The specifically male preferences are widely known (all those half-naked ladies on the covers of magazines didn’t get there by accident). The specifically female preferences are somewhat less known. Why? Consider the incentives: Women prefer to keep this mysterious, because mysterious means higher status. (This is why any attempt to explain the mystery feels like a status attack.) Men who understand them have no incentive to teach it to their competitors. And the men who want to learn, must first get a huge status hit by admitting that they need to learn.
This is not an actual explanation of the asymmetry—why do men prefer to keep their preference mysterious less than women prefer to keep theirs mysterious? why do women have less of a disincentive to teach men’s preferences to their competitors than men do?
Some male traits are attractive for short-term relationships, some male traits are attractive for long-term relationship. The official story says they are the same, which is wrong (but socially useful).
Which official story? People preferring (brutally simplifying while trying to stay polite) to marry older, richer people but to sleep with younger, sexier people isn’t that rare a trope as far as I can tell.
This is not an actual explanation of the asymmetry—why do men prefer to keep their preference mysterious less than women prefer to keep theirs mysterious? why do women have less of a disincentive to teach men’s preferences to their competitors than men do?
Which official story? People preferring (brutally simplifying while trying to stay polite) to marry older, richer people but to sleep with younger, sexier people isn’t that rare a trope as far as I can tell.