Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking)

by Christian Rudder

longitudinal data—data from following the same people, over time—and

If we want to pick the point where a man’s sexual appeal has reached its limit, it’s there: forty.

woman’s at her best when she’s in her very early twenties. Period. And really my plot doesn’t show that strongly enough. The four highest-rated female ages are twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three for every group of guys but one.

Of course, another way to put this focus on youth is that males’ expectations never grow up. A fifty-year-old man’s idea of what’s hot is roughly the same as a college kid’s, at least with age as the variable under consideration—if anything, men in their twenties are more willing to date older women.

“Beauty is looks you can never forget. A face should jolt, not soothe.” He’s completely correct, for as with music, as with movies, and as with a wide variety of human phenomena: a flaw is a powerful thing. Even at the person-to-person level, to be universally liked is to be relatively ignored. To be disliked by some is to be loved all the more by others. And, specifically, a woman’s overall sex appeal is enhanced when some men find her ugly.

People not liking you somehow brings you more attention entirely on its own.