MetaJess

first crude attempt, here we go Men's relationships to their bodies and their attractiveness is really weirdly distorted by a couple of things. (aside: so is women's, and some of those distortions are from the same sources, but most are different sources)

the sentiment that "men aren't attractive and women know this" is a kind of cruel reductio of something actually tractable as an element of Western culture. the standards of physical attractiveness for women are much more well defined than those for men.

which isn't to say that there aren't some well defined features. most people would pick a short list that would definitely include: tall, "good" hair (even if that means a well executed chrome dome), good teeth, maybe (MAYBE!) muscular/fit would make the list there too.

but there is so much less female-gaze oriented visual spectacle than there is male-gaze oriented visual spectacle that it feels much more like guess work than something you can just plainly see by taking a 30 second glance at TV or print media.

so it's possible to come to the conclusion that women don't find men attractive because the set of traits that count as attractive for men (who are trying to appeal to women) is much more nebulous than almost every other personal goal you might try to imagine for yourself.

and because of this positive reinforcement from one specific woman, while it is always appreciated, doesn't land the same. it's not a confirmation of "conforms to beauty standard" the same way an e-girl getting 100K followers on her OnlyFans is getting confirmation from men.

additionally, men just don't receive much positive reinforcement about their appearance in general, so instances of it are kinda discounted-in-advance because men become acclimated to not thinking about much, not expecting it, or even not wanting it.

so the cruel reduction version of this experience comes out as "men are unattractive" but a more realistic statement of it is "men are confused about attraction and are conditioned to discount it as a cope to confusion".