TRP talks about this “unfair” imbalance around how even “average” looking women can have sex whenever they want, including with men who are considered above average in looks, but that “average” looking men can’t even find success with average or below average women. This gets blamed on so called “hypergamy” or women’s inflated standards...but has anyone considered that the objective beauty of an “average” woman is just a lot higher than the objective beauty of an “average “ man?

I’m a straight woman. I’ve had a handful of gay experiences/experimented but I consider myself straight because ultimately I’m attracted to men and not women sexually. When I look at other women though, so many of them are beautiful...female bodies/features are just objectively nice to look at even if it doesn’t “get you going” sexually. If I went out in a city on any given day and counted, my guess is women I’d see as at least somewhat pretty is probably close to 80%, whereas men would probably be 10% at best.

I’ve never met a straight woman who’s “grossed out” by thinking about the bodies of other women. By the idea of other women’s vaginas maybe, but most straight women find other women’s body’s beautiful including their sex characteristics (breasts, curvy hips). That’s why sexuality seems so much more fluid in women, because women are objectively nice to look at and so it’s easy to imagine maybe you could be sexually attracted to them even if you’re really not. Men not so much...I know very few straight men who can even imagine another man as beautiful if he isn’t VERY clearly model-level looks that no one can deny...and even then it’s more admiration than really seeing the beauty of said body.

So here’s my point in all this:

If we accept that female beauty is just a different scale than male beauty, a woman who is a “5” among women is still a visually pleasing human, whereas a “5” man relative to other men is really not a visually pleasing human.

Like...as someone whose never had a 1000 dollar bottle of wine, I’m sure they’re all delicious, but like all things some are probably better than others so you could rate 1000 dollar wines on a 1-10 scale. You could do the same with 5 dollar bottles of wine, but most people if given the opportunity would probably be pretty excited to drink even a 3-4 rated 1000 dollar wine, but of 5 dollar bottles anything below an 7 or so might be actually unpalatable.

This means that just by way of being female, you’re likely pretty enough objectively to appeal enough for sex (even if you’re not Angelina Jolie). If you’re a man, you have to be VERY PRETTY to be appealing at all...OR you have to make up for the fact that your sex is overall gross looking by excelling in some other way that makes you attractive (being funny, interesting, fun to talk to, whatever else).

My point is if you took the most beautiful woman in the world and the most beautiful man in the world and compared them...the most beautiful woman would be far more beautiful. If you did the same with the ugliest man/woman....the ugliest man would be significantly uglier.

TLDR the perceived “imbalance” in men’s and women’s physical standards for mates is not hypergamy...it’s just that men’s body’s are objectively less physically beautiful than women’s.