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Let's simplify it further: a non-obese woman only needs like ONE aesthetically pleasing physical feature to attract male attention.
If she has a pretty face, she's golden. Or nice breasts, or a shapely butt, or a toned stomach, or long, smooth legs. Hell, I would bet my life that having pretty feet is sufficient all by itself these days.
Men, in contrast, need several favorable physical features in conjunction with more intangibles (sense of humor, high social status, wealth) to get the same level of attention.
If true then the "genetic lotto" is easier for women to win than men. Indeed, arguably men only need to lose on ONE dimension: height, and their prospects are forever hampered.
You practically admit as much in your comment. If you were visibly balding at your age, how much would your other features really matter?
Yes, the situation is not symmetric. I'm just saying that it's not simple, either. As you suggest, thinking of it as a lottery with a variety of prizes is a good analogy.
For example, a woman's options are hampered by a big nose, flat chest, saggy breasts etc., but the initial option set is probably better than most men's, e.g. she may not be able to make money as a streamer or model, but she can still attract a larger variety of partners than most men, mutatis mutandis.
Incidentally, I have a friend who started visibly balding at 17. He recently married a hot, sweet, smart chick. He also has the personality that a lot of Nice Guys have, or at least think they have - kind, helpful, not very assertive. He has slightly above average intelligence and a moderately good job. On the other hand, she was his first girlfriend, at about age 27. This exemplifies how the situation for men is certainly not ideal, but it's not necessarily awful.
And once we admit this, it shouldn't surprise us to see things follow a power-law distribution rather than a normal one.
The 'average' guy doesn't have an 'average' chance of finding a mate. Rather, the top 10% of guys have it extremely easy, then the ease of dating/marrying drops off sharply from there.
The average woman, on the other hand, can easily get the attention from the average guy, but is more likely going to target someone in that top 10%.
Yes I'm fudging the statistics but this particular distribution of attractiveness and ease of finding a mate is maybe the most well-documented anthropological/sociological phenomena ever.
I say anthropological because throughout almost every culture on earth and history, there's been a class/caste of male who gets to have a harem of women whilst the rest of the male population is in a state of hypercompetition for what remains.
So to simply state that the average guy, who doesn't have the collection of physical features that make him stand out from the crowd, has it much harder than the average woman, as long as she has one feature that she can display to find attention, is to REALLY undersell the reality of the situation.
Average guys get laid and married on the regular, mind. By definition most guys will fall in this category so the law of large numbers means that SOME of them will still get mates even if it is just luck/chance. This is NOT the same as saying that most average guys will get laid and married.
And now let us add in the point that a man's attractiveness tends to scale up as he ages if he puts in the effort, and the situation looks even bleaker for younger men of average physical attractiveness.
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A decade after it stops being the only thing you ever think about you might finally get a girl. You know, if you are a nice guy, which I guess is an incel without self awareness. But at least he knew with bold, soul-destroying clarity that nobody was only talking to him to get him in the sack.
I agree that thinking all the time about getting a girl is not a good strategy, at least for a sustainable relationship.
What destroys many young men's souls is rating themselves based on people's attraction to them. Rating yourself on any basis is unwise, but rating yourself based on other people's approval is even more unwise, because it's a way of voluntarily making your happiness contingent on the mental states of another person - something that neither you nor they can do much to control.
I think my friend is luckier than most women, at least as far as happiness goes. The real joy of relationships and sex comes from activity: from actively pursuing something meaningful. That's how happiness works in general. It's not getting what you want that gives you most of the happiness, it's doing things that you think have a good enough chance (relative to the value of what you are pursuing) of achieving your goal. Our neurochemical reward system is designed to push us towards achievements, not to make us happy and satisfied. So my friend, who had to work hard to learn how to talk to girls, be emotionally stable, and be interesting, experienced more happiness than some naturally hot chick.
Similarly, a woman who exercises hard, learns how to cook healthily, learns how to look beautiful using make-up, and how to be someone that guys enjoy staying with, will probably have more happiness than a woman who just naturally looks beautiful. As Jonathan Haidt puts it, "happiness comes from in between" - the joy of life comes when you realise that you are doing things that help you to get what is important to you.
I would only add to Haidt that those goals must be thought of as "wants" rather than "needs". Pursuing women because you think you need one (for happiness, status, or just because) is a great way to be unhappy. Pursuing women because you want one (or more) is a great way to be happy. I'm pretty sure that that's the key difference between my friend and incels: for him, a good relationship was something he wanted and worked hard to achieve; for most incels I know, they think they need a woman for "...reasons...".
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