Human females are attracted to status. That's it.

It has been like this from the pre-human time when the only way to get status was to physically fight and intimidate other males; plus, hunting was purely physical, too.

And here's the thing with the male's looks. The ideal human male is some variation of a 6'4", low hairline, square jaw, high cheekbones, broad shouldered, huge arms etc. It's hard to scratch the skull through thick hair, it's hard to break a square jaw, it's hard to aim for the eye when it's deep set and protected by the brow and cheekbones, it's hard to even get close when his arms are longer than yours and so on. If he's bigger and stronger, you typically lose. The ideal man is an ideal fighter, an ideal fighter is at the top when the status comes exclusively from fighting, either competition or prey.

During that time, you could immediately assess a male's status simply by evaluating his looks, compared to other males. That's where the male beauty comes from -- it's just a tool to quickly determine the status, the actual thing that's attractive.

But then, weapons changed everything -- the most primitive spear couldn't care less how good looking you are, especially if thrown from behind. Pure genetics stopped being the only factor, it was getting more and more about skill and experience.

That started confusing the female's instincts, and still does now -- a man can have high status, yet looking ugly; or he can look like an Adonis working at McDonalds and getting stoned all his life. Female instincts often can't figure out if that man actually has high status or not, because they're getting mixed signals like that.

That's why "what women want" is such a debate -- simply because they don't know it themselves.

Briefly on the male's attraction. Men aren't nearly as confused because we still rely on women giving birth more or less naturally, so their instincts are up to date, since fertility is what they want, and this is what is actually needed.

Thoughts?

EDIT: "Wide shoulders and huge arms" means robust bones, not big muscle.