Originally Posted by sapiens

I think the large amount of research on human romantic relationships contradicts your position that preferences for romantic partners are arbitrary. Men across cultures tend to value the same traits in long-term and short-term mates. The same goes for women. The attractiveness of an individual may be sum of the assessments across these traits. Now, who you choose as a mate will always be a function of those shared preferences, the current mating pool, and what your level of attractiveness is (physical or otherwise). Individual differences do play a part, but there are patterns of preferences within each sex that are not arbitrary.

Arguing about "which is more attractive: blonde, brunette, or red-head?" or the like does seem to reflect arbitrary standards. Looking for physically healthy, particular age ranges, sanity, kindness, intelligence, waist-to-hip ratio, symmetry, etc. does not seem as arbitrary to me. I think that part of what may make people think preferences are arbitrary is that people are not considering the full range of available mates. They assume a level of sanity, kindness, physical attractiveness, intelligence, etc. and then argue about really specific traits.