Occasionally, elves of both genders will be portrayed as androgynous, but usually the male androgyny is part of a broader tendency to portray all elves as particularly feminine, making the female elves anything but androgynous.
The "
no facial hair" clause helps, but it's only a little part of the image — other beardless peoples are immune to this even while wearing
braids and beads and being among the
prototypes for elves. One of the probable reasons why feminine qualities of elves are played up is the
intentional contrast between Elves and
their traditional opposites,
dwarves, who are basically
hypermasculine: stout, muscular, hairy, axe-swinging drunks (which depending on the portrayal may apply to female dwarves as well,
if they even have them).
Remember that elves and dwarves contrast along several lines:
Slobs vs. Snobs,
Harmony Versus Discipline,
Romanticism Versus Enlightenment, and especially nature versus technology. Thus it makes sense that races that fit so well into the
Mother Nature, Father Sciencetrope would even match the trope's gender implications: elves are feminine because
nature is feminine, and all dwarves masculine because
technology is masculine. This dichotomy also helps the both of them contrast against the mundane humans, who fit quite neatly between the two on all of these spectrums, including gender expression.