There’s also the possibility that the writing staff is mostly dudes, so they can think of what makes an attractive female NPC, but can’t do the same for men.

These sorts of games do often seem to fail to realize who their most attractive male characters actually are, yeah. I was there with Goro Takemura like "I can fix him" but I don't think any of the devs or writers ever thought any players would look at him that way.