The Difference in Sexual Market Value for Men and Women

Key Takeaway: Female’s sexual market values (SMV) is largely based on her age and looks which fade over time while male’s SMV comes down to his status in society and social intelligence which he has to build up over the course of his life. 

Today I am going to touch on the topic of SMV and how they differ between men and women as this is a key element, which needs to be understood in order to become better in attracting the other sex. The SMV, in most simple terms, is the measure of desirability of someone in the eyes of the opposite sex. The components which make up this desirability drastically differs between men and women and can be attributed mainly to hard wired biology within our brains which has evolved over thousands of year. As men and women pursue different mating strategies, it is apparent that the attributes they look for in a potential partner differ. While age (youth) and looks (e.g. facial symmetry or body proportion) are the most important for woman’s SMV, as this suggests healthy offspring delivering capabilities, status and social intelligence are the dominating equivalents for men as they convey resources security and safety for the (future) family. This is good news for us guys as we are able (and have) to build up those features of the year. This is illustrated by the chart below which shows that the SMV peaks roughly 15 years later for men than for women.    

Women are well aware of the effect of their looks to the other sex. There are tons of huge multibillion dollar industries evolving around the concept of cosmetics. Little history lesson: Cosmetics actually originates from the word Cosmos which is greek for (devine) completeness and was the standard that every human being on earth should strive for according to their philosophy. In other words, the field of cosmetics evolves around the idea to fulfill this by “fixing” the imperfections we as human all carry in us to achieve the “Cosmos” – sadly this has just come down to looks in today’s time. However, it should come as no surprise that society propagates youth as the beauty standard for women as they are in their young age most fertile and thus most attractive to men to produce healthy offspring (sorry for all the feminists reading this here but it how it is. You will not change biology.). Unfortunate for women looks is an inherently transmitted via DNA so there is not much one can do about it. For women it is hard to build up their SMV and after a certain threshold age it becomes near impossible to increase or even keep it steady (see graph).  

On the other hand, we have man who can reproduce even up to an age of 80 and are “not stuck” with a 9-month pregnancy. Women subconsciously know this and hence their preferences are based on whether a man can provide for them resources and safety during this pregnancy. All of this is bundled in his status and how it is perceived by women. However, as we can see from the graph above men do need time to build this status. It takes time to get an education, it takes time to become confident, it takes time to develop social intelligence (which I would say women generally have much more of than men do in their early adolescent) and it takes time to learn how to lead. This is what the graph above tries to tell us. Think back to your high school days. The most beautiful girls were usually with older guys because in their frame of reference of boys “competing” for her those older boys had more status / were most interesting. Similarly, it should come at no surprise to us that captains of sport teams are the most popular guys at school. It conveys leader of men, which is a very attractive trade to have as a man. We just have to accept it that it is that way – we also cannot change biology.  

 Let me know what you think. Looking forward to your comments on this highly controversial post.   

                                                                                                                      -Cheeky Fox   

In the next post, I will go into more detail about the male SMV and how you can build it up by following a few simple guidelines.