vacation with my mother and I remember looking at the middle-aged men around me at the resort and thinking out loud, “I could probably date a guy with a beer gut. Maybe even if he was balding. He might still be a little handsome.” My mom looked confused and said, “You’re eighteen. Why are you settling even in your fantasies?”
*This girl was already preparing to settle.*
Meanwhile, men are told that their attractiveness derives primarily from their status, that their looks should be irrelevant to the looks of the girl they ultimately win over (a beautiful woman is seen as a reward for “doing things,” not for being good-looking yourself), and in fact, that with enough status they can completely override the need to be good-looking or well-groomed. This is true of celebrities (who, I might add, *are still good-looking for their age, and impeccably groomed*) but also, your average “high status” man IRL is not a celebrity and his status can only go so far. Again, this doesn’t mean women only want men who look like Glen Powell, but women’s physical attraction generally cannot manifest only from things like status and money. This, my friend, is what we call “gold digging.” Bill Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend, I would venture, is not really *sexually attracted* to him as it were, but taking advantage of a situation where she can get rich and famous. I will make an exception for RFK Jr. and Olivia Nuzzi because she seems a lil’ freaky and I think she has a specific fetish for much older, powerful men. But my point stands.
s_!PVHl!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4d398b2f-a5aa-42ea-896a-400e7054c954_600x400.webp)
Bill Belichick is not proof that “women don’t care about looks.” It’s proof that “some women really want to have fame and millions of dollars, any any cost.” And there is a difference between Bill Belichick’s girlfriend looking for a meal ticket, and having existing physical attraction to a man boosted by the fact that he has status and power. Here’s my mask slipping again: I think my husband is hot from a purely physical standpoint, and of course I like his personality, but was I a little turned on when he got promoted? Yes. But also, when I was twenty-one, an older C-level executive at my company tried to take me on a date, and even though he was significantly more powerful and high-status than my boyfriend, I found the whole thing disgusting. Status is an enhancement to existing sexual attraction, not a substitution for it.
This is part of the problem. Women don’t want to admit we can be a little shallow, and while “blackpill” incels over-index on how shallow women are, most men assume women don’t really care what they look like at all as long as they have “status.” They see beautiful women as rewards for any man who can charm them, not considering that most beautiful women prefer handsome men.
One example of how men don’t really focus on their appearance the way women do: a male friend of mine once asked me for tips on his dating profile, and when I suggested he nix an unflattering, from-afar photo where he was barely visible at all, he told me that was his “best photo” because he was standing in front of one of the most historic buildings on the world. No woman would ever make this mistake.
Another one: a man I saw at a party I once attended, featuring mostly young, single people. On paper, he was good looking. He was a tall white guy with a thick head of hair, decent face, and while I don’t know if he was in great shape, he was probably somewhere between a slim and average BMI. He was probably in his late twenties. Nothing could possibly be wrong…right? Well, he was groomed and dressed as if actively trying to ward off women. He wore dated-looking wireless glasses. He had an incredibly unflattering haircut, no facial hair (being clean shaven is fine, if not preferable for some women, but the right facial hair can do wonders for creating a “look”) and his clothes consisted of business-style slacks with some kind of gray golfing-style polo made out of polyester athletic material tucked in with a mismatching belt. He also wore shoes that should really only be worn ironically, or on a hiking trail. I believe they looked like this:
Now, maybe the joke is on me. Maybe this guy went home and absolutely railed the fuck out of his 10/10 girlfriend. Maybe he was a fashion influencer pioneering “Databricks-core.” But he was there with a group of men, and I didn’t see him with a woman, so who knows. Anyway, my point stands that this guy could easily change his entire look with just a few enhancements to grooming—no insane surgeries or procedures required—and he would be a “top tier man,” at least in the appearance department. I can only assume he was oblivious to the fact that he could have done a lot better, or he just didn’t care.
I see men like this often. I saw them all the time in San Francisco. They have all the fundamentals necessary to be good-looking, but are missing some key (achievable) things. A single female friend of mine in San Francisco corroborated that while she was surrounded by men in a city with an imbalanced gender ratio that *should* have been in her favor, she frequently encountered men who *couldn’t keep up with basic hygiene*, let alone fashion, fitness and grooming. She also said they had no social skills. This was not a complaint that my male friends shared. I have never once had a male friend tell me, “I can’t seem to find a girl who regularly showers and takes basic care of herself.”
Now, *weight* comes up with both genders, unsurprisingly. Nobody wants to be rude and say “no fatties,” on dating apps, but both men and women find all sorts of ways to indicate this: must be active, love fitness, go hiking in a weighted vest, whatever. There was also the guy on *Love is Blind* who repeatedly asked women if he would be able to lift them onto his shoulders at a concert. Obviously, being not-fat (or even better: somewhat toned) helps your dating prospects whether you are a man or woman. And evidently, most people in the US do not fall into this category.
Despite the US being in an “obesity epidemic,” obesity is frequently referred to (at least in my genderslop Internet niche) as a total dealbreaker. Obviously, it’s not that way for *everyone*, or fat people wouldn’t be getting married every day. Part of this phenomenon is age (a lot of people gain weight *after* getting married) and also class (Substack, or even Twitter, seems to have more voices in the middle to upper class, where obesity is less common and more of a social detriment.) Also, let’s not forget the nuance between chubby and obese. During a [survey](https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/survey-results-do-men-and-women-want-03a) I ran, there was a huge difference for most singles between openness to dating someone who was simply a little overweight, versus dating someone who was obese. As you can see, most single men and women, regardless of sexual experience, would date a chubby person, but would *not* date an obese person.
s_!J9Au!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F071a683e-c5c1-4734-be38-39a7c309f068_866x528.webp)
But there is an interesting gendered component to this: according to a 2011-2014 study done by the CDC, obesity correlates with income differently for men and women. Richer women are thinner than poorer women (29% of highest-income bracket women were obese compared to 45% in the lowest income bracket) but for men, the obesity rate was flat across income groups (32% at the lowest, 33% at the highest.) Income brackets were calculated based on the federal poverty level at the time, so the lowest bracket was around $31,000 annually or lower, and the highest was around $84,000 or higher.
Anyway, this creates another imbalance that I have to address for this article to make any sense. For lower-income people, women are more likely to be obese than men, and for upper-income people, the reverse is true. For some men, who may live in rural or lower-income areas, the idea that women put “more effort into fitness than men” sounds absurd for this reason. However, it’s important to note that in a large metropolitan city, fit, slim single women will outnumber their male equivalents. When I hear men talk about how “my dating apps are full of fat single moms,” I immediately know he isn’t living in a major metropolitan area. Even in San Francisco, a city not known for having many women at all, let alone attractive women, I couldn’t go to Safeway without spotting a plethora of fit young women in activewear. I rarely saw as many men in one place who looked as good.
I can only assume that among urbanite singles, the women are just putting more effort into fitness than the men—or perhaps putting equal effort into fitness but more effort on nutrition. When I published my fitness guide with my husband, people here and on Twitter thought that my husband put an inordinate amount of effort into health and fitness, or that his entire life revolved around fitness in a way that was totally impractical for most men. They wouldn’t be the first people to notice this about him. People in real life have said the same. And yes, my husband does fitnessmaxx more than he needs to (and more than I would even want him to—I think it’s part of his OCD). But the vast majority of young single men—men with far more free time, who are far younger, who do not suffer from insomnia—do not come anywhere close, and I don’t buy that they’re “too busy.” My husband is a very involved father of two who works full time, plus he spends a lot of time with me where he suffers through my Trump impressions. Granted, he works remotely so he isn’t burdened by a hefty commute. But most guys could get pretty fit (think: toned, robust or slim, not necessarily JACKED, which isn’t necessary) by putting even half my husband’s effort into their fitness and nutrition, and single guys do not have spouses and children to take up their time. Most people spend almost all their time at home on screens. Men do not need to look like Brad Pitt from Fight Club to attract women, but I have a suspicion most are not employing any fitness or nutrition regimen at all. That is a major missed opportunity.
Fitness admittedly takes a while, and requires some degree of consistency and willpower (although GLP-1s stand to change this) but grooming, clothing and hygiene really do not. Provided you have a few hundred dollars to your name, you can improve your physical appearance in less than a week just by tweaking your hair, hygiene and clothing. And yet, a lot of men don’t really put effort into this area either!
As a society we have, bafflingly, declared that men who focus on their appearance are effeminate, even though most men are really not focusing on it enough. Forget “toxic masculinity”—I’ve noticed a particular type of “drab masculinity” where men one-up each other on how little they can care about their appearance because the first guy who admits to using moisturizer is gay. When we saw American Psycho, we were supposed to infer that Patrick Bateman was a complete lunatic because he did so much skincare and worked out so much—and obviously, he was a lunatic, but I maintain that it sent the wrong message: your average man should be doing more of this, not less. There is so much untapped potential. Yes, we know you’re a manly man because you use one bar of soap to wash your face and your ass, but I humbly suggest you buy some Cetaphil and SPF.
Drab masculinity is perpetuated even more heavily when it comes to fashion. I really love fashion, and I love fashion more than most women, let alone most men, so I’m not suggesting all men start loving fashion as much as CHH. But come on, guys. Almost every time I write about fashion, there is some man, in some comments section either here or on another website, smugly acting superior because “it couldn’t cost more than $5 to make a shirt, and I already own one shirt—why should I get ANOTHER SHIRT? For \(50???” These same men will unsurprisingly decry any kind of changing fashion trends as stupid and frivolous, while bragging they’ve been wearing the same Orvis polo shirt since 2007. Congratulations, Dwight! You look like crap and you’re not getting ass. Go to Bonobos. I won’t belabor this too much because I am not an expert in men’s fashion, but for men who are a little unconventional-looking, having a slightly *different* or alternative aesthetic can help them. What used to be a plain-looking potato guy becomes *jolie laide* (or well, *joli laid.)* In high school, I had a wild crush on a 5’6”, 90 pound guy with a balloon of frizzy hair and a retainer because he was a really good jazz musician and *not* in a geeky jazz club way but in a cool, beatnik, bohemian kind of way (with an aesthetic to match). More recently, I saw a cute woman on a date with a guy who, physically, looked a bit awkward, but he had put together a hipster aesthetic that made him memorable and signaled he cared about his appearance. Halfway through the date he confessed a melange of hoe-scaring baggage, including a divorce that ended in “crippling debt,” and as far as I could tell, she remained interested, so take from that what you will. Now, some men might be really mad at me for saying this because they resent being told to try, let alone try to *look good for a woman*! What are they, gay?! Some of these men believe the social contract has been broken—they’re supposed to provide a middling salary and nothing else, and in return, they’re supposed to have sexual access to a beautiful woman. And I suppose I can’t force them to change with the times. It just so happens that women like men who put effort into their appearance. If they don’t have to do that to attract women, great! If they don’t care enough to do it for whatever other reason, fine. But I do think it’s low hanging fruit. Then, there are the men who are so enraged by having to try that they would rather see the entire world change to enable them to walk around in the same Champion running shorts they’ve had since college than do anything to improve their looks. They will say that we should simply ban makeup so women will have to grapple with their own true ugliness and settle (I regret to inform you these women will probably *still* not settle.) I do think it would probably be great to de-normalize the arms race of plastic surgery because it’s, quite frankly, getting completely out of hand, but it will be very hard to “ban makeup,” so we can probably write that fantasy off entirely. We have a Republican trifecta and they haven’t even managed to ban porn, so you’re gonna need some real Church Ladies in charge to ban the Devil’s Paint. These men might go as far as to suggest that women’s rights at large should be rolled back for the express purpose of making it harder for women to opt out of the dating pool when they don’t like their options. I don’t know, I guess I’m a crazy radical feminist but I don’t think going to the gym and dressing well are horrible enough to warrant revoking women’s right to vote. s_!J7Jh!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9c16e610-bd8f-40cb-9b00-4ec009ee9b64_752x860.png)
I will side with the trad men for a moment: the fact that the enforcement of monogamy in traditional Western societies (take, for example, 1950s America) makes it very difficult for such an imbalance to happen. If everyone is married by twenty-six, and you can’t juggle multiple people at once or stay single, eventually people have to just find their match and settle down. In fact, let’s talk about the 1950s a bit more because I actually think we could learn something from this era.
In 1950, there was less of an imbalance between the degree of appearance-related effort made between young single men and women. Yes, women wore girdles and dresses while men didn’t, but men dressed far more formally, even for everyday occasions, than men today. Men and women dressed differently, but they were matched on effort. You did not see this, for example:
(That is obviously an extreme example, but today women will often put significantly more effort into dressing nicely than their male counterparts.)
In 1950, fewer people were overweight, but men and women also had far fewer resources at their disposal to improve their appearance, and perhaps this was a decent balance we struck. Women had makeup and men didn’t, but both sexes dressed nicely, took care of their hygiene, and styled their hair daily. And while men today might wax poetic about the beauties of yesteryear, I think many of them would be shocked to discover that Instagram-tier e-girl beauty just…didn’t exist. *These* were basically the best-looking women that existed:
s_!qf4n!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3cc68f63-03da-4afb-ac3f-f5d317a01b86_750x571.jpeg)
Yes, these women are all very pretty, but you will notice that all of them have faces and bodies that would be deemed “mid” by terminally online gooners today. All are slim, a few have clearly defined waists (aided by shapewear, most likely) but nobody has outstandingly large hips or boobs, and even though they are wearing one-pieces I would put money on none of them having six-packs. There were no fillers, no Botox, no breast implants, no BBL. And while the cheerleader effect might be boosting all of their attractiveness, take your time to look at each one individually (each one will be less impressive than the group at large) and remember these weren’t average women in 1950—they were the best. Everyday young women looked like this:
The best way to describe the aesthetics change of men from the 1950s to today, is that in the 1950s most young men put roughly the same amount of effort into their appearance (which more or less matched their female counterparts, minus makeup and heels) whereas today, most men do *less* than the men of 1950, and then a small percentage do more, usually in a niche, subculture way (gym bros, fashion guys, “metrosexuals,” etc.) Combined with the lack of enforced monogamy, it should come as no surprise that women are mostly interested in the small subset of men who “try.”
While a lot was wrong with the 1950s, I don’t think this gendered grooming setup was entirely bad. Despite being painted as a regressive time for women (and in some ways, of course it was), women of the 1950s didn’t have the female beauty arms race, where single women felt pressure to contort themselves into increasingly biologically implausible shapes and sizes to appeal to a small subset of handsome men. While women weren’t respected for their contributions in the workplace, their value could be recognized for their domestic skills (many of which are dead today) without the constant pressure to be a “Hot Girl” at every possible age, in every possible scenario. In fact, in the 1950s, people had different priorities for partners entirely, and both men and women cared less about looks than they do today. They likely had more realistic ideas of beauty too—the most beautiful woman a man could ever hope to see in 1950 looked far more like a real person than the millions of AI-generated (or indistinguishable from AI-generated) e-girls of today.
How do I know priorities were different? Well, a fascinating [study](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2001-06562-015) followed priorities for romantic partners’ attributes among college students in the 1950s, and then continued to survey people in this age cohort over fifty years. What they found is that looks were always more important to men than to women, but were less important to *everyone* in the 1950s than in 1996. People also care more about mutual attraction and love today than they did in the 1950s, when they had a less romantic and more pragmatic view of marriage. Other things mattered more in the 1950s: men were more likely to value things like domestic skills and cooking. Women were more likely to value good financial prospects, which dropped in comparison to other traits like personality-related traits or physical attractiveness. Both sexes were more likely to value chastity or family background/standing in the 1950s than in 1996.
Perhaps we had the grooming balance “right” at one point. So what went wrong? Several things, in chronological order:
- The sexual revolution enabled anyone to date as many people as they wanted and to stay single as long as they wanted. Without a societal standard that everyone should generally be married by 25 or 30, people were free to try their luck with multiple people, or continue to chase the best-looking people indefinitely. Arguably, a lot of gym culture among both men and women in the ‘80s and beyond can be traced to the desire to compete for the best partners—something that wasn’t quite as pronounced when dating was focused on marriage alone (and within marriage, less focused on looks and more focused on shared religion/community/values/family standing.)
- Ideals of masculinity changed throughout the 1950s to today. Society became less formal in general, but this decrease in formality was especially pronounced with men. Outside of requirements for specific office jobs, men’s fashion became less about formality, politeness and social conventions and more about making specific fashion *statements* or utilizing hot brands. This is a more niche interest than “wearing a suit to look presentable every day” and only appealed to a small subset of men. These men were deemed “metrosexual.” Increasing awareness, visibility and acceptance of gay men meant that straight men were excessively afraid of “looking gay.” For better or worse, gay men just…look better than straight men, so a great way to seem straight was to look crappy.
- Beyond the 2000s: social media, the evergreen demon. Social media has a specific effect on women’s body image that is not replicated in among men. Yes, social media *can* affect men’s body image, but the effect is strongest with women, specifically with [preteen girls](https://www.priorygroup.com/blog/can-online-image-editing-on-social-media-contribute-to-eating-disorders), whose brains are most vulnerable. A lot of the most absurd beauty standards set in today’s society originate on social media (see: the growing trend of [rib removal](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9988318/).)
- As we get into 2020 and beyond, especially during and after the covid pandemic, the [loneliness epidemic](https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/the-loneliness-epidemic-is-our-revealed) and availability of easy entertainment and lite socialization via phones and social media makes it all worse. People socialize in person far less. It seems like we have a blossoming world (that mostly exists online) with absolutely impossible-to-meet beauty standards, and then the real world, where most people are just at home, bored, and on their phones. Looking hot only matters if anyone, well, *sees* you. And a lot of young single people aren’t being seen at all (per one of my surveys last year:)
s_!UqlH!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F332ad5f5-a07c-4165-afde-febe91088ea1_1132x696.webp)
All of this combined to create the perfect storm. With marriage less important and with many other options available (from playing the field to playing on phone) traits related to long-term domestic function and stability became less important in favor of looks, for both men and women. Young, single women (especially in large cities) met and exceeded this bar by looksmaxxing beyond what their grandmothers ever could have imagined, while most young men began doing less, as male grooming became less of a social convention let alone a necessity. And now we have a wide swath of attractive, appearance-focused young women, whose “self care” and “mental health” are focused almost entirely on improving their looks (I cannot count the amount of times I’ve seen a TikTok about mental health that was literally just about getting a bigger more toned ass) faced with a male population, most of whom views any appearance improvements to be effeminate or vain.
I don’t think we can go back to the 1950s, especially not selectively for this issue. But maybe as a truce, men can invest in some clothes that were made within the past five years, and women can stop getting cosmetic surgery and injectables until age forty. RETVRN:
Write a comment