[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?

[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.

[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?

[belorn]

That doesn't answer if improving attractiveness increase the 20% to go beyond 20%, or if it just change who is in the 20%.

Ie, by improving physical fitness, confidence, kindness, empathy, social standing, and appearance, are you simply improving your relative status in the dating pool.

[oraphalous]

That's where my intuitions lean... that culturally men just aren't used to having to work on their attractiveness...

But you'd need long term cross-cultural data to confirm.

[belorn]

> 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.

Pretty easy to test. Look if the data is different based on time period or nationality. The ability to spend time and effort on being attractive is not a natural constant, so it should fluctuate depending food availability, wars, and so on.

[s-brody]

Women are attracted (on a visceral level) to a man's genetics, most of which you can't change. In varying order of importance: 1. Height 2. Facial traits that demonstrate high testosterone pre-natally and during adolescence: high-set cheekbones, a chiseled jawline, a proeminent chin, forward growth of the maxilla, positive or neutral canthal tilt, having a full head of hear and not being bald 3. Broad shoulders (swimmer physique)