This weekend the Wall St. Journal ran an interesting article: Why Women Don’t Want Macho Men. The Face Research Lab at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland has just published an interesting new study in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences.
Bottom Line: Researchers could predict how masculine a woman likes her men based on her nation’s World Health Organization statistics for mortality rates, life expectancy and the impact of communicable disease.
Furthermore, women from countries with poor health like “manlier” guys:
- Shorter, broader faces
- Strong eyebrows
- Prominent cheekbones
- Pronounced jaw lines
Conversely, women from countries with excellent health care show a clear preference for men with more feminine features. That’s not been demonstrated before, and it has all sorts of interesting implications. The study included 4,800 white women from 30 countries, mostly in their early- to mid-20s. Women were shown 20 pairs of male faces like this one, where one or both photos had been altered by software:
It took most of the women less than 10 minutes to indicate a clear preference for all 20 face pairs.
What explains the difference? How can a country’s health care policy determine who women want to jump?
That Old Reliable, Sexual Selection
Why are women choosier about sex? Why are they always the ones who get to say yes or no? Because women assume all of the physical risk of childbearing. A man can theoretically have sex with 100 women (or more) in a single year and father 100 children. A woman can only bear a child once a year. She has much more at stake with each sexual encounter, so if she is rational she will choose a high-quality mate. She is programmed to seek evidence of certain traits that predict longevity for the good of her offspring. Indicators of good health are key.
Testosterone and Goldilocks: How Much is Just Right?
Testosterone is the hormone that we most equate with masculinity, and it is a double-edged sword. What is the perfect amount for sexual attraction? Can a man have too much? Too little? Do women vary in their preferences for the degree of testosterone visible in a man’s appearance?
High testosterone levels =
- large muscles
- strong jaw
- prominent brows
- facial hair
- deep voices
What’s interesting is that testosterone is immunosuppressive. Therefore a guy has to be very fit and healthy to tolerate its effects. It’s also linked to other traits:
- fitness
- fertility
- dominance
Essentially, high testosterone is the advertising that tells a woman she should let a guy into her jeans so that she can get access to his genes.
So what’s the problem? The problem is that women want men to stay and help raise that baby, and high-testosterone guys are a lot harder to live with. Women assign the following traits to the most masculine looking men:
- uncooperative
- unsympathetic
- philandering
- aggressive
- no interest in parenting
Studies do show a correlation between child-friendliness and testosterone levels, and women are adept at assessing this by viewing photos.
A study of 2,100 Air Force veterans showed that men with T levels one standard deviation above the mean were:
- 43% more likely to divorce
- 31% more likely to leave home due to marital problems
- 38% more likely to cheat on their wives
- 13% more likely to admit hitting or throwing things at their wives
The question, then, becomes: How good are women at weighing these tradeoffs and choosing a man who will wear well over the long haul? Certainly we see plenty of evidence that the high T bad boy still does pretty well with the ladies. It turns out, though, that he does better in some countries than others.
Who’s Hot in Your Neighborhood?
Researchers found that women who prefer a pretty face to a rugged one live in the healthiest countries: Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Austria. Women who liked macho men came from countries with poor scores on the health care index: Mexico, Brazil, Bulgaria, Argentina. As an aside, it’s interesting that three of these countries have strong cultural machismo stereotypes. What might that say about the possible connection between cultural ideals of masculinity and a nation’s health care policy?
I figured the U.S. would rank high in health care, and therefore low in masculinity, but that turned out to be untrue. We rank 20th out of the 30 countries for health care! Not surprisingly, we scored the fifth highest on preference for masculine features. If health care reform is successful in making Americans healthier overall, then we can expect to see that change as women adapt their preferences.
What’s Making Women Wet is Changing
Personally, I believe that women are capable of adapting their preferences based on observation and experience, so I’m glad to see some scientific evidence for this claim. Previously, I’ve always focused on women’s ability to make good choices despite what turns them on. Here’s evidence that what turns women on can change fairly rapidly, as they adapt to a changing environment. What’s particularly interesting is the way in which women in aggregate can shift. This means there will be new winners and losers in the sexual sweepstakes. If things shift in America, we’ll see evidence of that across the culture, further reinforcing new preferences.
Obviously, there are many other factors at play. As I noted above, there’s the cultural stereotype of what’s manly in many countries, and that will exert considerable influence. The iconic American cowboy, as personified by Clint Eastwood or the Marlboro man, is the embodiment of the American male. Women in violent countries may prefer very masculine men for protection. In countries where women totally oppressed and lack education, a continuing preference for a dominant and aggressive male seems certain.
Researchers point out several other factors which may affect women’s choices over time. In countries where women earn considerable income, women may show less preference for masculinity as a signal of being able to provide. In the current U.S. mancession, many women are experiencing providing for their families. They may find that the qualities that make a cooperative partner are more valuable than skills passed down from the Stone Age. Studies have also shown that as women make more money they get pickier about men’s looks. Time will tell exactly what that means.
The very long-term implications are staggering to contemplate. If women prefer lower-testosterone men over a long period of time, how will sex roles change? Will women become more masculine? Will we reach a point where the difference between the sexes is dramatically reduced? And what might that say about how sexual attraction will work? As men with very high testosterone find themselves with reduced access to sex, how will their dominant and aggressive traits manifest? Will violence against women increase? Can marriage as an institution be saved by women selecting men with less aggressive tendencies?
If mate selection is adaptable as rapidly as this new study suggests, I just may live long enough to learn the answers to these questions.
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{ 48 comments… read them below or add one }
You're forgetting the simple scientific adage the correlation is not causation. There are likely many other cultural and societal forces in affect that change what women find attractive. The countries listed are also very socialist countries, where wages for men and women are very equal, with lots of government support for parents, including, in some cases, actual cash payments for having children that have nothing to do with need.
In fact, I can't remember what evo-psych book it was, but a book I read talked about women's preferences for men who make more money than them. Women in very socialist-leaning countries cared significantly less about money than women in very conservative countries.
You've got a lot of chutpah talking about Obamacare on relationships blog! My God, how did such a great idea go so wrong? We were supposed to get a public option, a universal health care service to whole country. What we got was a few band aids and a thousand payoffs to special interests.
(Did you know the bill will make illegal to charge women more for health insurance, even though they cost more to cover. But it's still okay to charge men more car insurance!)
Well I think causation is an open question, and I do point out the potential for many other factors to influence decision-making. However, the correlation is a strong one and varied predictably across the spectrum with the health care index. Perhaps with further study scientists will be able to say that socialist women prefer less rugged men. Some Americans say that the new health care reform is socialist – whether the cause is socialism, a subset of it in the form of subsidized health care, or something else, the relationship is an interesting one.
Re the attachment of importance to money, that's interesting, and I would think it would need to be studied over time. If socialist economies become moribund, the perceived value of money is bound to rise.
Haha, I know! This wasn't meant as an endorsement of the deal that got done. It's hard to imagine that working to improve health care, but I'm willing to suspend judgment for a while.
I just spent a week in Florida, often stuck walking slowly behind motorized scooters rented by the morbidly obese. They were everywhere – you can rent one for $12 in many places. I felt like telling all of them that the cure for their disease is walking instead of riding! After a while I realized that all of their health problems will now be on my tab – any insurance company that sees them scooting on down the road will have no choice but to happily insure them as they have another Twinkie.
On the other hand, I am pleased that now restaurants like The Cheesecake Factory will have to admit that most of their meals are 2,000 calories +.
I smell a rat. Did the researchers by chance control for birth control? If not, then the whole thing might be bunk. We would expect that women in the wealthiest, healthiest countries are all on the pill, right? And the pill is known to shift women's preferences towards less masculine and more androgynous.
Yeah—I saw this story in The Economist and wondered exactly the same thing. The vast majority of women I know have been on birth control since their teens…if this study didn't control for this, there's definitely going to be a lot of noise in the data.
What women find attractive is fitness, and fitness is contextual. To the extent that an environment rewards physical toughness, women will be especially attracted to men who look physically tough. I've seen a similar idea before in the linked review of the film Defiance (about Jews hiding in the forest, resisting the Nazis). Note especially the last few lines:
"In fleeting moments, the filmmakers develop one of [Nechama] Tec’s most fascinating observations: that, in the forest, the Jewish social and sexual hierarchies were turned upside down. The farmers or working-class men who could shoot, gut an animal, and build a shelter were sought out as protectors by the women, including the educated, upper-middle-class women; the formerly desirable scholars of Hegel, Marx, and the Talmud were not."
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009…
They did not. This would have been preferable. I wrote a post about how birth control is affecting women's choices, and that too came out of a recent study, so it's possible that the experiments overlapped to closely for that to be taken into account. The birth control findings indicated that what the Pill does is suppress the normal estrogen spike during ovulation. It's that estrogen spike that draws women to complementary higher testosterone men, when she is most likely to conceive. The reset of the month, women choose the more feminine males anyway. So whether you control for the Pill or not, you would have to control for ovulation. Since this was an online survey, that wouldn't have been feasible in any case.
According to the study, sexual selection theory predicts that women will prefer more masculine traits in men. From the study:
Evidence that women demonstrate strong preferences for masculine
par tners over feminine par tners is mixed, however, with
many studies repor ting surprisingly weak preferences for
masculinity (Rhodes et al. 2003; Puts 2005; DeBruine
et al. 2006; Little et al. 2008), or even preferences for
men who are more feminine than average (Perrett et al.
1998; Penton-Voak et al. 1999; Little et al. 2001, 2002;
Welling et al. 2007).
Because women do not show consistently strong pre-
ferences for masculine men, many researchers have
suggested that women who choose masculine par tners
may incur substantial costs and that the implications of
these costs for reproductive success attenuate women’s
preferences for masculine men (Thornhill & Gangestad
1996; Perrett et al. 1998; Penton-Voak et al. 1999;
Gangestad & Simpson 2000; Little et al. 2001, 2002;
Fink & Penton-Voak 2002; Gangestad & Scheyd 2005;
Jones et al. 2008).
In any case, the authors are trying to test whether women perceive a trade-off between the benefits of masculinity (healthy offspring) and the costs (low investment). Whether this study demonstrates that is clearly open to debate.
The link to the DeBruine, Jones, Crawford, Welling and Little study:
http://www.facelab.org/Publications/abstracts?id=…
Oh boy, I really opened Pandora's box here! This post was not really about Obamacare! But yeah, I hear you. We're going to see a whole lot of unintended consequences, and mating strategies may or may not be affected.
I think the point you make about Clint Eastwood & the Marlboro Man is spot on because I wouldn't call them the embodiment of the American Male anymore. They had their time and have been left behind; I think the new American male is somebody in the Matt Damon or Brad Pitt mold who do tend to be slightly more boyish/feminine in their features.
That's very interesting, and it suggests that we are capable of adapting extremely quickly. Of course, a woman depending on a man for survival may provide sex to get his protection even if she does not find him sexy. The question is whether women can actually experience a change in their sexual triggers when the context of fitness changes relatively quickly. No doubt the handy men were ordering around the scholars.
Social dominance was redefined completely, and the women may have been responding strictly to that.
An obvious question might be: If women evolved to prefer high-testosterone males during the Stone Age, why have we not changed our preferences to a greater degree as infant mortality has dropped? It's been many decades, at least, since American women have "needed" rugged genes to ensure survival. Either we don't adapt quickly, or cultural factors must be very important in explaining our preferences. If we reward lower-T traits in society in some way, e.g. economically, then social dominance will eventually be assumed by those men. High-T men will still exhibit natural leadership, but they may have to share the stage with people who can get the job done better. There is already significant evidence this is happening.
Yes, I agree with this. Some of the most biggest heartthrobs are pretty boys or baby faces. There are still exceptions, e.g., George Clooney, but in general the men considered the best looking are often more feminine looking. A look at male models confirms this.
In contrast, research has also shown that standards of beauty for women have gone in the opposite direction. For example, Gisele Bundchen has a very manly face, as do many supermodels. Fifty years ago the women considered the most beautiful had far more feminine features.
I'm very leery of a lot of these ideas. Not that I think they're wrong, but I'm not ready to jump on the bandwagon, mainly because I can't work out the evolutionary reasoning. It's fine to say that the long term cost benefits to the woman are sometimes higher when she chooses a masculine mate, but sexual fitness is about the offspring, not the health and happiness of the mother. While it's true that a mother does need to be healthy to care for her offspring, I don't know that I'm convinced that this benefit alone constitutes a strong enough evolutionary pressure to account for a shift in mate preference based on socioeconomic strength in the culture.
To put it more simply, what these tests measure is not female's subjective opinions about the long term fitness of a potential mate, but whether or not his face makes the vag tingle. This hypothesis suggests that female bodies are able to forecast socioeconomic trends and make subconscious adjustments to account for the long term health of the relationship. While this isn't impossible, it seems like a bit of a stretch based on the sketchy data I've seen so far. I think it's far more likely that something like birth control will be the culprit.
Well, you're the go-to guy for evolutionary matters, so if you're dubious that's pretty significant in my book.
I hear what you're saying but I doubt it is that simple – for example, if a woman associates the masculine face with aggression or even violence, she may instinctively deduct points for that. Since she doesn't perceive that face will give her healthier offspring, there are no corresponding bonus points for good genes. The other, more feminized face may generate a completely neutral response, but that will make his overall score higher. The study just asked women to state which face they prefer, not how sexy it made them feel. There may be a decided lack of tingle going on.
I don't think women are forecasting the economy, obviously, when they look at a man. But as more men achieve success in our culture based on traits other than high T ones, gradually the image of what a successful man looks like changes. I would argue that has already happened to some degree. So there may be some changes in female preference that is already demonstrable.
I find it all quite interesting – if nothing else, this paper has been rewarded with serious cred by virtue of its being plastered all over the MSM. The study of sex science is relatively new – no doubt there is much more coming down the pike.
Birth control may turn out to be the culprit – if so, as I've written before, this means women are choosing the "wrong" men wrt genetic compatibility, and that can't mean anything good when they stop taking the Pill after marriage. If birth control becomes more and more widely used, might this preference become part of the genetic memory?
Surely the vast majority of babies have been born to women who did not enjoy the benefit of any tingle whatsoever. The love match is relatively recent. Also, I fear that in the vast majority of cases where the tingle was present, the tingle did not develop into an orgasm, as knowledge of the clitoris is extremely recent. Women today are very fortunate to be able to expect frequent orgasms with the partners of their choice.
So basically those guys who survive the layoffs and actually have decent jobs in the oncoming double dip recession which will be made worse by Obamacare will have better luck getting their girl. Color me unenthusiastic. Hell, my sister voted Obama and is a died in the wool leftist, but she works for a cardiologist as his nurse-practitioner and while she was initially happy about a health care overhaul she is terrified about what Obamacare is going to do to her work. Hell, she already has 12 hour days every day.
Oh, and then there is this Gem:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gmzNv5...
Yah. I wanted a health care overhaul as well. But this was just a cover for another porkulous. And now I have to worry if my company is going to drop health care benefits en masse because the penalties paid will be cheaper than paying for the health insurance. Not to mention the fact that this will cause a rise in premiums:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/201...
Honestly, from now on every vote I make is going to be towards keeping one party in congress and the other party in the presidency.
And what does this have to do with relationships? Well, with all the new taxes this will dump on me it seems more cost effective to just go ghost, as Obsidian likes to say.
Sorry to rant. Obamacare is a sore spot for me. Anything that big being voted into law without even being read by the people voting on it scares me to death. It can only result in more massive (and massively ineffectual) bureaucracy, tax increases, and economic misery. All of which makes me just want to check out, live cheap, and retire outside of the western world.
I wonder how many babies have been born to women who had sex for reasons other than the vag tingle. When you look at the history of marriage, you have to wonder why evolutionary psychologists are so hip to jump on the female mate selection bandwagon when studies like these come out. It seems very likely to me that a significant part of the female cognitive algorithm is devoted to cost/benefit analysis of men. While this can certainly translate into physiological responses, it's just tricky, tricky territory to start asserting causal relationships. Cognitive decisions and unconscious desires are tough to link linearly.
Women are definitely turned on by situations. Romance novels don't have pictures. The thought of a strong protector might trigger sexual response, especially when a strong protector is very valuable, but it just seems like there are too many variables. To much noise in the data.
My recent post A Bit of Soul Searching
Yah, I didn't mean to go off. It just seems that whenever the same party is in control of congress and the presidency, common sense goes out the window. The bill just makes me sick because it was passed just so they could say they had passed a health care bill. They took no time to look at what was actually in the thing and consider possible consequences before it passed.
Anyway, did not mean to get off tangent. As far as the story goes, could we not just be looking at another case of women saying they want the less masculine guy because that is what they want when they are just thinking about an idealized man, as opposed to what they actually behave like they want when they are confronted by a masculine guy? I mean, people self report on views that don't match their behavior all the time. Humans are very good a lieing to themselves.
Yikes, androgyny's becoming the norm, then! If you look at the guys teens and tweens are going ga-ga over, though, they're very feminine looking indeed (Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Justin Bieber, Zac Efron) so I don't know how birth control will factor in, considering most of these girls aren't on it yet. So the birth control factor might explain the trend with regard to older women, but I wonder why preference for feminine looking heartthrobs trickled down to the younger generation, too?
I wonder if the fact that supermodels have very manly faces is a consequence of gay men in general dictating fashion trends?
Wow, that is a very interesting question. I'm going to research this – I remember seeing an article on this topic in recent months.
Very true, and I know that people are notoriously unreliable in self-reporting when it comes to sex. The Kinsey research was seriously compromised by this problem.
I'm experienced with one of the countries in the poor-health list (outside the US) and must add some additional considerations: how women act in those countries is different than how they rate raw attractiveness. In layman terms: being a solid provider usually means higher risk-aversion (i.e. lower testosterone) and is valued much more than it is in countries where everyone can get a college education for free and a nice job afterwards.
So those girls may find the local Sly Stallone more attractive, but that doesn't mean they'll have a one night stand with him. They'll usually try to stay virtuous to get the provider beta to commit. They'll also tend to be faithful after commitment, as divorce isn't as straight-forward or one-sided as it is in the US. There is some divorce going on, but not to the degree it goes on in the US.
(clarification) by "education for free" I meant you are very likely to get a federal loan. It isn't exactly free, but there's no money down or need to work long hours to pay for it.
Given that, I wonder how the new U.S. law with regard to student loans will influence mating strategies, too?
Very interesting discussion. And I suspect a bit more complex and multi-dimensional than a simple straight forward correlation here. But very provocative too. There are definite consequences & advantages, economically, socially & biologically to having more of your population becoming more healthy. Some are predictable, others are a bit more hopefully described in more general terms. But there's some well described definite outcomes that can be seen & improved for many with such policy implementation. (Witness the rise & ultimate 'defeat' of pellagra in the US & other industrialized nations).
On another point this probably does not negate the tendency towards hypergamy still seen here & elsewhere. And all the dangers & perils involved with that quest, for both men & women. This may or may not be at all directly related, but it's tragic just the same.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/us/30bully.html…
9 Teenagers Accused of Bullying That Led to Suicide
By ERIK ECKHOLM and KATIE ZEZIMA
"It is not clear what some students at South Hadley High School expected to achieve by subjecting a freshman to the relentless taunting described by a prosecutor and classmates."
We are constantly reminded that even at tender young ages, these 'games' can often have life changing and sometimes deadly consequences. Always have. Always will. So change will come for some, and perhaps more slowly for most others. No matter what we do. But a nice thought just the same. Cheers & Good Luck! 'VJ'
That's a good question, and it's the difference between a quick response about what's attractive physically vs. all of the considerations women may employ when mating. Sometimes I will hear men use examples like this as proof that women marry beta men that they are not attracted to. But I don't think this is the case – attraction changes and develops (and hopefully grows) in relationships. Choosing from among appropriate men doesn't mean you're not going to find your husband sexually attractive.
[Updated for clarity]: The nice thought was on the original premise here. Although I've got some more issues with it all, it's probably on balance an encouraging trend. Cheers, 'VJ'
That story is so horrendous, and yes, it does sound as if it originated with sexual jealousy. I do think the amorality of at least some young people is extremely disturbing, and more common than in the past. Bullying has always been a real issue, but nowadays we have this kind of merciless taunting by a whole group, as well as the thankfully extinct Juicy Campus, which also ruined or interrupted some lives. If this is a result of intrasexual competition among women, all going for the same few males, the problem is a crisis, and bullying legislation may help, but it won't address the root cause.
"The study just asked women to state which face they prefer, not how sexy it made them feel."
Interesting. Refinement counts for a lot in the circles I end up in (against my will.) The face on the right may be associated subconsciously with "refinement." Paul Fussell's book _Class_ has a section on facial bone structure and perceived refinement (I hate this.) I would not say that "refinement" makes a woman feel "tingle sexy" but if a woman is looking to be accepted among a certain set, being accepted in that set brings a feeling that in my opinion women should not be looking so **** hard for, but I think a lot of women are. It's not a "tingle" feeling it's a "he fits a certain image" feeling. I don't know if it's that much about evolution as about the things we are conditioned to pursue in modern consumer culture.
Ha! My sexual trigger is Gary Sinise's blue eyes, whether he is playing the hero or the kidnapper.
I am quite sure it would be the same if he was playing the nebbish getting beaten up by a linebacker who stole his lunch money!
I have heard the explanation that those babyfaced teen-boy heartthrobs appeal to teenage girls because they seem "safe." Those girls aren't yet old enough to trust a more "unsafe-looking" male, even in their fantasies.
Yes, this is probably why I was a "Paul" girl at the age of 8 – John always looked a little scary to me!
That is really interesting – what constitutes refined features or bone structure? Is it a more feminine look, or is it high testosterone?
Have you noticed how leading male roles for American action-type movies have been going to non-American men? Sam Worthington, Clive Owen, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, etc. It must be a conspiracy. Communists must be tampering with the water supply. Feminists commies. PMAFT said so.
Color me skeptical on this one. I tend to think that attraction is more based on deeply wired inclinations that, of course, play out differently based on circumstances. I don't think they change rapidly, though.
For example, a man will always *want* a 10. He can't always get one, so he adjusts. That does not mean he doesn't still *want* the 10 — he is wired to be attracted to her. But he overrides the wiring by consciously adjusting and calibrating to a more realistic standard.
I think women do the same thing. A women with more money feels more empowered, and becomes pickier about a man's physical attractiveness — because she feels like she has more market power. It's odd, however, because most men generally are not terribly attracted to women for their money or financial prospects, and the ones who are .. well, I think they're kind of along for the ride in a way. So that seems like an explainable mis-calibration, just like the short, fat, bald guy who is financially and successfully professional thinks it entitles him to a hot girl — not really. The ones who will come along are not worth it generally. But it appears that high earning women are developing the same sense of entitlement to hot partners as high earning men have — you can only pull that off, earnestly, if you are also hot — otherwise the folks you will attract, male and female alike, are going to be risky business to say the least.
So, an interesting article, but I'm really skeptical of it.
Yes, this may be true, but one of the things I hear a lot is that women are incapable of thinking with the big head. That a woman will happily take 5 minutes with Alpha over 5 years with Beta. This article directly refutes that, assuming that high T is correlated to Alpha. It sounds like you're saying here that women will select the lower T guy because they're realistic about their poor chances of getting with the more masculine guy.
It's true that women with more money get pickier about looks, but I wonder if that correlates to their success in any way. It seems to me that would only buy them access to a boy toy, in a cougar sense, or in the old-fashioned gigolo sense. Definitely risky business!
I've noticed this too… as in Hugh Laurie in House– My theory, rather simpleminded, is that these British and Australian actors are just better actors. They have usually had rigorous training in their craft and have been spared method acting which has often become a way of covering up intolerably bad diction with whines, screeches, and moans.
My recent post Liberal Intolerance
OK, that's true, and I could go on. Colin Farrell in Crazy Heart, for example, playing a country singer! However, British and Australian women gets lots of roles here too. Kate Winslet in Titanic and Revolutionary Road, Naomi Watts, Nicole Kidman. It seems like anyone who can do a perfect American accent has as good a shot at getting cast as any American. Perhaps more – maybe these stars have more box office appeal than their American counterparts.
I think you may be right about training and innate talent. One thing I've noticed in that nearly all British films, BBC productions, and hit series, the actors are not necessarily good-looking. They look like normal people who one might actually expect to meet and know. I've always found this refreshing, and I think it does speak to the questions of standards. A pretty face alone just won't cut it at RADA or the RSC. In America, we choose for looks first.
I can think of only one American doing a perfect British accent in an English film, and that is Gwyneth Paltrow in Emma. Usually, though, they stick to their own.
But even that is elusive to many women in the world today, Susana. If I may be blunt, I recently had a conversation with a woman who is 47 and experienced her first orgasm just last month, the reason being because the penis was especially large. I'd wager that most women today still are not lucky enough to be with men who provide them with decent orgasms.
Gary Sinise is only 5'7
You're probably right, but come on, women bear responsibility for this. I think most men are eager to perform sexually, so if a woman can say what turns her on, she's likely to get off. A 47 year-old woman who waited for a large penis?
1. She should have spoken up before now.
2. 80% of women don't orgasm from intercourse. There are, ahem, other ways.
More money enables a women to pursue a short-term mating strategy where she mates with the most attractive male and raises the kids on her own, due to the fact that the said attractive male won't stick around to help provide for the kid as he also is engaging in a short-term mating strategy and wants to impregnate more women, who will also raise the kid's on their own.
Well put! Cougarism is definitely a short-term gig. Obviously, the real dysfunction is women using short-term criiteria to select for sex, then winding up with a long-term consequence in the form of a child. However, I don't see a lot of affluent women running around with kids by numerous baby daddies, none of whom are on the scene, at least not yet.
I think this is all very interesting but I think there so many factors that I dotn think one can conclude patterns either way.
In my experience women's ideal physical mate involves 'tallness', clean jawline, full hair, good skin, dare I say it- packing a bulge, strong arms, and good overall fitness. (I dont think I know a single girl who likes muscle builders)
And for character: great humour, self deprecation, caring, spontaeneous.
Other details like hair colour and eye colour vary from women to women but you would be hard pressed to find women who dont admire the earlier characterisitcs.
So how do bald fat guys get married? One word. Compromise. We all do it! Otherwise 90% of the world population would be virgins. But the guy a girl finally plumps for is someone who isnt going to cheat or be abusive and has some income potential. simple as.
Hi, Kerry, welcome! I would agree with your description of the ideal man. I'd throw intelligence in there as well. Of course, as you say, most women (and men) will compromise. Those who refused to do so are the women who are now well into their 30s and finding it hard to compete with women 10 years younger.
One problem with the sexual marketplace today is that fat, bald guys have a much harder time than they used to. Back in the day, they'd basically marry a fat, bald woman, or the equivalent. Today that woman is thinking she might have a shot at Tom Brady, so she puts on a lot of makeup, skimpy clothes and goes out on the town, where she can probably have sex if she wants to. When she hits 39 she may turn to the fat, bald guy, who suddenly doesn't look so bad as a provider and baby daddy. But he knows what's up, and he won't play.
Finally, I wish you were right that women will go for the stable, loyal, trustworthy guy. Again, she's just as likely to go for a bad boy and wind up in a nasty divorce.
This is in response to the people talking about the pill.
What about Lesbian and bisexual women?.. if their is hormonal reasons for the reason some women choose femininity over masculinity, then it can’t be to do with the pill in lesbians, as the pill would not be used by most lesbians.
I think their could be a link between sexual preference and wealth, but maybe there is more of a link because of the women themselves rather than the men.. for example, more feminine women are perhaps more likely to go for a masculine man. Androgyny is more exceptable in a lot of europe, so maybe more androgynous women go for more androgynous men. But like some people have said there probably is many different social, ethnic, biological and cultural threads to this mystery. For example not all poorer countries have a preference for highly testosterone altered men, look at many asian counteries where health care is scarce for poor people, I don’t think the ideal man is so testosterone heavy. But I don’t actually have data so could well be wrong about that, of course.
Old entry but some blog monster ate all the other comments so I’ll just give my tuppence here out of boredom. I’m pretty sure I saw Lefty on the news once and Righty just looks like a lesbian so I’m finding it hard to think of either one as attractive. The middle ground would be pretty hot though. Most men are middlings right?