u/Worried-Advice3584

Or is it necessarily the case that in order for 1st world populations to live such relatively luxurious lifestyles, there needs to be poor populations producing cheap goods, given current technological constraints?

1. Women are just more attractive than men. Even without makeup, women are just more facially attractive then men are on average. I guarantee that straight men, "straight" women, gay men, and lesbians would all agree with this. Estrogen softens negative features, which is why when you see before and after pics of MtF transgenders, all of the negative feature they have soften and become less exaggerated. Testosterone makes negative facial features more extreme.
2. Women have a substantially lower sex drive than men. Even if men and women were equally attractive, men would still suffer more, because women's sex drives are much lower than ours, which makes them more judgemental/picky when assessing males. If you've ever looked at p*rn in a low libido state, you'll become much more judgemental about women's appearances, and minor flaws that would never bother you if you had a normal, healthy male sex drive will sort of disgust you, and really stick out to you in your low libido state.