A new analysis used face aging software to test how growing older changes how attractive people look. The software took neutral photos of young adults and generated likely looks for later decades of life. Members of the public then rated these faces for beauty and for how masculine or feminine they looked.
The main result is simple. Ratings for women fell with each decade, with the sharpest drop starting in the forties. For men, average ratings stayed fairly steady through midlife, with clearer decline only after about age fifty. The pattern was seen in ratings from both women and men, which suggests it is a broad social perception rather than a bias linked to the rater’s sex.
The authors propose two likely reasons. First, many studies in human mating show that people often use age as a proxy for fertility in women and for status and resources in men. That link may make age-related changes to women’s faces weigh more in beauty judgments. Second, biological aging shifts the face bones and soft tissues in sex-specific ways. The lower jawbone, called the mandible, tends to remodel over time. Several imaging studies suggest earlier or more marked shape change in women, which can reduce signals of facial femininity, while men show changes that may keep or even heighten some masculine cues until later in life.
There are limits to keep in mind. The aged faces were model outputs, not real long-term photos, and the starting sample of photographed subjects was small. Even so, most raters correctly guessed the target decade of the aged images, which supports the realism of the age progression. The authors frame their work as a tool to guide when cosmetic or non-surgical care may help people keep their preferred look as they age.
Finally, the study measured perceived beauty in static images, not who people choose as partners. Recent field work with blind dates suggests both women and men show a small tilt toward younger partners in first-meeting attraction. That nuance does not overturn the present result about face ratings across decades, but it reminds us that attractiveness has many parts and changes with context.
Facial Plastic Surgery and Aesthetic Medicine, Understanding the impact of aging on attractiveness using a machine learning model of facial age progression – 2025
Researchers created age-progressed face images from young adult photos using a machine learning model, then asked laypeople to rate attractiveness and gendered traits. Women’s ratings dropped more per decade than men’s, with the steepest decline after age forty for women, while men’s ratings were relatively stable until around fifty. The model’s decade targets were judged accurate by most raters.
American Journal of Biological Anthropology, Facial aging trajectories: a common shape pattern in male and female faces, but faster change in women after midlife – 2019
Three-dimensional facial shape modeling shows broadly similar aging paths in both sexes until about fifty, after which women’s facial shape change accelerates, consistent with post-menopause changes.
PLoS ONE, Sexual dimorphism of mandibular conformational changes with aging: a morphometric CT study – 2021
Computed-tomography morphometrics find sex-specific jawbone remodeling with age, with earlier and more marked shape change in women, helping to explain sex differences in facial aging cues.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, No gender differences in attraction to young partners: a study of 4,500 blind dates – 2025
In real blind dates, both women and men reported slightly greater attraction to younger partners after the meeting. This field evidence refines common claims about age preferences without contradicting face-rating findings on aging.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Facial attractiveness: evolutionary based research – 2011
A broad review linking facial traits to perceived beauty, including symmetry, sexual dimorphism, and age-related cues, within an evolutionary framework used to interpret many later studies.
Nature Scientific Reports, Three-dimensional analysis of modeled facial aging and sexual dimorphism – 2022
A 3D facial surface model across the lifespan tracks how facial dimensions and sex differences evolve with age, supporting the view that facial aging patterns differ by sex.
