[Spooky23]

When you ask men who they are attracted to, at least on the surface, it’s always young women. I’m pretty sure the OkCupid stats showed that girls age 20 give or take were peak attractiveness. Reality is of course that guys will “work for food” or attention.

Women are different. It ranges — alot, and is more about EQ and scarcity. If you have a moderate baseline level of physical attractiveness, moderately fit (Jon two miles let’s say), not an asshole, and not living with mom, a 40-60 year old guy is a hot commodity.

[ccakes]

If you’ve never stumbled across the older OkCupid blog posts or Christian Rudder’s book (Dataclysm[1]) then I can’t recommend them enough. Super interesting content delivered by a smart and engaging writer

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21480734-dataclysm

[fc417fc802]

This all makes perfect sense from a fertility (and thus natural selection) perspective.

[the_af]

Agreed, but once you reach 60 (like Cruise and McGillis) you're well beyond the forces of natural selection and into the unnatural realm that our longer lives have granted us. Both of these actors are outcompeted in real life by younger people (sex/reproduction wise) yet one of them is still able to secure billing in "sexy roles" and the other isn't... and this is just one example.

This could be natural selection acting against us, but since modern society is artificial anyway, why not make an effort to combat it?

[fc417fc802]

> you're well beyond the forces of natural selection

Are you? By all appearances this is a direct result of it. Visual indicators of age haven't been selected against in and of themselves as strongly with regards to men but a great many related things have been.

Arguably your specific example might constitute an edge case that historically didn't occur with enough frequency to be selected against. Seems like little more than a curiosity to me.

> why not make an effort to combat it?

I don't follow. What are you arguing for here?

[the_af]

> Are you? By all appearances this is a direct result of it.

This is a result of it when it no longer matters, in adults who no longer matter for breeding purposes. When natural selection acts on humans of age 60+, it's mostly irrelevant. There's nothing to select, they've already done their part. It's just that natural selection is blind and doesn't "know" when to stop -- but we humans know better (this is what I meant later by combat/countering it).

> Arguably your specific example might constitute an edge case that historically didn't occur with enough frequency to be selected against. Seems like little more than a curiosity to me.

Why would it be selected against? All else being equal, natural selection wouldn't exert any particular pressure on old people after they've passed their genes. It's "blind" to them. It certainly doesn't know anything about being media star material! ;)

But it's not an "edge case" for modern humans, especially as we live longer and keep working well into our later years. Modern society doesn't always resemble what the forces of natural selection act upon anyway.

> What are you arguing for here?

The same as the thread starter, only with a focus on women since they get the short end of the stick in this aspect (in media).

[hattmall]

Except this seems like a direct result of natural selection, because older men can still pass on their genes. Older women can not as readily pass them on.

[the_af]

Well, like I said, this is a result of it when it no longer matters. For reference, we're talking about 60+ year old men.

And, like I also said, modern humans and our society don't reflect natural selection anyway; many things we do are "unnatural".

[Spooky23]

Progressively fewer men 40+ want kids.

We are by nature dopamine machines, and will try to hit it as long as possible.

[fc417fc802]

Yes, that was exactly my point. The edge case is the potential for the selected behavior to work against reproductive fitness - someone young finding someone old attractive even though they aren't likely to get good offspring out of it.

I'm still not clear what you're arguing for. It isn't media giving women the short end of the stick, it's biology. What exactly are you proposing be done about it? I'm not even clear why it's a problem aside from the general desire that scientific advancement should eventually cure us of age related phenomena entirely.

[the_af]

Well, it's a problem for actresses for example.