I think what gets overlooked is men's experiences in adolescence, in that I think two crucial crossroads tend to send men down the path in some degree of obsessive comparison..
1st, I think mothers and female relatives(especially of only male children) tend to place a pedestal beneath them that if not reconciled becomes an impossible, maternally established eschelon forever trying to be reached.
But what I think happens more often than not is for men during boyhood, is our first obvious or overt positive attention from an opposite sex peer typically comes after a moment or event of distinction that sets us apart from our same sex peers. I for, example garnered very little of girls' attentions until I was taller than most of my male classmates and peers. I think most Western patriarchal thinking likes to wallow in the tallest, strongest, richest, biggest dick arguments, but I think reality and experience expands it to anything that sets us apart , or more often, above the men around us is typically what will garner the most women's attentions. Could be the smartest, the most sensitive, the distinctly artistic, the emotionally open, while all good and desirable qualities, to name them implies comparison to other men whom do not measure up, as it were.
Even the "boy next door" trope encapsulates the idea of him being "All American" and high achieving, not necessarily appreciating another cog in the machine. It makes me wonder how or if women in a place like Japan(which socially encourages conformity) in their younger years, are more positively receptive to less distinctive male peers.
