In all cases, men rate physical attractiveness and good looks as more important and desirable in a potential mate than do women. Men tend to see attractiveness as important, whereas women tend to see it as desirable but not very important. The sex difference in the importance of attractiveness remains constant from one generation to the next. Its size does not vary throughout the entire fifty years. Men's greater preference for physically attractive mates is among the most consistently documented psychological sex differences.
(The evolution of desire, D.M. Buss)