Over the past 10 years, I’ve lost count of the posts where the original poster (a woman) complains that men don’t approach her, while her friends — especially if they’re white — seem to attract male attention effortlessly, like magnets.

The responses to these posts are often completely delusional. People insist that men don’t approach because the woman is “intimidating,” or has a “resting b**** face,” or is “too pretty,” or that men assume she only dates within her culture, or that men only pursue average-looking women, or even that men just don’t approach women anymore at all.

But from what I’ve seen after spending a decade across two different universities, that simply isn’t true. I constantly see men trying to engage with women — whether through direct cold approaches or more subtle ones. I also notice men frequently staring at women who are obviously attractive.

It’s interesting how some Reddit discussions confidently tell men that they’re not attracting women because they’re not in the “top 20%,” not tall enough, or not conventionally attractive—yet there’s rarely any acknowledgment that women, too, exist across a wide spectrum of attractiveness, including those who don’t fit conventional beauty standards or who may also struggle with being approached.