I'm sure the exclusion of these things is the Sims Team's attempt to be all inclusive (an effort which has been routinely flubbed) but it seems almost comical to exclude them in this case.
Especially in the context of dating apps, blind dates, etc., when you really don't have much to go on about your match, you'd be looking at things like their eye color, hair color, facial hair, or body to determine if you find them attractive or not. It's a bit juvenile to beat around the bush and pretend that people have no physical preferences when it comes to attraction.
Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I feel like they were afraid of backlash around having things like "skinny", "blue eyes", and "blond hair" being a turn-on. But at the end of the day, what people do in their own games isn't really the team's responsibility and they shouldn't water down features just to avoid people being potentially problematic* in a single-player game. You know that there are already people who only have their sims hooking up with white supermodels. That's not a good enough reason to completely ignore any physical attraction in a game that already has "woo-hoo" as a core feature.
(*not that it's problematic to be attracted to any of these traits, but I'm sure we all know why this specific combo and nothing else might be perceived as racist)
@Coraychiexactly, or we should introduce build limits to prevent people from making netherbits shaped buildings, and the like. It's completely ridiculous to go to the extent of customising gender and preferences, but then completely go over physical traits because someone thought the solution to the male gaze and unnatural beauty standards is to pretend they're not there, instead of revolutionizing the concept and making it our own.
I feel I'm condescendingly being told my body and relationship with physical intimacy does not matter at all, when instead it was a huge factor in stepping into my power
