Interesting take.

You ignore another potential path which will potentially take women out of the beauty trap. At least, in the western world.

First off. Women look to good looking men to play (gain sexual experience) with, not necessarily to have a family with. Different considerations entirely. In fact, good looking high school football stars are just as disposable to women as ‘models’ are to men. There are plenty of guys you might love to ‘wear out rolling in the hay’; it doesn’t follow that you want to take them home to Mama and Grandma. I highly doubt the woman you described as an alley fuck in a previous essay would proudly announce to her mother how she let you bang her in that alley, no matter how much she enjoyed it.

Further, male displays of status to gain a mate are only valuable to women if

• the status being hyped is real. Everyone knows how fake pics are these days and every major brand has a cheap knock off.
• the males in question are willing to share said status at least until the point where the young fledge the nest, as it were. So, 20ish years.

[brief aside on this one: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, no woman in her right mind would believe that’s the case anymore.]

• said status sharing loses value with every resentment, difficulty gathering, and court case. As does any desire to keep it.

Let’s call this the beauty industry’s 2nd law of diminishing returns. Why continue engaging in a costly, time consuming venture where any real or meaningful gains are about as likely for most of us as winning the lottery or bagging a tech mogul, a sports star, or an A-list actor? At that point, it’s just wild gambling and, as you said, the House always wins.

So if the1st Law (you called it — its temporary and increasingly difficult to maintain over time) and the 2nd Law consistently prove women lose in the end, then you’re more likely to have a shift in both mating strategy and arrangement in how young are raised.

I believe this is happening. I often hear younger women say things like, “he’s an ok starter husband”, “he’ll do for now”, “his mother will help with the kids”, or the speak of some feature he has, usually medical, that will offset some real or perceived genetic weakness or defect that she’s hoping will be passed on— like high metabolism or no familial incidence of allergies, asthsma, cancer, or even addiction, etc.

Personally, I expect to see a shift to something like dolphins or killer whales — pods with mature males in male-male pairings or as “lone wolves”. They’ll either fulfill sexual desires and impulses through other males or develop very strong grip muscles.

Unless they start offering women something of more tangible and lasting value than dick pics or airbrushed hip-hop posturing, the competition for sex and beautification extremes is about to ratchet up for men much more than it is for women.