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Rich men, beautiful women. It’s sort of a cliche, right? Ugly old man, young blonde gold digger. The Millionaire Matchmaker. Men make money to get hot women. Women try to look hot to land men with money. What is there to argue with?
Evidently, quite a lot. A really interesting article by James Hamblin in the Atlantic goes deeper. Yes, “physical attractiveness is exquisitely, at times incomparably, important to both men and women. Status (however you want to measure it: income, formal education, etcetera) is often not far behind. In real-life dating studies, which get closer to genuine intentions, physical attractiveness and earning potential strongly predict romantic attraction…On these “consensually-ranked” traits, people seem to aspire to partners who rank more highly than themselves. They don’t want a match so much as a jackpot.”
Men make money to get hot women. Women try to look hot to land men with money.
But there’s a caveat, according to a study by Notre Dame professor, Elizabeth McClintock.
“Women spend a lot more time trying to look good than men do,” McClintock said. “That creates a lot of mess in this data. If you don’t take that into account then you actually see there’s a lot of these guys who are partnered with women who are better looking than them, which is just because, on average, women are better looking. Men are partnering ‘up’ in attractiveness. And men earn more than women–we’ve got that 70-percent wage gap–so women marry ‘up’ in income. You’ve got to take these things into account before concluding that women are trading beauty for money.”
It’s subtle but we’re talking about a controlled study here – and McClintock concludes that it’s a fallacy to suggest that dating is a straight-up trade of looks for money. “Rather, hearteningly, people really are looking for … compatibility and companionship. Finding those things is driven by matching one’s strengths with a partner who’s similarly endowed, rather than trying to barter kindness for hotness, humor for conscientiousness, cultural savvy for handyman-ship, or graduate degrees for marketable skills.”
Most men don’t want to be sugar daddies, most women don’t want to be gold diggers, and, as a result, the vast majority of us are not.
The fact is, reports McClintock, women value men’s attractiveness just as much their wallets. And men value women’s kindness and personality just as much as their looks. To suggest otherwise diminishes what happens in genuine happy marriages, which are based on much more than a mercenary exchange for looks and money.
Most men don’t want to be sugar daddies, most women don’t want to be gold diggers, and, as a result, the vast majority of us are not.
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