As a society we've always placed unrealistically high patriarchal standards on men.

However, it used to be equally placed on women too, growing up on the 2000s, we used to always hear phrases like "stay in your lane" "stick to your class" etc etc, usually these phrases were for everyone but most often than not, it was directed at women.

This created a far healthier dating dynamic, as everyone had a healthier dating life. Hypergamy was hardly ever discussed, if at all, cause it largely did not exist.

Universal dating standards did not exist either, it's why you see more nuance in marriage and dating history in the past, there was less stigma, because everyone unanimously and subconsciously believed that having high standards was unrealistic, a fairy tail, something from movies.

However, things have changed now, fast forward to today, hypergamy is very much a thing, men are still held to high patriarchal standards, but with a universal set of standards imposed too (height, money etc), whilst women are barely held to high standards, with social media even promoting and normalising that even the most unaccomplished women are "deserving" of the utmost accomplished man.

And I believe the reason for this change is that women are no longer held to any standard at all, no one can even think of universal standards for women, but we all know the universal standards imposed on men, as well as the list of icks women have.

Essentially the burden is now entirely on men to live upto an astronomically high standards, but there's no burden of women having to live upto any standard.

I know social media has played the largest role in this, but I genuinely believe this issue can easily be resolved by placing the same ridiculously high standards on women like society used to in the past.