I've never associated men with long hair to be more feminine. I guess it depends on how long I guess. Is Geralt from The Witcher more feminine?
And I couldn't care less if women have short hair.
With Men the hairstyle is not important but more the overall bone structure of the face & being possibly overweight. Men look either like born winners or god was once more an a°°hole and decided this one is to amuse the masses with his goofy appearance. A "handsome" man will look good with almost any hairstyle. An unattractive man will look sh°° regardless what he does.
I wondered for some time why long hair has such a strong impact on females? Must have to do with simple biological facts like vertility & the power of youth.
Men are instinctually programmed to seek not a beautiful mate to be with for life, but a suitable target simply for reproduction purposes, to ensure the survival of the species. Long, thick & healthy hair is a sign of youth and a vibrant life force able to "produce" lots of children. The older Humans become the less amazing, more pitiful and thin will their hair look. Or at least the hair of the majority of people - a few natural born winners as the exception even until the day they check out.
Men are supposed to find "a vertile healthy female body" attractive. This body type seems to have certain characteristics & shapes we all know as a classic example of beauty. Nice curves, toned body, bodyfat proportions in all the right places ( the same as for what jiggles and what not ) and long, healthy looking hair.
Everything else will be automatically seen as inferior or less attractive.
Minthara as she looks now, looks less attractive. She looks weak, "sick", frail, undernourished, about to get worse. A man in hospital wear supporting himself on a stilt does not look strong either even if he has muscles. ^^ Our villainous EA Drow could look worse but she looks like she is suffering under some kind of condition right now.
There you go again, equating your personal preferences with that of all men. Being a heterosexual male, something I gather from your previous comment is very important to you, I disagree quite a bit. What you're entering into is the usual pocket-philosophy nitwittery of alpha and beta, winners and losers, the same usual platitudal noise that you get from any half-decent "this is how you get laid" guide for basement people. Hooey.
Long hair does not mean vibrant, thick, lush hair. Short hair does not mean frail hair. On top of that, you're going head first into an enormous false dichotomy. That is to say, beauty is not a binary quality and the dramatic majority of people on the planet are neither beautiful nor ugly, but somewhere in the middle. On top of that, standards for what constitutes beautiful are not universally the same and have not universally been the same through time. A pretty woman 200 years ago looked very different from what we consider pretty now.
Currently we have a weird standard where completely unnatural proportions in women is apparently beautiful. To some, anyway. A weight of 100 lbs or less, enormous front pads made of plastic, and a waist you can reach around with your hands. And a butt so big that bringing a chair is optional. This is cartoon nonsense. It has nothing to do with looking youthful or healthy. It's just your intense desire for your personal fantasy to be "rational" that runs away from you. It isn't rational at all, it's just what you've been taught is pretty by your social environment, and it makes no more inherent sense than any other beauty standard.
Also, all that commentary about Minthara as if she was a 2021 woman rather than an Elf living in a medieval setting... Hooey.
