This is something that I just considered from reading the title "If all men were to make significant improvements to themselves all around, would women reject less often or would they only increase their standards".

In a lot of cultures today a seeming paradox is happening where females do two things:

  • they are the primary selector; this is what is typically expected in any species with sexual reproduction where one sex invests more energy in reproduction than the other; if there is a selector in those species it is typically the female
  • they are also the sex that pays the most attention to their appearance

The last one is the unusual paradox; it is invariably the selected sex that pays the most attention to its appearance. in nature. Just look everywhere i nature, the peacock's tale; the lion's male, the crab's pincer. In general males when females perform the selection are far more ornamental investing huge amounts of energy to look good and show their genes which only makes sense if the females are the ones selecting yet in most cultures today it seems to be the female who spends considerably more effort on its appearance in comparison to the male and then invite the male with that to "approach" and then select upon the best genes seemingly. It doesn't usually work like that and it doesn't make a lot of sense. In most species it's the male standing around advertising its genes with all these ornaments and the female eventually selects the best male from all those in line and approaches that. That's how it goes in Peacocks; the males compete with each other for who has the best looking tale and the female goes for whoever does.