Darwin noticed something odd about human beings. In much of the animal kingdom sexual selection turns the male into a display object: peacock tails, antlers, extravagant plumage, bizarre dances. Females get to choose; males merely get to advertise.
Humans are different. Women are generally regarded as the more beautiful sex. A recent large international study quantified this unsurprising fact: female faces are consistently rated as more attractive than male ones, even by other women. But why?
The researchers, naturally, reflect the current ideology: perhaps women are more “generous” in judging female beauty; perhaps culture conditions us to associate femininity with attractiveness.
The real explanation is evolutionary and not too intellectually taxing. Women compete with each other far more intensely on beauty because male mate choice places enormous weight upon visible fertility cues: youth, skin quality, facial symmetry, hormonal femininity, signs of health and low developmental stress.
Female beauty is a reliable marker of evolutionary quality.
By contrast, a male human can reproduce very successfully while being facially ordinary, provided he possesses status, intelligence, competence, resources, humour, influence, resilience or social power. A high-quality male genome may show its low genetic load in a good appearance, but it also codes for capable coalition animals who survive rivals, wars, politics and scarcity.
Female beauty matters not merely to men but also to other women. Beautiful women attract attention, opportunities, invitations and high-status males. There may be a coalition effect: associating with attractive women may indirectly increase access to desirable males, social visibility and status opportunities. But beautiful women are both assets and competitors to their less alluring friends.
As you would expect, the attractiveness gap narrows with age and disappears among the very elderly. Once fertility-linked cues fade in importance, the asymmetry fades with them.
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