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Dahlen comments on Instrumental Rationality Questions Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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Yeah, finding reliably good people is a problem in general.
But there is also this gender-specific part of problem... uhm, remember the OKCupid study about how women rated average men as "below average" on the attractivity scale? (Like an opposite of the Lake Wobegon effect.) So we have all the average women who believe they are looking for a correspondingly average man and can't find one, while in reality they are merely unwilling to settle in their own league.
Maybe Heartiste means something like this, from the opposite side. A woman who is in the man's league will believe she is better than him, and therefore will not put much effort into the commitment, because she is still waiting for the true prince to come for her. (It will take some hard lessons in life to learn what she can realistically expect, but those lessons take time, and Heartiste prefers young women.)
I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine, in which he said he didn't care about looking good for women or catering to them in general. Coupled with the fact that he often complained about not being able to get women, the whole situation seemed rather pathetic. Something about a lost license to complain, methinks.
When I look beyond my own grooming habits, the problem seems widespread. By contrast, and this is essential, there are industries upon industries dedicated to enhancing women's appearance, to which they are drawn irresistibly, often well past the point of diminishing returns. If this were an arms race of attractiveness, women won before the race even started. If we are to get even a little closer to the ideal of everybody being paired with someone in their "league", either both genders get preoccupied with enhancing their looks, or neither does. In fact, if we are to factor in the fact that men seem more needy, sexually, they should be the ones trying somewhat harder to look attractive. Remember, in most species ornamentation belongs to the male gender.
Looks matter. Whoever is telling you that the end-all-be-all of male attractiveness is position in a dominance hierarchy is bullshitting you and probably has an appetite for domination higher than is optimal or moral himself.
tl;dr Women's beauty industry has a distorting effect on average attractiveness for each gender, this might explain part of the discrepancy in standards, and men might need to pay more attention to their looks than the cultural standard if they want to "stay competitive".