Statistically speaking, I probably reached my peak desirability three years ago.
I would have guessed it was longer ago than that, but science says otherwise. If only I had known so I could savor the year of my peak sexiness. Maybe I could have gotten someone else to buy most of my beer. Maybe I could have gotten some big discounts by fluttering my eyelashes. Sometimes people let me cut in line at Food Lion. I’d hate to think that’s all I got to show for it. Alas, the opportunity for more has passed.
The Washington Post reported this week on a study in the journal Science Advances that analyzed data from thousands of users of an unidentified “popular, free online dating service” in four major U.S. cities: Boston, Chicago, New York and Seattle.
The user data did not include names, personal details or message content. The scientists involved analyzed how many messages users sent and received, how long those messages were and whether they got a response, and cross-referenced that information with users’ age, ethnicity and education.
The study established “a hierarchy of desirability” defined by the number of messages someone received, and it compared that to the desirability of the people sending those messages. In other words, a person who received a lot of messages from people wanting to get a date rated as highly desirable.
The study found that men’s desirability increased with age – up to a point. The peak desirability was at 50.
Maybe that’s why you don’t see George Clooney in movies anymore. For a while he was everywhere, box office gold, but now he is 57 and the luster has been fading for seven years. That’s four years past my age, so it would make him even less desirable than I am. (Wouldn’t it? Don’t answer that.)
The study also found that men are shallow and insecure. At least that’s how I interpret the information that women were most desirable at age 18 and less so from then on — and that more highly educated women were particularly less desirable.
Elizabeth Bruch, lead author of the study and a sociologist at the University of Michigan, told the Post that this data means scientists can now answer the question, “What would it mean scientifically for someone to be ‘out of your league?’ ”
The answer is that if you are the one initiating contact, you’re already pushing the upper limits of your league.
Both men and women sent first messages to potential partners who were on average 25 percent more desirable than they were, and men wrote more first messages than women did.
The length of the messages also corresponded to how much more desirable the message’s recipient was than the sender. So, if you are trying to ask someone out on a first date and find yourself going on and on, babbling, unable to stop yourself, recognize that on some level you know you are seriously out of your league.
I take my analysis of this study’s information a step further than the Post’s story does: Even though men seemed most interested in very young women, at all age levels they tended to initiate contact, which means at all age levels the women they contacted were still on average 25 percent more desirable than they were, often much more than that. The likelihood, then, is that on any resulting date, the man should have felt lucky even to be at the table because he was probably out of his league.
In other words, science now confirms what all smart men openly acknowledge: Almost all of us marry up.
Newsroom With A View 