If Women are the Selectors, Why Is Mabeline Still In Business?

Here's something I've been puzzling over to-day:

So, you know that conventional wisdom that people like to dispense about how women are ALWAYS the one who choose the guy? You know: EVEN when it seems like you're the chooser, they say, she was the one who chose you. EVEN when you pursued her out of the other 3.3 billion other females, SHE chose YOU.

Or so they say.

Well, it's true. 100%. But why?

Now, I know you girls would love to think that it's something YOU'RE doing to maintain this position as the sexual selectors, but really it's just nature at work. It's called Bateman's Principle, which states that whichever gender must expend the most resources in reproducing, that gender will become a limiting resource over which the other gender will compete.

So, imagine I'm a savage in the African jungle 10,000 years ago. If I needed to reproduce as quickly as possible, it would take me about 2 minutes, 20 calories, and however much else it takes to replenish the lost seminal fluid. But my putative partner, on the other hand, must take 2 minutes + 9 months (assuming my super sperms are capable of INSTANTANEOUS fertilisation-ha!), plus the massive energy and resources to carry the child to term. Then assume I'm a deadbeat dad, as men are biologically programmed to be (when it's reproductively viable), and that's an additional time and effort expenditure that she is left with, whereas I'm off breaking hearts in some other part of the jungle.

Hence, women are the limiting resource over which men will compete, according to Bateman's Principle. It's called sexual selection, and that's the reason why the males of most species are ornamented, like peacocks: because women CHOOSE those mates who are competing against rivals. And they choose based on the traits they find most appealing, which is explained by two competing theories: sexy sons theory and good genes theory.

Darwin's theory was that one example of human ornamentation are our beards and other body hair, but modern evolutionary biologists have begun to get more creative. One currently influential theory is that male ornamentation went internal, and that our brains and the products thereof (viz. art, literature, culture, etc.) became male sexual ornaments. (Which could explain why those fields have always been dominated by men, even after the rise of feminism.)

So that's all very interesting, and that's the subject of the book I'm presently reading: The Mating Mind. But what I'm puzzling over now is why, if Bateman's Principle applies to humans, are WOMEN the ones who most visibly ornament themselves. On a deeper level, I agree with the biologists that Bateman's is working on humans, but the striking reality that I see in the streets is that women spend hours on their hair, nails, shoes, clothes, demeanour, etc. And men spend a fraction of that time on those accoutrements. Guys, just go out in the streets and notice the women who are walking around in that familiar way that just screams "I'm a 10--look at me!". See how put-together they are. See how they carry themselves. And for a much more interesting experience, try to notice what happens when you DON'T look.

So why, I'm wondering, are women the ones who are doing the most manifest ornamentation if you're the ones who are the sexual selectors. If getting guys to hook up with really was as easy as showing up at a bar and being willing (as many smug women on-line are wont to report), then why aren't you showing up draped in velvet, wearing flip-flops with unwashed hair? Because guys would STILL compete, according to Bateman's. Yet guys are the ones who turn up unshaven, wearing dirty t-shirts and jeans, and yet manage to pull the girl who spent 2 hours primping before going out. What's going on??

Any suggestions?