One of the most common notions spread around the "manosphere" is that it's solely women "ruining the dating market"... because average women aren't attracted to average men.

Meanwhile, average men are simply dying of thirst, desperate to date their "looksmatch."

But when you actually get down to the crux of it, and ask men to define "average" - they almost always describe a woman in her 20s who's fit/thim-slick, feminine, with a reasonably pretty face. Even most guys here who say they like "bigger" women, have a perception that the woman is just going to "happen" to be super well proportioned, with a hour-glass figure.

Men will describe literal models here as a "6-7," then describe themselves as a 5.

A recent thread here was about online dating where men complained OLD only had "bottom barrel" women. Whenever there's a thread about average men not getting casual sex, and someone says "Hey wait, I'm an average guy and have gotten it" Men will chime in to say how the women probably weren't that attractive.

Men will also say that the dating app stats "prove" men actually do want average women. However, dating apps like Tinder/Bumble usually front-load the "hottest" profiles first, giving the perception that attractive women are more widely available than they actually are.

Lots of men also use the "shot-gun" method where they'll swipe right on everything, then choose who they'll actually talk to after. We also know that many men will hookup with women they're not super attracted to (or even attracted to at all).

Apps like Hinge that limit likes and are more "LTR" focused show top 10% of women get 45% of total likes M2F. Bottom 50% of women get 8% of total likes M2F.

Why are even the bottom 50% of men still mainly "shooting for the top" if average men are desperate to wife up average women?

The average woman is 5'4 and 170lbs. This is 20+, so it's not just "for older people" either. Men will then go on to say "average is relative" and describe their outlier city/town which just happens to have tons of super hot women.

Which sounds a lot like an average woman saying "I was able to get 500 matches with guys over 6', so they're not that rare after all!"

Bottom line: Average women don't want average men. But many average men, especially on PPD, do not want average women either.

They think they do, because they think their skewed perception of "average" is so widely available. But they do not. The women they describe are not average in the US, they're above average.