Jack, I don't know that I agree with the gay/straight difference, but I do think that men and women react differently to the story BBM, and in general men tend to be more powerfully affected by it. Obviously, there are exceptions, since Front-Ranger still has the magazine on her bedside table 10 years later. And nakymaton, who started a whole thread about the short story, was a woman also blown away by it. I also know men who liked the movie better, at least at first.
But there's something to this male/female divide in literary taste, and I'm not just talking about Tom Clancy vs. Danielle Steele. I had just been thinking about this recently, because I read something short by David Foster Wallace, and although I really love his prose style in small doses, I don't think I could read a whole book by him, let alone the 1088-page "Infinite Jest." (Yet I read the 1037-page "Gone With the Wind" a dozen times in grade school and junior high.) Thomas Pynchon is another writer who seems to appeal much more to men. As is Don DeLillo. And Cormac McCarthy.
I'm not saying no woman would ever love these books -- only that fewer do.
I can't think offhand of good, literary books (not romance novels or bodice-rippers) that appeal primarily to women, but I'm sure there are many. Probably the majority are a) written by women and b) have female protagonists.
I don't know how much any of this has to do with wordy description. As I said, I read GWTW a dozen times between fifth grade and maybe 8th grade, and at that time that kind of physical description was fine. (GWTW was my favorite book at the time -- I no longer love it; though I think it's powerful and well-done in many ways, it is just too offensively racist.)
Wordy description is less in style now. Lots of times whole books go by without the reader ever knowing what the main characters look like. I tend to like spare prose myself, and to get impatient with wordiness. I saw "Sophie's Choice" the movie before trying to read the book, and I found myself just wanting to skip ahead to the good parts. I never finished reading it.
Uh-oh, I'm getting pretty wordy myself now! Hope you men can make it through this post!