People don't get married if it's not financially viable.

That's not news.

I hear people choose business partners on mutually beneficial financial gain as well....shocking....

You pick a spouse based on a complex financial, social and biological fitness analysis that you are largely unaware of. Most people call the resultant motivation/emotional state "love."

Finding that a woman (or man, since the internal calculus is similar for women) who is +ev doesn't make the feelings are anything less than they are. Same as studying what makes a painting beautiful doesn't make it less beautiful.

Why women be shoppin so much?

Welcome to the world, OP.

Just to give you a few examples of how you also "be shoppin'"

Would you marry:
- a girl who grew up in a trailer park, ghetto, bad part of town / acted consistently with someone who did
- an ex-prostitute
- a girl who was grossly obese
- an extremely old woman
- a girl who used to be a man
- a girl who was infertile
- a girl with HIV
- a girl with a terminal illness (< 1 year to live)
- a girl who has already been married
- a girl who is a single parent

While the answer *may* be "yes" to some of these, I'm sure the vast majority is "no" ... think about why. It's not all that different for females considering males. I bet the HIV positive morbidly obese old ladies sit around in the ghetto complaining about why men are so shallow. Hard knock life, yo, shocking, etc.

theres a great Jay-Z song about this topic called

CAN I GET A....

Men are WAY more shallow then women. Not even close. Men are attracted to how a woman looks. Women are attracted to a man's personality and character.

A common myth. Women are attracted to attractive and muscular men just as we are attracted to beautiful women. They value wealth and personality more than we do, but only slightly.

Women value STATUS in men

You're half right. It's a myth that women aren't attracted to physical appearance, yes, but you're wrong about them valuing wealth and personality "slightly" more than we do. They value it a decent bit to a lot more than men do. Their value scale is weigh'd primarily towards social value/wealth with physical attraction being pretty high, whereas for a male physical appearance trumps wealth by a large degree.

Unless the man is poor, but I don't know of many poor men marrying rich women.

Well, even in the instance of a poor man, it wouldn't be that he's somehow attracted to a rich woman because of her money, it would be that he decides the monetary benefits outweigh the lack of genuine interest. For example, I'd probably marry Oprah but it wouldn't all of a sudden mean I find her the least be attractive, whereas for women the money and status sparks a genuine attraction in most cases.

It is pretty funny that everyone is discussing women as if they are all exactly the same in what makes them prefer one potential mate over another, that mate preference even a stable trait within an individual woman, and that temp-mate preference is equivalent to long-term-mate preference.

all that variation across individuals and within individuals across time averages out in the aggregate. people are modelling the representative woman itt.