Article content

If you haven’t watched “Nanette,” Hannah Gadsby’s fearless comedy special on Netflix, do that now. (We’ll wait.)

In it, Gadsby takes on the fragility of masculinity — and at one point drills into Pablo Picasso, who, well into his 40s, had an affair with a teenage girl.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or 'Desirability' peaks for men at 50, according to study of online daters. For women, it's 18 Back to video

Gadsby, who has a degree in art history, recounted how Picasso justified the relationship by claiming that he and the girl, Marie-Thérèse Walter, were both in their prime. Seething, Gadsby said: “A 17-year-old girl is never in her prime. Ever! I am in my prime.” She is 40.

That anecdote came to mind recently, in response to a new study about online dating published in the journal Science Advances.

In it, researchers studied the “desirability” of male and female users, based on how many messages nearly 200,000 users, all of whom were seeking opposite-sex partners, got over one month on a “popular, free online-dating service” — and if those sending the messages were desirable based on the same criteria.