New University of Bath research shows ‘trophy spouse’ phenomenon persists into marriage

New research from the University of Bath School of Management shows that the ‘trophy spouse’ phenomenon persists into marriage as husbands and wives continue to trade money and status with attractiveness throughout their relationship.

The ‘beauty-status’ exchange has long been identified by researchers looking into how people choose who to marry. The assumption has often been gendered - traditional social psychology and evolutionary theories propose that men prioritize physical attractiveness, while women prioritize resources. This dynamic is epitomized in popular culture by the “trophy wife” phenomenon: the idea that women exchange beauty for men’s status in the race to the altar.

“However, this research shows that the marriage ceremony does not freeze that bargain in place. It continues into the marriage and both partners do it. When a wife’s share of income rises, her husband slims down. When a husband earns more, she does. The beauty-status exchange lives on - but it has evolved and now it is equal,” says Dr Joanna Syrda, author of the study (A)symmetries in beauty-status exchange: Spousal relative income and partners’ BMI (at) during marriage.

The study examined 20 years of data from U.S. research into income dynamics on more than 3,700 dual-earner heterosexual couples. It compared the wife’s share of total household income with changes in both partners’ body-mass index (BMI) and physical activity between 1999 and 2019. It identified that as one spouse’s income rose, their spouse became slimmer and also engaged in more exercise.

“As incomes rise or fall, people respond not just financially but physically, subtly reshaping themselves to preserve what feels like fairness or desirability within the relationship.

What was once a gendered, one-sided exchange, becomes a mutual process of balance, maintained in part through deliberate changes in fitness routines. These effects are symmetrical and statistically robust - they hold for both men and women,” Dr Syrda says.

“And significant shifts in one spouse’s status can destabilize the relationship if the couple fails to adjust accordingly. In that respect, marriage can be modelled as a repeated game in which, at each stage, both partners decide whether to remain married or pursue divorce,” Dr Syrda says, adding that identifying whether the process of readjustment was conscious or unconscious was outside the scope of the study.

Dr Syrda said the study had been prompted by observations that, across several economies, the number of households where wives earn as much or more than husbands has risen sharply. This, in turn, had prompted changes in cultural expectations about equality in appearance.

“The rise of male grooming markets, celebrity fitness influencers, and the normalisation of skincare and body image conversations among men all signal a shift: men now invest far more in how they look than previous generations did – economic parity is matched by a new form of aesthetic parity, where both men and women feel motivated to maintain attractiveness,” Dr Syrda says.

“(A)symmetries in beauty-status exchange: Spousal relative income and partners’ BMI (at) during marriage”. is published in the journal of Economics and Human Biology.

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Notes to editors

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