It may be that Ares uses his attractive appearance because it either amuses him or suits his wiles, too.
I'd like to think war is a bit more nuanced than just "breaking things." War is seductive and enslaves its victims with promises of power. His new look perfectly depicts this in my opinion.By contrast I think we don't see men in this position often because we blokes tend to be primitive enough to think that if we are outmatched, then we can just try and brute force our way out if we dont just curl up and hope it wont be so bad. And perhaps this whats most jarring of all, that this is the God of War... he's the prototypical man who thinks everything can be sorted out by breaking things. So it's the wrong character thats doing this... like Zeus being depicted as terrified of women.
Brute force Ares is the least interesting version of the villain by far.
In a perfect world, absolutely! I would *love* for there to be complete equality between the genders in comic book portrayals.And I don't know, but while I know depiction of female and male heroes and villains often cater to the male fantasy... the women are sexy and the men are powerful. If this was to be sorted and balanced out, wouldn't it be more ideal for comics to start depicting characters (male and female) with more natural but varied body types rather than well... this?