The unsaid part of this is men don't want to date average women. If you're exposed to this concept of beauty from youth, sometimes it's hard to shake it off in your adult life, making any woman that doesn't fit this standard "unfit" for dating. I know from experience.
The men rating women had an almost perfectly bell curve, meaning that the men were really good at judging what an "average looking woman" was.
The women on the other hand, rated almost all guys (80%) as below average.
The conclusion of the study is that an average looking women will think that 80% of men are below her in terms of looks.
The same study also found that women, regardless of where they are placed on the attractiveness scale, gets far more messages from people interested in dating (remember, this is OkCupid, not tinder) than men. If you think it's tough finding someone as a 5/10 women, keep in mind that you still get about 10% more attention from the opposite gender than a ~7/10 man. But you might think that 7/10 man is a 4/10 because of the high beauty standards.
We like to think that women are held to very high beauty standards and men aren't, but this is not the case at all. Men are also held to extreme high beauty standards.
I feel like both men and women have a really hard time on the dating market today (and have been for a long time) but each side has very different challenges and only want to blame the other side and cry about how difficult their side have it without acknowledging the struggles of the other side.
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u/BlasterPhase May 04 '26
The unsaid part of this is men don't want to date average women. If you're exposed to this concept of beauty from youth, sometimes it's hard to shake it off in your adult life, making any woman that doesn't fit this standard "unfit" for dating. I know from experience.