Our culture is sexist, and all of us are (in daily practice) to some degree. With women, there's a strong focus on their attractiveness that doesn't exist for men. For just one example relative to this society (not OP) people don't infer radically different personalities for men based on attractiveness (except, perhaps, for the top and bottom couple of percent) but they do for women.
Yes, I think that, based on the totality of the OP, there's a latent sexism in the way the encounter was presented.