That was my objection as well. The headline is just factually incorrect. Of course it’s vain and superficial.
The rest of the article, whatever. Yes you go from being attractive to 90% of the male population from 8 to 80, to being invisible, probably that’s a noticeable loss.
But to claim that’s not vanity??
Billions of years of life has had one directive—To be fruitful and multiply. From a religious standpoint, it is also a commandment of God.
Having offspring is inherent in our very being.
In the human species, being attractive to the opposite sex is an important factor in successfully having offspring.
More importantly is the fact that humans are also inherently social animals. One of the amazing reasons we evolved such big brains was to understand a million degrees of subtlety in human-to-human relations, communications (real language) and sort out individual and group emotions.
Being better at understanding these subtleties could also lead to a more successful group that generated more descendants with this same traits and even further developments.
So certainly, from the brain’s perspective, losing one’s attractiveness has a profound effect on producing offspring and social status.
Then again, going with this same idea, 10s of 1,000s of years of human evolution gave us the idea of the ELDER, who often was the key to one group of humans surviving over the other, especially during tough times. So it is a norm in human cultures to have great respect for the older people of the group.
So one can go from hot babe to wise old Grandma, and derive deep self worth in doing so.
The same factors apply to men. All of them.
We’re only human.