Why more women today prefer effeminate men?

Women today, at least young women, have a different aesthetic appreciation of men. Both in the West and East, women are becoming increasingly fond of effeminate men rather than masculine men. The trend is most evident among male pop stars and male characters in popular TV plays in various countries.

This seems to go against common sense. According to evolutionary psychology, women are supposed to fall for masculine men. Masculinity conveys the message of more power, greater possibility of survival and better access to resources, indicating better life guarantee for women who have to conceive and raise children.

A research by New York University and Princeton University in 2011 showed that the long-term evolutionary "instinct" was changing gradually. Researchers showed more than 1,000 facial images of the opposite sex to male and female participants - the pictures had been airbrushed to make them look either more effeminate or masculine. It turned out that men and women both had greater fondness for the feminine facial images of the opposite sex, suggesting masculine men are not as popular as before among women.

The traditional view has been challenged by another research. Participants in the research were shown pictures of many groups of men from different races and regions. In each group there were three pictures of the same man that had been airbrushed: one looked more masculine, the second more feminine and the third almost sexless. The participants were women from rural and urban areas in different countries such as the US, Russia and China. The result: urban women favored faces of masculine men more while women from rural or less developed regions favored men with effeminate faces.