>Their attractiveness also dwindlew with time First, young boys are certainly competitive with each other. Bullying is largely about social status, and social

>Their attractiveness also dwindlew with time First, young boys are certainly competitive with each other. Bullying is largely about social status, and social status is the main predictor for mate choice. Second, male attractiveness does not follow the same pattern. Yes, sperm quality does degrade with age, but that decline is nowhere near as sharp as the decline in a woman's reproductive health. Not only will their eggs run out, but their chance of surviving childbirth drops sharply with age. Remember, we're not talking about western societies with modern medicine, but evolutionary imperatives which would have developed prior to any sort of antibiotics, pain killers, C-sections, etc. Third, male attractiveness is strongly correlated with access to status and resources. Which young men almost universally don't have. (although young men may show traits which indicate potential future access to status and resources: intelligence, drive, assertiveness, popularity, etc.) However, an older man (30s-40s) still has very healthy sperm, and may have proven access to status and resources, which is nearly universally considered attractive. So, I don't think it's fair to claim that male attractiveness declines over time an sort of the same way as female attractiveness. (Once again, from a strictly evolutionary perspective.)