The Gender Attractiveness Gap
31 comments
·June 23, 2025delichon
I read a claim that most male to female transitions are about wanting to become an object of desire, and most female to male transitions are to avoid being an object of desire.
I've never knowingly even met a trans person and have no basis to judge. Does this ring true or false?
dfxm12
Anecdotally, no.
watwut
Afaik, this is not something trans people themselves would ever be saying, but what people who do not think being trans is a thing say about them.
reedf1
I don't think a cross-cultural meta-analysis properly controls for the cultural effect of gender attractiveness given we live in a (progressively more) globalized, interconnected, world.
krona
Unconvincing.
Why did the authors select the face as the determinant of attractiveness? AFAIK the human female focuses on the upper body in general, with nothing in particular. Cultural variations exist, obviously.
This (upper body strength, generally) would make sense for evolutionary reasons. It makes more sense than the (male) peacock's tail, for example.
Arnt
It's a meta study. Meta studies generally choose a scope for which there are many studies. I assume that there exist more studies of facial attractiveness than of upper body attractiveness. 30 seconds of googling agrees, but is, of course, 30 seconds.
yawpitch
Never met a single human female that would actively select upper body strength over a face they like the look of, but I guess YMMV.
monster_truck
[flagged]
ggm
I don't find this critique particular compelling, but I do hope some illumination is thrown on what is clearly a vehemently held view.
Please expand.
Diti
Gee, if only it was possible for people to try and replicate results, peer review the paper, and publish a counter-study.
jinnert
Why would you react like this?
It seems like one of those phenomena we all intuitively know to be true, and they've tried to capture this as best they could with the method described.
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blueflow
> poorly normalized subjective opinions
I thought thats what attractiveness is
suddenlybananas
Why is this specific paper harmful?
bronlund
[flagged]
Diti
The study mentions the perceived attractiveness comes from body shape. Unless plastic surgery is involved, men can’t really compete.
DannyBee
As the paper says, studies generally require they remove makeup and any non permanent look enhancing things.
So they do control for this to the degree they can
4ndrewl
Did the authors take into account that humans have 'culture' (and structures of (male-dominated) power associated with it) whereas other species don't to any great extent?
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jinnert
It is interesting that, now the West has shifted to a matriarchal model, we are seeing a lot of young men optimising purely for physical attractiveness at the cost of success in fields we might traditionally identify with male success (career, wealth, sporting excellence, etc). Will we see "trophy husbands" in Gen Beta?
BoxFour
There’s a lot of incorrect assumptions packed into one sentence, but one point in particular stands out:
> we are seeing a lot of young men optimising purely for physical attractiveness at the cost of success in fields we might traditionally identify with male success
This doesn't align with observable trends: Consider the sustained growth in MMA’s popularity or the emergence of figures like Andrew Tate as clear counterexamples.
IX-103
If we do, it won't be a new phenomenon. They've been around practically forever.
watwut
How are they pursuing look "at the cost of career, wealth"? In other studies, good looking men earn more and are more successful in negotiations.
soco
"matriarchal model" quote please? Maybe I'm not in the west enough (Switzerland) but I definitely see pretty much the same power structure as ever, just with a few female managers and a few whining males. But I do see indeed a few trophy husbands - ordered in the same mail catalogue where the thousand times more brides are ordered.
4ndrewl
Not sure I understand the downvotes. We demonstrably have culture, including higher function language. The "other species" they mention as being the comparator don't.
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JimDabell
> Did the authors take into account
You could read the study to determine answers to questions like this. Instead you want somebody else to read the study and explain it to you. You should expect questions like this to be downvoted.
null
>While self-selection is unlikely to explain the GAP, another potential artifact of data collection could be systematic differences in grooming practices between genders. Women typically invest more time and resources in grooming than men (Das & Stephen, 2011). However, most studies follow standardized photo-shooting protocols requiring participants to remove makeup and other enhancing accessories (e.g. Ebner et al., 2018; Kleisner et al., 2024; Torrance et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2019). While some grooming practices, such as eyebrow shaping or long-term skincare routines, may not be entirely controlled by these protocols, their impact is likely minimal.
I disagree with their premise that this impact is "likely minimal". I also would want to know what percentage "most studies" refers to.