Sounds like a really tough situation!

Things like facial features can be subject to runaway sexual selection. See here for an explanation of this process. It can work even on traits that have long since stopped being useful for survival purposes.

While humans can override certain aspects of their genetic programming, it is not the easiest thing to modify which facial features you find attractive (though one can make a certain degree of progress, surely).

I find it somewhat strange that certain facial features are attractive but make little difference, as you say. Are we just unaware of why? I’d probably say the same about the peacock paradox…maybe we’re just wrong, and it’s not a paradox (it wouldn’t be the first time something was mislabeled as a paradox). When given a choice between two females [human], I think chicken and men choose the same one like 80% of the time or something. I wonder if other animals would do the same. Humans are smart though to the point where we can almost “overpower” evolutionary goals like reproduction: many people don’t want kids for example–at least that’s what they say.