All else being equal, everybody (both male and female) will go for the most attractive person available. That's just common sense.

But all else is never equal.

And "attractiveness" is a very complex thing; a person's looks are just part of it. Not only do people disagree on what "beauty" means, but the same person can find very different-looking people to be very beautiful.

In mathematical terms, attractiveness/beauty/sexiness is a vector quantity, not a scalar.

There's also things like the Bailey Quarters/Jennifer Marlowe effect.

None of this is new. It was all explained almost a half-century ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh9ZZgDqzAg

The thing I find interesting is that so many writers are taking that article seriously. Please consider that, for one or more of those women, any or all of the following may be true:

1) There are a considerable number of people who will do almost anything, including affecting odd personas, to get on TV or in the paper. The truth is often far less interesting.

2) There are folks who do reenactments and historic impersonations who, when doing their impersonation, will not drop out of character for as long as they are in costume. All we know about those three women is what they told the reporters, and the Daily Mail isn't exactly the most skeptical of publications.

3) The whole thing may be one enormous joke, like the Flat Earth Society, intending to make the opposite point. Putting gas in the car isn't "feminine"? Yeah, sure, and Danica Patrick isn't "feminine" either....

4) None of them have children, which is an enormous historical inaccuracy (but probably a very good thing).

5) They're really not living the way it was back then; instead, they've surrounded themselves with a selected, idealized version of the best things from those times. (If any of them got seriously ill, do you think they'd insist on only 1930/1940/1950 treatment?)

6) A lot of what was done in the past was really dictated by the necessities of the available technology. In a world where refrigerators were small or nonexistent, processed foods were expensive, rare and/or of poor quality, and a fully-equipped kitchen was a tiny room with a stove, a sink and little else, food shopping, cooking, baking and cleanup were major operations, particularly when done on a tight budget. Washing and ironing clothes, keeping the house clean, etc. was a similar situation, particularly in a city where everyone burned coal.

7) A big part of what makes it possible for them to re-create their favorite decade's trappings is, ironically, the internet. (One even mentions this).

8) Many people bring pieces of the past along with them, and there's nothing wrong with that. Look at how many films have been remade (and how rarely the remake is better than the original). Look how many Broadway plays have had successful revivals, how many fashions from the past have come back into style, how many radio stations play nothing but "oldies", etc. Note how much people are willing to pay for antiques!

9) If that is how they truly want to live, (not being forced by husband/family/society) and they don't try to force it on anyone else, what's the problem? True freedom means being able to make choices other folks wouldn't make. Conformity takes many disguises! Like it or not, in past ages there were lots of people who lived very different lives than we live today - and were happy doing it.

10) Just because something is old doesn't make it bad, and just because something is new doesn't make it good. There are things from the past that *were* better, and are worth preserving or re-creating. The trick is sorting them out from the bad things.

"Why is this so hard for American feminists to appreciate?"

"9) If that is how they truly want to live, (not being forced by husband/family/society) and they don't try to force it on anyone else, what's the problem? True freedom means being able to make choices other folks wouldn't make. Conformity takes many disguises! Like it or not, in past ages there were lots of people who lived very different lives than we live today - and were happy doing it."

It may be hard for *some* (not all) American feminists to appreciate.

The difficulty may come from the fact that, in the 1930s/40s/50s, most (if not all) American women had a lot fewer choices.

For example, it was common, and perfectly legal, for employers to designate certain jobs as men-only, certain jobs as women-only, and certain jobs as men-or-women (but with different pay scales for the different genders) - even though the jobs could be performed equally well by men or women.

I got a small taste of this in my college years, almost being turned down for a job for being male!

It was common - even assumed - back then that a woman would leave her job upon being married or having a baby, regardless of other circumstances.

Certain professions were virtually closed to women by circumstances beyond their control. For example, there were no American women astronauts until the Space Shuttle because all of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronauts came from the ranks of military test pilots. There were no women military pilots, let alone military test pilots, in those days.

The depictions of 1930s/40s/50s "femininity" are also a bit distorted IMHO. It's forgotten that, for millions during the Great Depression, anyone who could get a job, any job, worked. It's forgotten that Allied victory in WW2 was heavily dependent upon using large numbers of women workers in "men's" jobs. Not just Rosie the Riveter but women ferry pilots, radio operators, women in the British air-warning radar network, etc.,

IOW, given all the choices available today, it may be puzzling to some that any woman would choose to live in some version of those times.

Still, if a particular individual *chooses* to live a certain way, and it doesn't clearly harm anyone else, why not?