女性吸引力巅峰在18岁，男性在50岁？
如果你还没有看过汉娜·加兹比(Hannah Gadsby)在Netflix上那部百无禁忌的喜剧特别节目《纳内特》(Nanette)，现在就去看。(我们等你。)
In it, Ms. Gadsby takes on the fragility of masculinity — and at one point drills into Pablo Picasso, who, well into his 40s, had an affair with a teenage girl.
在这个节目中，加兹比触及了男性的脆弱——一度黑了毕加索，他在自己40多岁的时候和一名十来岁的女孩有过风流事。
Ms. Gadsby, who has a degree in art history, recounted how Picasso justified the relationship by claiming that he and the girl, Marie-Thérèse Walter, were both in their prime. Seething, Ms. Gadsby said: “A 17-year-old girl is never in her prime. Ever! I am in my prime.” She is 40.
拥有艺术史学位的加兹比讲述了毕加索是如何为他们的这段关系辩护的，他说自己和那位名叫玛丽-特莉丝·沃尔特(Marie-Thérèse Walter)的女孩都正当盛年。加兹比怒气冲冲地说：“一个17岁的女孩绝不可能处在她的盛年。绝不!我才是盛年。”她今年40岁。
That anecdote came to mind recently, in response to a new study about online dating published in the journal Science Advances.
最近我又想起了这段轶事，起因是发表在《科学前沿》(Science Advances)上的一篇有关网上约会的最新研究。
In it, researchers studied the “desirability” of male and female users, based on how many messages nearly 200,000 users, all of whom were seeking opposite-sex partners, got over one month on a “popular, free online-dating service” — and if those sending the messages were desirable based on the same criteria.
研究人员在其中研究了男性和女性用户的“期许性”，其依据是在一个“热门、免费在线约会服务平台”上，统计近20万名在寻求异性伴侣的用户在一个月当中收到了多少条信息——以及在同样的评判标准下，那些发出信息的人的吸引力如何。
The researchers determined that while men’s sexual desirability peaks at age 50, women’s starts high at 18 and falls from there.
研究人员们发现，男性的性吸引力在50岁时达到巅峰，而女性则在18岁时达到巅峰，随后开始下降。
In other words, not so far from the ages of Walter and Picasso.
换句话说，和沃尔特与毕加索的年龄差距差不多。
“The age gradient for women definitely surprised us — both in terms of the fact that it steadily declined from the time women were 18 to the time they were 65, and also how steep it was,” said Elizabeth Bruch, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan and an author of the study.
“女性的年龄梯度无疑让我们感到意外——既在于它从女性18岁开始到65岁的这段时间内稳定下降这一事实，也在于它下降得是如此急剧，”密歇根大学的社会学副教授、该研究作者伊丽莎白·布鲁赫(Elizabeth Bruch)说。
This study isn’t an anomaly.
这项研究并不反常。
The study results echoed data shared by the dating behemoth OkCupid in 2010, in which the service found that men from the ages of 22 to 30 focus almost entirely on women who are younger than them.
该研究结果与大型约会网站OkCupid于2010年公开的数据相呼应，在那份数据当中，该服务平台发现介于22岁到30岁之间的男性关注的几乎全部是比他们更年轻的女性。
“The median 30-year-old man spends as much time messaging teenage girls as he does women his own age,” OkCupid wrote in a blog post at the time.
“30岁左右的男性在给未成年女孩发信息上用的时间，与给他的同龄女性发消息一样，”OkCupid在当时的一篇博客中这样写道。
OkCupid also reported that as a man gets older, he searches for relatively younger and younger women, while his upper acceptable age limit hovers just above his own age.
OkCupid还报告说，当男性的变老时，他会寻找相对越来越年轻的女性，但是他可以接受的年龄上限却仅仅停留在他自己的年龄上。
“The male fixation on youth distorts the dating pool,” OkCupid concluded.
“男性对于年轻的这种迷恋扰乱了约会市场，”OkCupid网站这样总结道。
Caveman mentality persists.
穴居人心态根深蒂固。
Michelle Drouin, a developmental psychologist who focuses on technology and relationships, was not surprised by the new study — in part because they “align with evolutionary theories of mating” in which youth suggests fertility, she said.
米歇尔·德劳因(Michelle Drouin)是一名专注于技术与关系领域的发展心理学家，她对这一新的研究并不感到惊讶——部分原因是男性“遵循了交配的进化理论”，该理论认为年轻意味着生育能力，她说。
Dr. Drouin pointed out, though, that there are also theories that suggest that “men are just less interested in earning potential or power, and more interested in physical attractiveness.”
尽管如此，德劳因指出也有其他理论表明“男性对于收入潜力更不感兴趣，而对外表的吸引力更感兴趣。”
Women want brains. Men care less.
女人想要头脑，而男人则不关心。
Speaking of earning potential, Dr. Bruch also found that a man’s desirability increased the more education he attained.
谈到收入潜力，布鲁赫还发现男性的教育水平越高，吸引力就越高。
For women, that benefit ended with an undergraduate degree — and postgraduate education, in fact, made them less desirable.
对女性而言，这一利好到本科学位就终结了——而且博士学位事实上会使得她们的吸引力降低。
Women now outnumber men in college and earn more degrees, Dr. Bruch said, adding: “Preferences coupled with the availability of partners may drive the patterns we see in our paper.”
布鲁赫说，现在大学里女性人数要超过男性，而且获得了更多学位。她还说：“偏好以及伴侣的可获得性可能催生了我们在论文中看到的规律。”
Dr. Drouin said that educational dynamic might also be related to “beliefs that higher degrees among women translate into more work commitment and less relationship and family commitment.”
德劳因说这种教育水平上的动因，很可能跟“认为女性获得更高的学位就会更多地投入在工作而非情感与家庭”有关。
People aim high (probably too high).
人们的目标比较高(有可能太高了)。
Dr. Drouin stressed that the preferences of people seeking mates online reflect aspiration, not necessarily what people want in real life. A key finding of the study was that most users sent messages to people who were more desirable than themselves. Twenty-five percent more desirable, to be exact.
德劳因强调说，线上择偶者的偏好反映的是他们的渴求，这未必是他们在现实的生活中想要的东西。这项研究中一个关键的发现就是，大部分用户都会给吸引力高于自己的人发消息。确切地说，是比自己高出25%的人。
This data represents “the reality of dating preferences” — in other words, dating out of your league, Dr. Drouin said. That is often not the reality of dating.
这一数据反映的是“约会偏好的现实性”——换句话说就是和自己配不上的人约会，德劳因说。约会的现实通常不是这样。
“These messages sent by online daters can be likened to slot machine play in Vegas,” she said. “Little investment on the front end might pay out big on the back end — so why not opt for a chance at the biggest win?”
“在线约会者们发出的这些消息，可以比作是在拉斯维加斯玩的那种老虎机，”她说。“初期几乎不需要什么投资，但是结果却可能收获颇丰——所以为何不选择获得最大胜利的机会呢?”
But then again, the internet can’t read chemistry.
但话又说回来了，互联网不懂化学反应。
“In the real world, the woman with a graduate degree who knows your favorite Kerouac passage, speaks a few languages or discovers new ways to cure disease might be undeniably attractive,” she said. “Think of Amal Clooney.”
“在现实的世界里，一个女人如果有研究生学历，知道你最喜欢的凯鲁亚克片段，会说好几种语言，或者还发现了治愈疾病的新方法，那她的魅力可能是难以抗拒的，”她说。“想想阿迈勒·克鲁尼(Amal Clooney)。”
