BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Like flicking a switch
Back in January, the IG and I had a conversation about her future plans, and where and how and if a boyfriend would fit into them. She was tempted and torn by the notion, and the man who was postulating it, but she'd only been single for a couple of months at that point, and hadn't been happy with how her last (and previous) relationships had gone. She felt she was too busy with full time school and two part time jobs, and that she couldn't fit a boyfriend into that, at least not with the quality of relationship she wanted. She'd felt like her previous boyfriend was almost a long distance relationship, even though he only lived 15 miles away and they often saw each other at school, and she didn't want that again.
She rescinded that rule for about a week around Valentine's Day, and we had a lovely date and a lovelier follow up date at my apt one day, but she came to her senses before March began, and held her ground through the rest of the spring. We saw each other all the time, and traded phone txts and emails and talked now and then, but it was purely as friends. (Obviously she knew I had ulterior desires, if not motives, and we'd joke about it from time to time, but it wasn't as if I was actively trying to seduce her or pressure her into anything.)
In early summer, before she went away for 2+ months on an internship, we had a conversation much like the one we'd had in January, with a similar outcome. I really couldn't argue with her logic; she was going to be out of the country from late May until early August, when she got back she was going to do some other traveling, she had to help her younger sister move down south and get set in college, and then her own fall semester started in late August. At that point (now) she'd be back where she was in the spring; full time student, working at least two part time jobs, with a lot of friends to find time for, and no realistic time for a boyfriend. (And that's how things have turned out.)
She wasn't leading me on or stringing me along; she never asked me to wait for her, or flirted and then shied away, etc. Quite the opposite; she kept encouraging me to find a woman who was looking for a boyfriend, and offered me advice on good ways and places to meet women. I didn't take her advice, but I did make some efforts to meet women over the summer. I even met some, but none that worked out. I think I mentioned it on the blog at some point, but mostly on a lark, while semi-drunk late night on my June 20th birthday, I posted a personal add on Craig's List. It didn't go well.
I didn't get a ton of weird spammers and scammers, as I'd expected. That would have been better. What I got were several replies from women who were around my age or "a few years older," and while two of the four were fairly interesting to talk with via email, when they got around to sending me pictures I was, frankly, horrified. Thrown for a loop, as they say. I never met any of them in person, or even talked to them over the phone, and I disliked myself for simply ending the conversations as abruptly as I did, but the pictures... *shudders at the memory*
I'm not going to post any of the photos here, and I never told them my real name or used my regular email or mentioned my blog, so I'm sure none of them are reading this now, which is why I can honestly say that the experience made me question my heterosexuality. Not that it almost turned me gay; more like, "If all women looked like that, I'd just be celibate."
I've never been unhappy alone, and I hate hanging out in clubs or bars, and I'm not into spending time with people I don't enjoy spending time with. As a result I haven't dated that much or had that many girlfriends, but by chance or design, I've been pretty fortunate in the quality of women I have ended up with. No Victoria's Secret models, but none who weren't at least "pretty" by any conventional scale, and none who were anywhere above "plump." Usually closer to "slender." More importantly, I realize in retrospect, they all were young, and looked it. I've dated women older than me, but I was in my early 20s then, and in more recent years they've been younger, if only by a few years. On the whole though, I've never dated a woman who didn't get carded any time she went near a bar. I still get carded, for that matter.
The women who replied to my CL personal were not ugly, and they might even have been pretty. But they were clearly nowhere near slender, and most crucially, as I discovered to my surprise, they looked old. Not elderly, probably not even past 40, but when I received emails with photos, I immediately thought, "I'd be dating my mother." Which isn't a plus, in my judgment.
My reaction was way off base, of course. My mom is over 60, and while she was a beauty pageant winner in her youth, and she looks good for her age, these women were clearly decades younger than she. But after spending half a year hugging, occasionally kissing, and regularly looking into the face and eyes of the beautiful, size zero, 22 y/o IG -- that after spending four years with the beautiful and typically youthful-Asian-looking Malaya, I couldn't make the jump to secretary-haired, soccer mom type white women in their late 30s. It was day to night. Or at least day to very late afternoon/early evening.
It was partially my fault; I'd neglected to include a desired age range on my post and hadn't lied about my own (very much), so women within hailing range of it felt within their rights to try their luck with a hunky younger man. *cough* They just happened to be women who looked their age (or perhaps they were well-preserved 45 y/os?), while I look well under my own, (I never felt out of place ferrying the coed IG around the Bay Area) and (apparently) look for even further under my own, when it comes to picking women.
That realization, I think, is part of what made the CL personal ad experience so traumatizing. I hadn't really thought about age when placing the ad, and hadn't considered that an issue of importance in picking a girlfriend. I just assumed that if I got any replies, they'd come from youthful, possibly-attractive women in their late 20s or early 30s, and that the deciding factors for us dating would be compatibility, conversational aptitude, hobbies/interests, appearance, etc. Instead I wound up talking to a couple of women who seemed fun and youthful and lively (and a couple who did not) and when I saw their pictures I reacted like the evil businessman who drank from the fake Holy Grail in Indiana Jones 3. Or, to be more accurate, I reacted like Elsa did in that scene, when faced with the evil businessman after he'd sipped from the fake Holy Grail.
I didn't just take it as "Oh well, bad luck on the personal ad replies. Better luck next time, and for good measure, use a more reputable, user-vetted service than CL." I took it as an existential dilemma. Was I supposed to be attracted to that? Is that what I had to look forward to? After all, even if I married one of the IG's classmates, in 10 or 15 years, they'd be that age. (And girth. And looks.) Was I doomed to a pathetic, Hefner-like existence, using my fame and fortune to trade up through a decades-long parade of interchangeable, 25 y/o dipsy blondes, while steadily transforming into a Crypt Keeper-esque homunculus?
Except that I don't have fame or fortune, or like blondes.
I don't know. Perhaps. I chose not to grapple with that dilemma in June or July, and quite likely it was what drove me to enjoy (so much) my summertime interaction with the IG. She was a thousand miles away, but she had cell phone service and plenty of free time to chat, and we traded numerous txts every day, talked for an hour at a time two or three times a week, and got to be quite close, even though we were far away. One thing we didn't do was flirt, or phone sex, or anything along those lines. It was very platonic; she'd tell me about the crazy people she was interviewing for her summer project and her annoying boss and the small town she was going stir crazy in, and I'd talk about things on my end, and we'd cheer each other up.
I had no reason to think things would change between "us" when she returned, and when she talked about hoping to keep her schedule lighter in the fall, and that she wanted to save more time for socializing and not be dashing to or from school or work every minute, I didn't believe it. I believed that was what she thought, and what she wanted, but I knew her well enough to feel certain that activities would rapidly fill her time, that she'd get another job, and that even if she found a roommate and moved out, as she kept daydreaming, that process would drag on and the end result would (somehow) have her even busier than before.
Nevertheless, when we got together for an evening last week, with dinner and much conversation on the agenda, I felt myself growing ever more enchanted, and eventually had to ask her the same question. Of course I got the same answer, but with even more nuance. She didn't have time for a boyfriend, and furthermore she'd given it a lot of thought and decided that her next relationship would be really special. Not just someone to spend romantic time with, but a sort of trial engagement. Someone she would rearrange her schedule around, focus her social life on, perhaps even live with.
All of which is fine and even admirable, but it's not going to happen for at least another year or two, and what she's looking for then isn't what I'm looking for now. I've never thought she was the woman I would marry (and I'm sure that impression, gender-flipped, is mutual), and even if she wanted that right now, I'm not sure I would be willing to provide it. I don't want to leap back into a full time, living together, pseudo-married situation. I want to have a serious, monogamous relationship, but I don't want to live together, or see each other every day, or not have other friends, etc. I want a fun, intelligent woman to do some cool activities with, talk to regularly and get to know, romance and date, and spend a night (or two) with each week. Basically what I have with the IG now, plus a little more time, and sex. And she wants that with me, minus the sex. In fact, that's basically what she has with me now, minus the sex and plus a ton of other friends pulling on her time.
As a result of that Sunday conversation, and its (inevitable) outcome, I was in a very glum mood Monday, angry and resentful Tuesday, and more or less back to normal Wednesday. I wish things were different, but the IG's answers and desires have been consistent all along, and now that I know where things stand and see that even if she had more free time it still wouldn't work... I can move on. Which brings me to the title of this post.
I was running some errands yesterday, and several times while touring Costco and Target, I saw things I knew the IG would like, and thought about sending her a photo, or a txt, and then realized there was no point in doing so. I still care about her, and want to see her as a friend, but the fact that I'm no longer trying to win her over for romance has entirely changed my attitude and outlook. Why would I make an extra effort to remotely include her in my activities? She's off doing her own thing. I'll text her if something interesting comes up, or I'm stuck in line at Costco, waiting to buy peaches that will turn out to be grainy and inedible; but the urge I felt all spring and summer to keep her apprised of my situation, to send her funny or encouraging txts, to keep track of what she was doing so I could remark appropriately at the end of the day... it's gone. And I find that very odd. How quickly, how switch-flickingly it ended.
It's genetically and biologically understandable; when the sex drive is engaged humans will do effortful things we'd never otherwise consider, but it's weird to see it in myself. Especially when I wasn't consciously thinking of the IG in that way. Sure, I wanted to fuck commence romantic activities with her, especially when she returned from her summer job 10 pounds lighter and even prettier, but it wasn't like I was sitting around txting her with a boner. (Not literally or figuratively. My phone buttons are way too small, for one thing.)
I knew it was very unlikely that she'd change her mind about having time for anyone to be her boyfriend, even/especially me. And I never consciously thought I was waiting for her, or trying to convince her to change her mind. And I didn't give up looking at and thinking about other women. And yet... my desire for romance with the IG was clearly a substantial motivating factor for most of my behavior over the past few months, given how differently I feel now that that dream is dead.
I still like her and want to spend time interacting with her; we might this weekend see the movie we were going to see last weekend, before we decided that we had too much to talk about and would rather spend our evening doing that. But I've not thought much about her the past couple of days, the idea of her spending her free time with her other friends doesn't give me the feeling of lost opportunities, I've felt no compunction to send her my usual string of chatty and engaging txts, and I'm just not viewing the world through the same prism. Yesterday I looked at the huge homecrafts warehouse store by Costco and my eyes slid right past it. It wasn't until later that I realized that I hadn't thought, as I had every time I saw that barn for the past near-year, "I should bring the IG here sometime -- she loves that girly decorating/sewing pattern stuff."
I'm not really thinking about finding someone else/new/different, at least not yet, but I think that thought will come. It did in mid-June, 4 weeks after the IG had departed for her summmer working vacation, but I don't think it'll take that long this time. Monday evening I spent my 2 hours in the gym sweating and scowling and cursing under my breath and thinking how happy I'd be to never be attracted to another woman ever again. Tuesday and Wednesday's gym sessions I was kind of in a fog and not thinking clearly about much of anything. Yesterday evening though, I was quite aware of two young women treadmilling their way towards fitness, and as I churned up the 20 minutes/120 flights on the stepmill that serves as my warm up exercise, I found myself thinking how much fun it would be to have a fit woman to workout with. Not to mention the enjoyment of sharing a shower and trading massages afterwards. Yes, hope, and erections, spring eternal. Even if chemical assistance is required.
Not much time for blogging lately, with other things going on. But since this'll serve as a blog entry, and let me think things over while I'm typing it, here I go.
1) My nice little part time (hours and pay) job updating the content on diabloii.net, and filling up the wiki, and establishing the screenshots section, and encouraging the forums, and planning for some future day when Diablo III comes... has blown up thsi week since it seems almost certain that Blizzard is going to announce Diablo III at the WWI convention this weekend in Paris. Other staff members on the site have, in fact, said for a fact that that will happen, and I both believe and hope they are correct in that prediction.
Perhaps needless to say, this has caused the gaming world to stand up and take notice, and site traffic and attention is vastly increased. Blizzard has been posting mysterious splash screens on their website all week; a new one each night at midnight, and as the images progress and the mystery deepens, the fan interest is spiraling ever higher. I posted the new images tonight at 12:15, went to the gym, got home at 2am, and there were upwards of 400 new comments in the forum, and more than 100 directly on my post.
This is starting to remind me somewhat of the pre-D2 days, when virtually anything we posted on the site would be viewed by 10,000 people in like, 3 hours. Hellgate:London never approached that level of activity/popularity pre-game, and certainly didn't once it was released, but Diablo III is doing it before it even (officially) exists.
This weekend is going to be interesting, when/if they do announce the game and release screenshots and information. I may need to make some new forums just to divide up the Diablo III comments and attention, since new posts are scrolling off the first page in just hours now, and that's with basically nothing to talk about but wild speculation over the enigmatic clues Blizzard is throwing forth.
2) I ordered a furminator last week from Amazon ($20 there, vs. the ridiculous $40 they want at PetCo), it arrived this afternoon, and tonight I can safely say that it works as well as advertised. I have used it on Jinx several times thus far, for no more than a couple of minutes each time, and I could literally stuff a pillow with the hair that's come off of her. This photo is from the first go, and all that fur came off in about 45 seconds, and just from one side of her lower back. I later got a clump that would have burned out a clothes dryer from 1 minute combing the base of her tail, and removed a cabbage-sized tumbleweed from her neck and the sides of her face.
The amazing thing is that she looks exactly the same. Same coloration, same thickness, and she even feels the same afterwards. Perhaps a bit softer, but I can't necessarily tell the difference between this and how she feels after normal brushing, when her fur is all orderly and smoothed down.
The product literature claims that it removes the undercoat, and that does seem to be true, since the fur that comes off of Jinx is all blonde/light gray and monochromatic, while her actual pelt has dark patches and variegations. As best I can tell, it works by shaving/cutting the fur, but only down by the skin. The tines are very pointy and angled, and not very deep. They're maybe 5mm deep, and all angle to a V shape, which is beveled somewhat on the top side. So the longer, outer hairs get pushed to the sides, while the softer, shedding underfur gets cut off near the root. The larger models, for big dogs, come with replacement blades, but the smaller cat ones are just one piece.
It's damn clever, and quite effective. I get more fur with 5-10 seconds of this than I would with several minutes of brushing with a normal pet comb. They say not to use it if the animal has skin lesions or a rash, and not to go over the same area too much, but if it hurts, Jinx has given no sign. She purrs relentlessly when I do it on her neck and chin and cheeks; she always enjoys being brushed there, but she definitely enjoys the furminator more than a normal comb, perhaps since it scratches her better?
I'm going to get her more thoroughly tomorrow, and see if she actually looks/feels/vomits any differently once I've taken another pound of fluff off her. She doesn't hork up hairballs that often, but she does do so from time to time, and there's perpetually cat fur flying around my apartment, so it would be lovely to minimize those effects. Plus it's fun to unpeel her with this strange device.
This is not her post-furminating, but is a photo I took last week when I found how nicely she blended with a new fleecy brown blanket I got. I didn't think it would pair well with her color, but I think the brown and gray go very well together.
3) I'm taking a couple of months off of kali. I've not been for a few weeks, and as of yet I'm not missing it. The class has gotten very rarefied of late; lots of talking, lots of theory, and very little of what I wanted from it, which was practical self defense techniques, sparring practice, and playing with weapons. I don't mind if we do odd things, but I want them to involve sticks, swords, staves, spears, etc. Odd forms of open hand, while no more practical, don't interest me as much, and yes, that's an entirely personal preference with no real defensible logic to it.
I've been thinking about trying some other forms of martial arts, or even just doing something more brutish and direct, like some MMA (non-competitively) or kick boxing or the like. However, I've not sought out any such activities yet, and I'm not really feeling motivated to do so tonight. I'm not hibernating; I've been working out 4 or 5x a week, but haven't felt any real desire to fight or train.
One unexpected benefit of not going to kali for 3 weeks is that my back and hip are feeling almost normal. I complained some weeks ago about how my right hip had been growing very stiff, and radiating up into my back, when I stood around for a while on a hard floor. And the chief culprit was kali class, since our current studio has a concrete floor, and with all the lecturing lately, we'd had a number of nights with almost nothing but standing still. I knew that was aggravating my sore back, since I was always sorest Tuesday nights after class, but now that I've not done it for a few weeks, that's become very clear. I miss the combat and fraternity of class, but I do not miss being unable to get out of bed Wednesday morning, and limping until Friday each week.
4) Freed from/deprived of my martial arts outlet, which (some weeks) provided a pretty good workout, and no longer so burdened by a sporadically sore back/hip, I've been hitting the gym more often, and enjoying it. I'm doing very long cardio sessions; usually 20 minutes at a pretty high speed on the stepmaster stepmill machine (about 120 stories climbed in that time), and then 35-55 minutes on the elliptical (800+ calories, according to the highly-inaccurate digital readout), before an hour of weights, situps, etc.
I can't say that I see any big differences in my body, but one thing I've been experimenting with lately is the situp machine. My gym, like every gym I've ever been in, has a bunch of these, and they allow you to do far more situps than you could just lying on the floor, or on an inclined bench. The upper back thingie rocks with you, so it provides neck and shoulder support, and part of the exertion is on your shoulders and arms. How you use it varies the load; if you really lift with your crunch muscles instead of using your arms and bracing your feet, it's far more exertion. The best is to stick your legs straight up in the air, or at least curl them up so they're not on the footrests, since you get much more strain on your stomach that way.
I've used that type of machine at the gym for years, and I used to do 50 or 75 situps on it when I went to the gym with Malaya a few years ago. I'd do that many straight, and then turn my legs so both knees were on the left or right, and do another 15 or 20 each way to get the sides of my stomach. I'd upped that to about 100 during the 5 months I've been going to my new gym, but was also doing a lot of reps on the "make it burn" crunch machine, and using some other ab/torso machines too.
Last week I started to realize that I wasn't really getting tired on the sit up machine anymore. I was doing my usual 100 or so situps, about half with my legs up in the air, but I was just doing that many out of habit, not because I was too tired to do any more, which is why I stop doing reps on all the other machines I use at the gym. So I tried to do more, and did 250 one day last week, and then did 300 the next time, and followed that by another 50 to the left and 50 more to the right.
I don't recall exactly which day, but over the weekend I did 500 without pause, and then more to the sides, and on Tuesday I did 750. That was getting to be silly, not in terms of how many, but just in the time it took. I haven't exactly timed myself, but I do them a little faster than one per second, so it took me something like 10 minutes to do 750. Ten minutes doesn't seem that long when upright on a cardio machine, but when you're just rocking up and down on a sit up machine, it's a long time. I'm not used to being on any single piece of exercise equipment for longer than it takes one song to play on my ipod. Much less two or three.
That aside, I decided to see how far I could go tonight, and set 1000 as my goal. That was an arbitrary number, I thought, since if I could do even 300 or 400, I could theoretically do them forever. It wasn't like they were getting gradually more difficult every 10 or 15; or that my muscles were steadily, but very slowly, tightening up. It was just a mental thing; could I do situps for that long?
As it turns out, I could. I didn't time them, though I probably should have since I doubt I'll do it again. But it took 4 full Eminem songs, one of which was Stan, and that's about his longest song. At least 15 minutes lying there, nonstop sit up'ing. And yeah, I could have done them forever. I felt my stomach get tight after 30 or 40 with my legs up, but then I'd put them down on the foot pegs and breath deeply to relax my stomach, and after 10 or 15 situps I'd be back to a neutral state; neither tired nor straining.
My conclusion is that doing situps on that sort of machine is equivalent to doing a bench press with no weight on the bar. Once you get to some level of fitness in the relevant muscles, it's not really exercise anymore, and you can more or less do it forever. The problem is that since it's not a strain, you won't really improve your muscles by doing it. It's like trying to build up your legs by walking. I'm now thinking it's pointless to do more than a couple of hundred reps on that machine, and maybe not even that many, since they're not straining me. Other ab machines do, and there's a simple padded plank with footrests that I can't do more than 30 or 40 situps on without cramping up. I see some guys on there holding medicine balls, or 20lbs weights to their chests, so I imagine they could go infinitely on the situp machine too.
I find it interesting though, and surprising, that it's possible to get to a point where such a machine is no longer work. I imagine guys with really strong upper bodies feel the same way about pushups; their arms and chests are powerful enough that they can lift their own upper body weight an infinite number of times, and it's neither tiring, nor enough of a strain to let them build more weight.
5) Last week, on my birthday, motivated by boredom, ennui, mild loneliness/horniness, and a glass of exquisite dessert wine gifted me by my dad, I popped my own cherry by placing a spur-of-the-moment personal ad at an online dating service. I didn't have any expectations for it, so when 3 actual human women replied, (along with about 10 really lame, boring, and obviously fake spammers/scammers) I was pleasantly surprised. A week into trying to get to know them, I'm less pleasantly.
In my spontaneous state, I didn't include some of the basic personal ad elements, such as a desired age range. I would have gone something like 24-34, since like most men, I want a woman who is potentially younger than me, since like most men, I find younger women more attractive. I wasn't looking for a hook up, and physical attraction isn't anywhere near my most important criteria for a date, but there has to be some attraction to make it worth the effort to get to know a person, when romance is the potential end game.
Given my lack of specifications, I shouldn't have been surprised that two of the women were, as Chris Rock said, "damn near forty!" Yeah, age is just a number, but both women were white, and not to be racist, but white women don't age well. The event horizon varies from woman to woman, but most white women go from MILF to cougar to granny in like, 3 years. Whether that happens from 28-34, or 32-36, or 35-40, you can almost see time taking its toll from day to day. White women in that range are almost better off accepting the inevitable, putting on 25 pounds, and aging gracefully, since the alternative is um... this.
None of the women who replied to my ad were Terri Hatcher'ed, but neither were they women that I, in great shape and still semi-able to pass for 30, found real desirable. While contemplating the chronological doom that is my fate, I reflected on the downside of having spent so much time with the IG over the past 6-8 months. It's been fun, and she's good company and we're very friendly, but we're not destined for romance or an LTR, and more relevantly for my current dilemma, she's in her early 20s, is very pretty, and wears size 2 petite. And it's hard (impossible, in my current case) to go from that, to women who are more than a decade and a half older, even if they look fairly good for their age.
All is not lost on the personal ad front though, since I'm still corresponding with one woman who is but 32, and even if that doesn't work out I got my feet wet with this free ad nonsense, and saw the possibilities. There are countless non-free dating/singles sites with more quality control, more serious singles, and many more opportunities to find someone with a more selective criteria than "click here." And I might one of them later this summer.
I'm not sure how suitable such an activity is for blogging about. Such activities are definitely "blog material," but I'm wouldn't be doing it entirely on a lark and I'm not looking just for hook ups, and I'd have to/want to reveal my blog to any woman I was sincerely interested in. And me blogging about her, or other women I'd seen before her, probably wouldn't be a huge selling point. Nor would/will the comments I made in this post about white women aging in dog years, for that matter.
Guess I'd better find more Asian girls women, eh? They're cuter when they're young, and better yet, they age more gracefully. Plus, by 30 most of them have escaped the controlling clutches of the "traditional" family they grew up in/rebelled against, and can start to live their own lives, rather than just doing what their parents want for them.
Was that five things? I think so, and it's too late to proofread or count now. I picked the number kind of at random, so it's nice if it worked out in the end.
A friend of the IG's has been rebuffing the advances of one of her exes, and through a complicated chain of events, she imposed upon the IG to create a largely-fictitious persona through an online dating service, expressly for the purpose of checking out the exes' own personal ad. There wasn't much to report from that, and it wouldn't be my place to talk about it if there had been. What was more noteworthy was that the IG hadn't had her profile up for a day before she started getting male attention.
The first one came in while she was on the phone with me, and I received a gasping-for-air, laughing-in-pain play by play of her investigation of her admirer's profile. I shan't link to the poor soul, but the salient details were as follows. He's a 42 y/o white male, who lives with his parents in Oakland, is unemployed, has some college, likes watching sports and playing video games, is of average build and height. He's seeking... an 18-27 y/o female who is pretty, slender, and adventurous. Seems like a likely match there, eh? Better yet, for his luck and the IG's amusement, he had posted some photos. Her narration of that discovery went something like this. "A picture!" *in a high, excited voice* "Oh my god Eric..." *peals of laughter* "He's so fat! His beady little eyes!" *much more semi-breathless laughter*
His profile had more info than that, and I'm writing this from memory of tonight's phone call, but I assure you, it only got worse. More hobbies women aren't interested in, more unrealistic expectations of his future soul mate, etc. He didn't actually talk about his Night Elf rogue, or list the names and classes of his lvl 70 Alts, but possessions of that nature were strongly hinted at.
Mercifully, the IG closed her browser at that point to get back to not studying for her finals, and after our conversation ended I found myself thinking about that guy's ad, and the whole scenario. I guess we've got to give him some credit for being honest about what he wants? Perhaps needless to say, every man wants an slim, beautiful, adventurous 18-27 y/o. It's just that most of us realize such a catch is out of our league, and that such women don't spend time on personal ads since they have negative trouble meeting men in real life. Even if we overlook those two realities, most men have enough sense not to advertise their delusions of glandular quite so openly. For those who do, the imagined worst case scenario is being ignored by women and annoyed by scammers and spammers. That a girl who actually qualifies for his wet dream-esque profile preferences might one day come along, read the ad, and laugh so hard she gets hiccups is not something many guys consider. Luckily for the shriveled, blackened, last-year's-orange of a husk that is their ego.
It takes some nerve to post an honest personal ad. It's putting yourself out there, where you can, and probably will, be rejected. Perhaps painfully. It reminds me of a junior high dance, where the girls cluster together along one side of the gym and the boys have to find the nerve to walk across the desert of the basketball court, the three point line unreeling beneath their shined shoes like road lines leading over a cliff. Boys tend to suspect that the pretty girls only go to dances to tease and laugh at us, and men might think the same thing about posting a personal ad.
Fortunately, we all know that's just paranoia and foolishness, and that women never look over the ads just to laugh at how lame the guys are... oh wait.
In vaguely-related news, I saw a link to this description of the legendary debacle that was Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos, and had to share.
After being informed by friends at a dinner, Kerry Packer, owner of the broadcaster Nine Network tuned in to watch the show on TCN-9 and was so offended by its content that he phoned the studio operators and ordered them to "Get that shit off the air!" The studio operators complied, and the show immediately pulled the plug and went to a black screen saying the network had "technical difficulties" In Melbourne, the show went to a commercial and never came back, with two reruns of Cheers filling the show's remaining air time. The same happened in Brisbane, with the exception that it was succeeded by three episodes of Cheers.
The show ran for just 34 minutes of a 90-minute premiere (minus the advertisements, an effective 24 minutes of the show was aired); Mulray was immediately fired and banned for life from the network.
Some clips from the show can be seen on YouTube, though they're terrible quality, very short, and show nothing but quick snippets of non-explicit interspecies animal porn. Dogs with cats, bunnies with chickens, monkeys with goats, etc. For example:
Finally, when I went to the gym after Kali on Tuesday night, I got there early enough that the place was still slightly crowded, and with women as well as men. (There are very seldom any ladies there after 11pm, when I'm usually working out.) I was forcibly informed of this fact when I entered, had my badge scanned, and walked around the front desk only to come face to face (so to speak) with a young, slim, tall, tights and jog bra-wearing Asian woman who was walking on one of the stepmill machines, placing her most delightful asset directly at my eye level.
For an instant I considered turning around and leaving. After all, there was no possible way any subsequent events at the gym could improve upon that opening. Sure enough, I walked from there into the locker room and was greeted by the usual rogue's gallery of all-too-naked 60 y/o while males, most of whom carried more weight, and fat, in a single thigh than that scrumptious stepmilling woman had in her entire body.
I didn't talk to her there... wonder if she's got a personal ad?
While looking for a link to place in the previous post, I saw this graphic and remembered that I'd wanted to post about it weeks ago, but hadn't gotten around to doing so.
I saw it posted here, and the original is here. Reading the comments on the Washington Monthly page, I found some insightful analysis into the trends this map illustrates.
First, some liabilities.
The map isn't calibrated by %, but by whole numbers, which means that only large populations can qualify, and that slight differences in very large populations will be magnified. NYC, for instance.
The age range is too wide; 20-64, which extends far beyond what most people think of as "singles," and runs into the problem of widowers (who are predominantly female, especially under the age of 65).
There's no racial breakdown, and since prisoners (disproportionately male) were evidently not counted, and most prisons aren't located in metropolitan areas anyway, this skews the numbers female in areas with large black populations, given the high rate of incarceration among young black males.
It's unclear how illegal immigrants are counted. If they are, that would probably account for many of the blue dots in California, with its heavy population of largely male migrant workers.
Sexual orientation isn't adjusted for, which really skews things in areas like the one I'm in. It's a cliche how much women in San Francisco bemoan the "Every guy is gay or taken." issue. (Guess I should move to the city?)
All that said, there's still plenty to explain and learn from. Many commenters pointed out that tech heavy industries are clustered in California, especially around LA and Silicon Valley, and those are heavily male. Others said that many industries in NYC skew female; fashion, publishing, media, etc. It's also likely that some of the blue dots would be surrounded by dart boards of tiny pink dots, thanks to young men moving to work in cities in greater numbers than do the women.
I'll buy most of those explanations, but as is usually the case in American society, they're largely devoted to explaining things from a male POV. What about the big pink dots, though? Why are there so many more women in almost every major city in the South, Midwest, and Northeast? It's not enough to say that men are moving to follow jobs in higher numbers than women, unless you're going to say that all those guys from New York and Alabama and Georgia moved to Phoenix and Dallas. Either the men all moved west of the Mississippi, or all the women from California moved to the East, and why this might be the case was not addressed by any explanations I've yet seen. This isn't 1849; men from New York aren't selling all they own to book passage on a clipper sailing around Cape Horn on the way to San Francisco and their fortune in the gold mines.
Yes, I'm a day late on that wish, but I was busy yesterday... having a happy Valentine's Day. I picked up the IG from her university over in The City in the late afternoon, and we headed to Union Square. She wanted to eat at the Cheesecake Factory, which is on the top level of the massive seven-story Macy's, and that was fine with me, so we headed right over there, expecting that there might be a wait and wanting to get our names on the list. There was no wait at all, since it was only 4:30, and since neither of us were especially hungry yet, we decided to kill time browsing through the mega-department store for an hour.
We weren't hungry yet in part because of these. Aren't they the cutest thing ever? I was making lunch Thursday afternoon and thinking about the V-day date coming up that evening, and what I might take the IG for a little snack. I had a red pepper before me on the cutting board, and its ineffable redness and succulence called to my muse. I was going to cut it into heart shapes, Xmas cookie cutter style, until I noticed that the top ridges of the vegetable made rather convenient heart shaped curves already. So I just adapted those in several places, and cut a couple of more hearts out from the flanks of the beast. Notice the broken-heart locket one, with matching halves? Yes, I amuse myself.
The IG thought they were adorable, but not so adorable that she didn't gobble them right down. While noshing on those, she cooed over the non-mushy card I'd brought, and a tulip-type plant with crimson red flowers. I was going to get her a rose, but those are so cliche, and besides, it's just a pretty weed that rots in a few days. I always do a plant if possible, rather than flowers, and happily the IG concurred and liked the present. My theory was to clip one flower and corsage her with it, but she was like, "You're out of your damn mind if you think you're cutting a bloom off of my new plant!" So the plant remained undamaged, and her breast unadorned. It was just as well, since I gave her dozens of hugs that evening, and if there'd been a safety-pinned bloom between us, that would have somewhat dampened my ardor. Or at least left red spots on our respective upper body garments.
As for the pre-supper fun, the Macy's in Union Square is ridiculous. It's seven floors, big floors, and every one of them is women's clothing. Well, there are a few kid's sections, and lots of shoes, and the 2nd story (street level on one side) is all makeup, and they've got suitcases, and one level of furniture/carpets, and a linens section, etc, but it's at least four floors of every type of women's clothing. No men's clothing; there's a smaller, dirtier Macy's across the square for that ignoble purpose.
This was fine with me, since I don't really need any clothing and I wouldn't pay Macy's prices if I did. Besides, it was a lot more fun watching the IG wiggle into various coats and jackets than it would have been trying them on myself. The IG also let herself be shanghaied in the makeup session, where a man as gay as he was commercially-aggressive furiously applied make up of the sort she'd never wear on her own. Dark, almost blood red lips, aggressive dark eye shadow with some gold tints, blush, etc. It was a bit much at first, making her look somewhat plastic, but it faded in over the course of the evening, and she kept blotting at her lips, so by the time dinner was finished it was quite a nice look. Amazing how much difference some eye shadow and mascara can make in making the eyes flash and catch the attention. We took some photos, but none for public display, for much as Malaya was, the IG is a private person and doesn't want her face, or anything else, splashed all across the Internet.
We eventually headed back up to the restaurant, and of course there was a wait by then, so we wandered back down to the 7th floor, where Macy's has considerately located their furniture section. It essentially serves as a lounge for the Cheesecake Factory, with dozens of groups staking out various overpriced leather couches to kill their 60-80 minute waits all through the dinner rush. There wasn't much of a rush yet at 6, so we wandered through the area, crashed on some ugly brown sofa, and hardly got talking before the pager buzzed.
Dinner was adequate; we got a great table, right against the glass wall with a view down over Union Square, but the service was horribly slow and our waitress was clearly in a pissy mood. In that light, perhaps it was good that she only came by every 10 minutes? The IG got a corn cake appetizer and I got an appetizer salad, and since Cheesecake Factory portions are obscenely large, that was plenty. We also split a strawberry martini and then a slice of strawberry cheesecake for desert, so apparently red fruit/vegetables were our running theme for the evening.
We browsed a bit more after dinner, getting as lost in our conversation as we always do, before heading home through the rat's warren of one way and partially-blocked streets that make navigating downtown SF a pleasure of the "avoid at any cost" nature. Thankfully, the IG traverses Union Square fairly often while commuting to school and/or work, so she was able to guide us to the Bay Bridge, and across the water to civilized freeways and automobile-designed suburban layouts. I dropped her off by her car, and after a lingering goodnight, she was off.
I was in a good mood and full of energy, so I stopped by my apt just long enough to pet Jinxers and change clothes, then headed straight to the gym. I'd never seen it so crowded, and I don't think there was any Valentine's Day connection -- no more sweating couples than usual -- but for whatever reason there were considerably more people there than I've come to expect at 10pm on a weeknight. It's such a large place that I still had my free choice of machines, at least.
So... fun night, good date, and oddly enough, it was the first real Valentine's Day date the IG or I had ever been on. I'd been with Malaya for nearly a year by the time our first Valentine's Day rolled around in 2004, and we went out that night and again on V-day in 2005 and 2006, but we were a couple, so the V-day events weren't really any different than our usual nights out. (Which was probably a failing you could tie around my neck; that I didn't make an effort to make the event more special.) The IG hadn't ever done anything notable on that night in her past relationships, so it was fun for us both to be in the still "getting to know each other" stage, on a festive evening of that nature.
Nothing momentous occurred, and you'll note that I'm still calling her the IG (Imaginary Girlfriend), but maybe after such a lovely evening she's a little less "I" and a little more "G?" I guess time will tell. I do know we need to think up a better nick for her, but, like everything else in our relationship... all in good time.
I got my grad school application package sent out today, approximately 22 minutes before the post office closed. It had to be postmarked today, and after nibbling at it for the past couple of weeks, I spent about 12 hours straight working on it yesterday, running straight through the night until 9:30am. At that point I sent the 5-page Statement of Purpose off to my mom, dad, and Malaya and asked for some comments/ideas for improvement. I then went to bfed for 3 hours, got up at 1, read some useful suggestions by my correspondents, and made a bunch of changes. I also finished up the required resume, did a last time over the 15 page writing sample, and then frantically filled out the various forms while the printer was working.
I very nearly forgot to put in the check for the application fee, but remembered that just as I was sealing the manila envelope. I'd set out my checkbook for that purpose yesterday, but had forgotten to write the check and have it ready. Just imagine if I'd sent everything off, and then returned home and seen the check book and realized my error, 5 minutes after the post office closed for the day? Oh, how I would have laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed.
At any rate, it's been submitted and my fingers are crossed. I don't want to say where I've applied, but I will say it's a very good writing program, that it's expensive, that they accept fewer than 10% of applicants, that admission is based almost entirely on the writing sample and Statement of Purpose, and that I wont find out the good (or bad) news until at least April. Now let us never speak/think of it again.
While I'm not going to school this semester, my friend and very imaginary girlfriend is. I really need a nick for her, since we're friends and we hang out, but she's not "dating" me (or anyone else) in a romantic sense, so calling her the IG is misleading. Neither she, nor I, imagine that she is my GF. Anyway, she's started her semester at one of the many fine colleges over in The City, and as usual, tons of guys are hitting on her. She's very cute and personable, but is too nice for her own good, since when some guy comes on too strong and makes a fool of himself *cough*, she doesn't tell him to fuck off, but is polite and tolerant. As a result, she ends up with various mental patients, sad puppy dogs, "nice guys," and plenty of others trying to get up the nerve to ask her out, or asking her out and refusing to take a hint, or even a direct "No." for an answer. This causes her no end of exasperation, but does give her some funny stories to tell.
Last week some guy in one of her classes latched onto her like a remora, and followed her around for a couple of hours after class, while she was killing time before her next class began. As she said to me, "I stupidly told him I didn't have anything to do until 2 when he asked, so he stayed beside me the entire time. I've never been so eager for my theology class to begin." I of course made a joke about her thanking God that it was time for theology.
Anyway, here's the list of the expert dating techniques he displayed during 90 of the longest minutes of the IG's life. Keep in mind that this guy had just met her that day, and the extent of their experiences together were sitting all-too-near each other for a 2 hour college course.
Sitting way too close beside her.
Breathing on her with his stank breath.
Staring at her from about a foot away thanks to the circular chair arrangement in the class.
Waiting literally a foot from the bathroom door when she went to pee after class.
Taking a big uninvited sip of her fruit juice, through her straw, when she went to get a drink after class.
Repeatedly putting his arm over her shoulder, or around her waist, or over her back while walking next to her, despite her shoving him off each time.
Asking if her dad let her date.
Asking if she was a virgin.
Asking if she did one night stands or had boyfriends.
Inviting her over to his place for lunch, since he claimed to live very near campus.
Saying his girlfriend experiences involved a lot of one night stands. "You know, just the 'in and out.'"
Saying he sells a lot of pot, but that it's okay since God made plants for us to enjoy.
Asking repeatedly if she wanted to come over and get high.
Asking what religion she was, proclaiming how totally devoted to Christ he was, saying he was very tolerant of all religions, and then going on a vindictive rant about how Muslims are the root of all evil in the world.
There was even more, but you get the idea. I guess the moral of this story, and it's not one you need to be reminded of if you've been reading my coverage of The Evolution of Desire, is that the behaviors men think women will like are very seldom the behaviors women actually like. Also, guys... just because a woman doesn't come out and tell you that you're an asshole and she'd like to see you eaten by a tiger doesn't necessarily mean she's enjoying your company or you constant sexual comments and innuendos.
It's quite interesting to me to hear the IG's stories, since every guy she goes out with or gets to know, who is anywhere near 21, is just impossibly stupid, sexist, sex-obsessed, ignorant, rude, crude, uncouth, etc. And when I think back to myself at that age.. I wasn't much different. I can recall the burning need to put a sexual comment into virtually every sentence, when I was talking with a girl. After all, how else would she know that I was, you know, interested in sex?
To all the 21 y/o men out there... trust me, girls know. They're not nearly as stupid or oblivious to social clues and cues as you are, and you're not the first 21 y/o to come slobbering after them. You do not need to mention sex, blowjobs, how hot her ass is, how nice her tits look, pubic hair shaving vs. waxing techniques, etc, etc, etc. She's quite aware that the vast majority of your thoughts stem from about 2" of dangle between your thighs, and the more you bring it up, so to speak, the less interested she's going to be in engaging in the behavior you so desperately want her to engage in. There's this thing called "subtlety," and if you know a guy who isn't rich or a big jock stud, and still seems to get laid a lot, he's got it, and you don't.
This is kind of an awkward transition in subject, but is there any possible connection or correlation between date rape, and a cat sleeping on you when you're asleep? See, Jinxie and I have a bed-sharing arrangement. I sleep on the left side, by the window, and she gets on the right. She never sleeps on the left anymore, and when I go into the bedroom and find her already on the bed, she's invariably on the left side, up near the top of the comforter. About neck height, on the invisible person who might be sleeping there. She occasionally sleeps leaning against my side, but most often she's at chest height and arm's length from my right shoulder.
The date rape part has come lately.I've had some sudden nap urges in the evenings, since I'm not sleeping very long at night (which is usually in the day), since I keep waking up after 5 hours with financial worries and thoughts about all the work I want/need to do, and grad school ideas, and story ideas, and more, that I can't get back to sleep. Nor do I want to, when I can get up and start working.
Unfortunately, my inferior meat unit of a body can't go indefinitely on 5 hours of sleep, especially not when I'm working out 90-120 minutes every other day, plus martial arts. Hence... naps.
The weird part is that if I nap on the left side of the bed, jinx sleeps right beside me, whether I'm under the covers or on top or just rolled up in the comforter. But if I sleep in the center of the bed, or on the right, I invariably wake up with Jinx sleeping on top of me. My position doesn't matter either; she'll get on my back if I'm face down, or my stomach if I'm on my back, or perch awkwardly on my hip if I'm fetal'ed. And she's never there when I fall asleep; she only comes in once I'm out, and settles herself down on me.
The worst was a few days ago when I woke up from vaguely sexual dreams with a boner and a desperate need to pee, only to find Jinx hunched right on my groin, in a reverse cowgirl, with her back end right on my bladder. I had on pants, and was rolled up in the comforter, thankfully. I was lucky I didn't piss myself, she was so creating a simulation of male pregnancy kitty, and that's not the kind of wet dream I'm interested in experiencing. Not for another 40 or 50 years yet, anyway, until they're feeding me full of dog food and rolling me onto the rubber sheets.
So, I'll repeat my question. Is a cat taking advantage of your (or my) unconscious, helpless, yet apparently desirable and welcoming body, the equivalent of feline date rape? I did not grant consent for this activity, Mrs. Jinxles!
Finally, can someone pass a law allowing for the sport shooting of any really, really loud motorcycle? Especially when the same asshole rides it slowly around your block, like ten times in a row? All young men on motorcycles are just organ donors anyway, and anyone who makes that much noise in a residential area, without involving dynamite, deserves to die. My only concern is that stray bullets might strike innocent, deafened bystanders, or that people with poor aim would land a gut shot, and ruin the valuable chest meats that human pinata is riding around with. Still, I think it's a fair trade off, given the level of disturbance those Harley-riding assholes create. I'll be happy to co-sponsor any appropriate legislation in the upcoming congressional session.
More from the The Evolution of Desire. Coverage of the previous chapters can be seen here.
Chapter Six: Staying Together
Chapter Six opens with a few paragraphs about the benefits of couplehood. (Not that Buss calls it that, since "couplehood" isn't actually a word.) These include shared resources, complimentary skills, division of labor, stable home for rearing children, etc. Maintaining a successful marriage is tricky though, and breaking up comes with high costs. Family bonds can tear, children are damaged, finances can be ruined, and if there hasn't been any reproduction, the time off the dating market was wasted, from a genetic point of view. Men lose a potential reproductive partner and the resources they've expended on her over time. Women lose a resource provider, protectors, prime years of fertility, and will likely be less desirable (from the genetic, youth/beauty standpoint) when they leave the marriage than when they entered it. (In today's society which partner provides more resources can vary, but throughout the book Buss frames most situations in evolutionary terms, and historically it's been the males who were the providers, so that's the direction in which our genetics guide us.)
Buss points out the reality of high divorce rates, details some of the many perils that can doom a relationship, then goes into his usual animal examples, using them to illustrate situations analogous to those humans must navigate. Various types of male animals use techniques to keep their mates for themselves, including hiding them or disguising them, or using physical aggression to drive off interlopers. Reproductive access and exclusivity is of such paramount importance that many types of insects remain in the mating position until and even after death, and others have evolved ingenious (single use, tragically) techniques such as penises that break away and remain stuck in the female, blocking any other males from inseminating her.
Humans can't do all these things, for better or for worse, but humans are unusual, and nearly unique, in that both parties in a relationship gain substantial benefit from it. Males don't just use females to make babies, and women aren't alone in raising them (in theory, anyway). In terms of successful reproduction, humans function best in a pair bond, and thus we've evolved various tactics to help perpetuate such relationships.
One of the most important is continuing to fulfill the desires of one's mate--the desires that led to the mate selection to begin with. But merely fulfilling these desires may not be enough if rivals are attempting the same thing. Ancestral humans needed a psychological mechanism specifically designed to alert them to potential threats from the outside; a mechanism that would regulate when to swing into action in depoying mate-guarding strategies. That mechanism is sexual jealousy.
The Functions of Sexual Jealousy.
Compared to other animals, human males invest tremendously in their offspring. In the ideal case, years and years of resources are plowed into developing the young and sustaining the wife and the relationship. Raising another man's young is a complete waste from a genetic point of view. Worse than a waste, it's a loss, since resources that could go to providing for a man's own child are being spent on someone else's. Intellectually humans today can choose to do this, and many people do, but it goes against our evolutionary instincts. Since human males often can not tell if a child is theirs or not, human males are highly sensitive to possibilities of marital infidelity. You'll recall from earlier chapters that men rate sexual fidelity as the most important trait in a wife. As Buss describes the situation, "Cuckoldry is therefore a serious adaptive problem that men throughout human evolutionary history have had to solve."
Buss describes the emotions a human experiences when discovering sexual infidelity. "If you are a woman, you would be likely to experience sadness and feelings of abandonment. If you are a man, you would be likely to experience rage .If you are a human, you would most likely experience humiliation." Given the high stakes involved, suspicions of sexual infidelity trigger strong reactions, for logical reasons. "Sexual jealousy is activated when one is confronted either with signs that someone else has an interest in one's mate or with signs of defection by one's mate, such as flirting with someone else. The rage, sadness, and humiliation following these cues motivate action typically intended to either cut off a rival or to prevent the mates defection."
While most studies of jealousy behaviors have focused on men, and logically it would seem that men have more cause and likelihood to be jealous (given the obvious disparity in how certain a man or a woman can be that their child is genetically theirs), other studies, in the US and worldwide, have shown that the genders experience feelings of jealously equally. What is not equal is how men and women react to those situations, and the sort of situations that make them most jealous. Women are most jealous of situations in which their man spends time or resources with another woman. Men are most jealous of situations in which their woman is sexually unfaithful. This is only logical, from an evolutionary POV. "...although both men and women have the psychological mechanism of jealousy, it is triggered by different events, which correspond to the adaptive problems of ensuring paternity for men and ensuring resources and commitment for women."
Buss tested this in a lab, by hooking volunteers to machines that measured their heart rate and a muscle in the face that contracts when they frown. He then had them imagine sexual and emotional infidelity and sure enough men were far more bothered by sexual and women by emotional. Other surveys bear this out as well. In a study of 511 college-aged men and women on what type of behavior they would find most upsetting in their partner, the results were confirming:
Emotional infidelity: 83% of women found it the most upsetting. Only 40% of men did.
Sexual infidelity: 60% of men found this most upsetting, while only 17% of women did.
Various studies in central Europe, Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, and elsewhere have all found the same results.
The Consequences of Jealousy. Buss cites documentary and anecdotal evidence of men becoming violently enraged by the discovery of sexual infidelity. Laws have long supported this, for better or worse. Until 1974 in Texas, it was legal for a husband to kill his wife and her lover if he caught them in the act. Old Roman law allowed husbands a similar right to homicide within his own house, and similar laws remain in effect in many parts of Europe. Buss doesn't mention it, but this sort of thing is of course epidemic under Sharia law in the Muslim world, where "honor killings" of wives, daughters, and other women are carried out routinely.
Male sexual jealousy is cited as the chief cause of violence directed at wives. Buss cites a study of 44 battered wives, 55% of whom said jealousy was the key motive behind their husband's abuse. Men aren't the only violent ones either; many murders committed by women have jealousy as a motivating factor. Women kill jealous husbands in self defense, and sometimes even seek out the woman who they feel is trying to steal their man, with lethal results. By any measure, sexual jealousy is leading cause of violence and death worldwide. It's estimated that around 20% of all male on male homicides in the US are predicated one or both men competing for the same woman.
In a sample of 47 homicide cases precipitated by a jealous man, 16 women were killed by men for real or suspected infidelity, 17 male rivals were killed by enraged men, and 9 men were killed, in self defense, by women whom the men had accused of infidelity.
Happily for the perpetuation of our species, sexual jealousy does not usually result in murder. The jealousy and the strong emotional reaction it causes are evolutionary useful, but it seems that violence, especially to the point of murder, is an overreaction, genetically speaking. After all, the vast majority of cheating wives are not murdered by their husbands.
The Value of Fulfilling A Mate's Desires. Besides motivating murder, jealousy can inspire greater watchfulness. Many men and women check up on their partner: calling them at unexpected times, having friends check up on them, snooping through their personal belongings, dropping by their work unannounced, etc. These activities can, and often do, double as romantic actions. A sudden late night phone call while out of town; just calling to say I love you, or making sure you're home and alone? Or both.
Ideally though, jealousy is a motivator by providing incentive to make the partner happy in the first place, so they don't consider straying. And this is best done by fulfilling their desires. "Because women desire love and kindness in their initial selection of a mate, continuing to provide love and kindness is a highly effective tactic for men who want to keep their mates." This works better for men than for women, and women judge such behaviors as the most effective men can perform. Unsurprisingly, how likely men are to do this corresponds directly to the length of the relationship. Women in new relationships report much higher satisfaction along these indices than women who have been married for more than 5 years.
Women vote with their pocketbooks as well, and because they are genetically and culturally conditioned to value economic and material resources, keeping the flowers, candy, and more expensive presents flowing is another highly effective tactic for men who wish to satisfy their wives. In this as with showing love and affection, women value it more highly than men.
So what can a woman do to keep her man happy? If you've read the chapters up to this point, you'll have no trouble guessing. Men desire physical attractiveness in a mate, and women report that making efforts to enhance their appearance and keep themselves looking their best is a very good way to maintain their man's interest. Buss cites no studies or surveys on this aspect of things, which is odd, as many as he had on the "men keeping women happy" side of things.
One interesting study is documented. In it men and women watched a short film and reported their reactions. Participants viewed a short scenario in which a couple were sitting on a couch. One of the partners got up and left the room, and a moment later another person entered, and was introduced as an ex of the partner who had remained on the couch. The newcomer sat down on the couch, and after a moment of conversation, they started touching and kissing each other. The partner who had left then returned and caught them in the act, concluding the video. Naturally, women saw a version of the tape in which an ex-girlfriend entered, while men saw a version in which it was an ex-boyfriend.
The researchers then asked the study participants what sort of strategy they would pursue in response to this sort of a threat. Men said that they would become angry and would pursue various, aggressive strategies of keeping a mate. Women were far more likely to say they would try to make themselves more attractive to keep their man from thinking about straying.
I suppose studies must be conducted to build up scientific evidence of human behavior, but really, they needed a survey to figure this one out?
The Uses of Emotional Manipulation. When tactics such as providing resources, love, and kindness fail, some people resort to baser approaches. Behaviors such as crying, talking about how jealous you feel, and telling the partner you depend on them are common techniques. Total submission and self-abasement is commonly used as well. "I'll do anything/whatever you say." for instance. Oddly, studies show that men, whether in new relationships or after years of marriage, are 25% more likely to use this approach than are women. Why isn't entirely clear, at least not to Buss, since it seems to go against the stereotype of women as the submissive sex.
Perhaps men who perceive themselves to be relatively lower in desirability than their wives or girlfriends use submission to try to prevent a woman from defecting to another relationship. Perhaps the tactic represents an attempt to satisfy or placate a woman who is on the verge of leaving. But these speculations are not satisfactory because they beg the question of why men need to resort to this tactic more than women. Only future research can reveal the answer to this mystery.
I'd suggest that it's because men are (at least) 25% more likely to be the one cheating, and when a woman is righteously furious at a man for his misbehavior, the men feel shame and fear of losing her. Besides, just in a tactical sense, screaming back aggressively when you're the one who at fault, is not likely to calm her down. Furthermore, I'll get Freudian and say that such situations trigger childhood memories in men, of mommy shouting at them when they were bad, and that some men behave as they did then, flopping the power dynamic entirely to the benefit of their aggrieved partner.
Another interesting behavior is that of men and women who intentionally provoke sexual jealousy to try and keep a mate. These tactics are judged to be much more effective when performed by women than by men. Women walk a fine line though; stirring just enough jealousy to make their man pay more attention to them, but not so much that he becomes violent or concludes that she's promiscuous and an unsuitable mate. Again, it's unclear to Buss why this works so much better for women than for men. And again, I'll suggest that it's because men are more likely to stray, and because men are more possessive of their mates. Male ego is tied up in it, and is easily activated by the thought of losing a prized possession. It's connected to the whole, "You don't know what you've got until it's gone." truism, and being reminded that their girlfriend or wife might not be there forever is a powerful incentive to most men.
Ways to Keep Competitors at Bay. Public displays of affection have an odd gender breakdown. Although studies show that men and women are about equally likely to show their affection in ways such as displaying photos, holding hands in public, exchanging jewelry, and so forth, these signals are judged to be far more effective at keeping a mate when used by men. Buss speculates these work well since they satisfy the woman's desire to feel wanted and needed and secure, rather than simply functioning as deterrents to ward off the approaches of other men.
I think that's reasonable, but I question the conclusion that the genders are equal in their desire for touching and hand holding and other forms of PDA. I've always enjoyed holding hands and walking close beside my dates, but most women have told me that's rare, and that they have to initiate that sort of thing, or poke their boyfriend to make him walk closer/slower. Women want to hold hands and hold the man's arm and feel escorted. Men often want to be more like moody teenagers and not walk too close to mom/the gf in public, so as not to look like they're whipped. That said, I might be skewed by a lack of time spent in single's bars and college mixers and rock concerts and other meat market type locations, where a man would feel a need to show his possession or attachment to his date.
Monopolizing a mate's time is another common tactic. Staying close to them at social events, wanting to keep them at home, not wanting them to go out alone, etc. Buss brings up the historical fact of rich and powerful men keeping harems, which were secured to keep men and out to keep the women in. Kings and maharajas have long kept dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of women locked up for their private use. "In Imperial China, emperors around 771 BCE kept one queen, three consorts or wives of the first rank, and 81 concubines." And you thought knowing the powers of three would never come in handy!
Destructive Mate-Keeping Measures. Most male animals use the physical threat of violence to dissuade rivals and/or to keep the mate from straying. Humans are no different, but with our higher brains we can use social and cultural tactics as well. Verbal threats and promises, as well as subtler techniques, such as belittling the competition, are frequently used by humans. Logically and ironically, these tactics are most often turned on the mate in more serious, committed relationships. After all, the more a man loves his wife and the more he is planning to remain with her, the more violently and angrily he will react to signs that she might be straying.
These tactics can be taken to horrible extremes. Buss discusses the cultural (and largely religious, since it is practiced mostly by Muslims) practices of clitoridectomy and infibulation. Both function to retard a woman's sexual desire or pleasure in the act, and infibulation makes covert sexual intercourse impossible.
While much of this chapter stresses the nastiness and violence that jealous humans can engage in, this just underlines how important our ancestors found the act of preserving a successful pair bond to be. If there were not substantial benefits from such a relationship, we would not have all of the encoded desires to fight to preserve it. Speaking of sexual jealous, Buss says, "It may seem ironic that this mechanism, which is designed to keep a mate, causes so much destruction. It does so because the reproductive stakes are so high..."
Up next: Chapter Seven: Sexual Conflict.
I'm going to cut way down on the detail of these, since this is just going on too long. Both on the blog, and in my life. I vacuumed up every detail from some of the early chapters, but these middle ones aren't as fascinating to me, yet I'm continuing to summarize nearly everything, since that's the tone I set from the start.
Book Review: The Evolution of Desire, Chapter Five
My discussion of The Evolution of Desire continues. Click here to see the review and discussion of earlier chapters in this fascinating book.
Chapter Five: Attracting a Partner
I've been reading the whole book with great interest, especially chapter two on what women want, but for this chapter I really perked up for. I've got a personal interest, now that I'm single and looking to potentially change that fact, but also because this is what I find most interesting about male/female interactions and relations. Not so much the getting along once they're together, but the mating dance and the way different priorities and hopes and dreams mesh in the initial interactions.
Buss starts off by describing the differences between human mating interest and simpler attraction paradigms. In most cases in nature, prey and predator evolve together. Catching a fish is simply a matter of finding a lure the fish like best. Catching a partner though, is far more complicated, in part because of the competition. You are not the only fisherwo/man in the stream, so just as humans have evolved strategies to snag a mate, and to appear more interesting to potential mates, men and women have evolved strategies to "counter the seductive lures of rivals."
Many other animals engage in this sort of behavior, but what makes humans unique is our intelligence, our culture, and our verbal skills. We speak to make ourselves seem more attractive, and to denigrate the charms of our competitors.
Derogatory tactics, like tactics of attraction, work because they exploit the psychological mechanisms that predispose persons of the opposite sex to be sensitive to certain valuable qualities in possible mates, such as their resources or appearance. A man's communication to a woman that his rival lacks ambition can be effective only if the woman is predisposed to reject men who have a low potential for acquiring resources. Similarly, a woman's remark to a man that her rival is sexually promiscuous can work only if men are predisposed to reject women who do not devote themselves sexually to one man.
Buss is clearly posing this as an answer, not a question, since he's demonstrated through the book that men and women are predisposed to those two things, at least when it comes to selecting a partner for a long term relationship. (As explained in chapter three, a man's preference for promiscuity in a woman is inversely proportional to his interest in establishing a LTR with her. Men hook up with sluts; they don't marry them.)
Deception is a more viable skill in casual relationships, too. A man can exaggerate his wealth and social status for a short time; married people can temporarily conceal their marital status to the person they're having an affair with, etc. Also, the rules are very different for the sexes. Since more men than women are seeking casual relationships (women look more for long term relationships, and men tend to cheat more), women have more power since they have more men to choose from. As Buss points out, "For every sexually willing woman there are usually dozens of men who would consent to have sex with her."
Displaying Resources. Buss begins by detailing some of the behaviors that male animals engage in to attract a mate. Male birds build nests for females to pick between, other male animals catch or accumulate food items they do not allow the female access to until she consents to mate, etc. These behaviors in animals work quite well, but are usually fairly simple and straight forward. Human resource displays are a bit more involved.
Researchers interviewed hundreds of college students and had them list tactics they'd used, or seen others use, in attempts to attract women. The list of more than 100 behaviors was then sorted into categories, and put to a different group of single college students, and married couples, who rated how successful they thought the various tactics would be in attracting a partner, and how often they or their spouses used those tactics. Techniques that displayed wealth, or convinced women of the man's social status or ambition, were by far the most successful. Denigrating those tactics in other men worked quite well to lower the women's opinions of them, as well. Wearing expensive clothing, buying a woman an expensive mixed drink (rather than cheaper beer or wine), and tipping generously were winning tactics, since they demonstrated that the man possessed resources, and more critically, that he was willing to part with them. These types of behaviors work best when trying to attract a casual sex partner, and are less effective on women who are seeking a LTR.
Expensive clothing worked very well too, of course. Another study showed women slides of men; the same men appeared dressed in a Burger King uniform, or in slacks with a blazer and a Rolex. Unsurprisingly, "Based on these photographs, women state that they are unwilling to date, have sex with, or marry the men in the low-status costumes, but are willing to consider all these relationships with men in high-status garb."
These behaviors are not limited to American women, either. Buss details studies of various primitive tribes and in every case, the men with the resources enjoy higher status and have a better choice of women. To test this, an interesting experiment was carried out by anthropologist A. R. Holmbrerg. He befriended one low status man of the Siriono tribe of eastern Bolivia, started hunting with him and by using a shotgun, vastly increased the man's take. He even taught the man to use the gun and in short order the loser was, "enjoying the highest status, had acquired several new sex partners, and was insulting others, instead of being insulted by them." Sound like every rich-daddy, frat boy you ever dated hated in college, or what?
Displaying Commitment. Showing signs of commitment and devotion are powerful attractions to a woman. They're difficult to fake since they must be repeated over a long period of time, and are good indicators, to the woman, that the man would make a good LTR partner. Such things as showing an interest in her problems, discussing marriage, integrating her into his social circle, and (especially) showing persistence in courtship were very winning tactics.
Buss talks about these as ways to demonstrate to a woman that a man is interested in a LTR, and throws in several anecdotes about men who persisted in pursing a woman and impressed her with their perseverance. In the examples given, the women were not especially interested in the men initially, and truly did have to be won over. This phenomena is pretty widespread in my experience, even amongst women who aren't considering getting married. Attractive young women who have their pick of men, such as my current Imaginary Girlfriend, are constantly being approached and solicited, and if they're not given to bed hopping, or being easily wooed by some flash and cash, they often use commitment and persistence as sorting factors. Men have to put in the time and effort to prove their worth and prove they are truly interested in such women, even to obtain "casual" relationships with them.
Women also appreciate kindness, and men have learned to act that way, or at least fake it. A study in Germany showed that college students engaged in all sorts of deception to woo women. Common tactics included acting "...more polite than they really are, appear to be more considerate than the really are, and seem more vulnerable than they really are." This sort of thing works in singles bars too. "Women stated that the most effective tactics for attracting them are displaying good manners, offering help and acting sympathetic and caring. Mimicking what women want in a husband by showing kindness and sincere interest, in short, is also an effective technique for luring women into brief sexual liaisons." The old "pose with a baby and/or a puppy" trick works too. Women evaluated photos of the same man standing alone, playing with a baby, or ignoring the crying baby. Unsurprisingly, the women were most attracted to the man playing with the baby. Women like caring and fidelity. "Of the 130 possible ways to attract a mate, women regard showing fidelity as the second most effective act, just a shade behind displaying an understanding of the woman's problems"
Honesty is another trait that women are strongly attracted to, so of course males of all species have evolved techniques to take advantage of this. Male birds and other animals appear to offer the female food, then snatch it back after copulating. Lying about one's relationship status was the most effective, and damaging, lie men could tell. A survey of men in a singles bar got a substantial percentage of them to admit they were married or in LTRs. By the same token, telling a woman that a rival for her affections is not available is the single most effective technique to cause her to lose interest in him.
Displaying Bravado and Self Confidence. On the other hand, women can be won over, especially for casual relationships, by attitude and charisma. As one woman is quoted in the book, "Some guys just seem to know what they are doing. They know how to approach you and just make you feel good. Then you get those nerds... who can't get anything right. They come on strong at first, but can't keep it together... they just hang around until you dump them by going to the restroom or over to a friend to talk."
Men with strong self esteem approach the most attractive women, regardless of their own attractiveness. Men with lower self esteem don't approach the most attractive women. Buss also points out the obvious, that men who get rejected experience lowered self esteem and tend to lose their nerve.
Buss also describes the "satellite technique." The nature analogy is the bullfrog. Male bullfrogs sit by the pond and croak to attract females, who home in on the loudest, deepest croaker. Males who can not compete in volume sometimes use stealth techniques, and sit by the loudest male, then dart out and quickly copulate with females as they approach. Buss analogizes that habit to sidekicks type guys who hang out with BMOC types, and then try to pick up their leavings. Another technique is to be a friend of a couple, and wait until there's a breakup, or the woman is feeling down and rejected, and trying to take advantage of her then.
Enhancing Appearance. Buss spends several paragraphs describing the value of the cosmetics industry and the fairly obvious fact that women don't use cosmetics to make themselves look normal, but to make themselves look like the image of womanhood that attracts men. Youthful, clear-skinned, flushed-cheeked, etc. There are a myriad of other deceptive techniques to employ; false fingernails, hair extensions, eyelashes, padded bras, girdles, spray on tanners, and so forth.
Women compete viciously, too. As much or more than men, women denigrate their rivals, both to the man they're competing over, and directly to the other woman, attempting to drive her from the field.
Buss concludes this section by taking on various cultural commenters, such as Naomi Wolf with her book, The Beauty Myth. Since Buss' whole point in The Evolution of Desire is that what men and women want is not imposed by culture or society, but is an evolved desire, he of course objects to authors, like Wolf, who say that we've been brainwashed by out culture into wanting what we think we want. "Women are not unsuspecting dupes buffeted about by the evil forces of Madison Avenue, but rather determine through their preferences the products that are offered." He admits that the cosmetic industry, and others, prey upon our genetic desires, but strongly objects to the theory that culture creates our urges.
Employing Sexual Signals. In another section of "no, really?" insight, Buss details numerous surveys that prove that men really like it when women do sexy stuff. Bending over to show their curves, licking their lips, touching the man, rubbing against him, etc. All those are sure winners, when women do them to men. The more overtly sexual the enticement is, the more men like it. Women are almost exactly the opposite. The more obvious and overt the man's enticement is, the less it interests a woman. (Unless she already likes the guy a lot, in which case it can be exciting to her. Good luck guys, in figuring out when that is.)
Clothing follows this pattern. Men find women in tight or revealing clothing extremely attractive as sexual partners, though somewhat less attractive as marriage partners. Happily, there's some overlap here, since women report wearing sexy outfits when looking for casual partners, but not as often when with men they consider as better potential LTR matches. As for female preferences, they are nearly the opposite of male preferences. Women shown slides of men in various outfits rate the more revealing outfits as less attractive in men they're considering for casual as well as LTRs.
Men also show their mental state by the fact that they interpret almost anything a woman does, such as making eye contact, smiling, any sort of physical contact, etc, in sexual terms. Buss mentions a study in which male and female actors interacted in a variety of scenarios. Men and women in the test audience then watched these movies and filled out surveys on their impressions of the events displayed. In every scenario, men were much more likely to see sexual connotations, and especially to judge the actress' behavior as flirtatious or attraction to the man; while female test subjects saw nothing more than politeness or friendship.
This sort of thing, I think, does a great deal to explain the difficulties men and women have in communicating and courting. I've talked to the IG quite a bit about how guys approach her and hit on her, successfully or otherwise, and she's got endless funny stories about men just failing and flailing in their every effort. (And yes, a few of my initial, overly-earnest efforts will no doubt end up on her permanent story list.) Nearly every guy she has known, on what she thought was a friend level, invariably made some clumsy, often downright embarrassing play for her at some point.
She brings it on herself, somewhat, since she's attractive, but also quite friendly and polite, and as such she puts up with guys who she really has no interest in, but who are so attracted to her that they keep persisting in pursing her despite numerous rejections. Because she's so nice she tries to let them down gently, or give them a hint, rather than just saying, "Fuck off!" and she's quite often driven to distraction, trying to be nice to someone who she really doesn't want to interact with anymore. Her main complaints about men are that they (we) can't take a hint, and act very inappropriately. I've told her that it's a difference in how men and women think, and much of what Buss covers in this section meshes nicely with my own conclusions.
Men don't know how to show casual, cool interest. We get all obsessed and het up, and think that if we could only show the woman how much we care, she'd understand, or be won over, or see our true value. So men ignore obvious "No." signals, make grand gestures that just annoy the disinterested woman, or use behaviors that would win them (the men) over, but that fall flat, or are actively repulsive, to the woman. It's not that men are trying to be crude when they say how hot a woman is, or how much they want to have sex with her, or how aroused they are when they think about her, etc. They're demonstrating behaviors that would be all but guaranteed to work on them if a woman displayed them, and they mistakenly think that women will respond to the same thing. They are very, very wrong.
Women do the same thing, of course. Women most strongly respond to emotional appeals and communication and emotional outpourings and vulnerability. Men do as well, sometimes, but quite often men feel overwhelmed and terrified by that sort of thing, which results in the stereotypical relationship fight in which the woman is crying and trying desperately to reach out, and the man is sitting silently, wishing she'd stop crying, or else feels so overwhelmed that he has to flee the scene.
Book Review: The Evolution of Desire: Chapter Three
My "review" of The Evolution of Desire continues. As you've no doubt noticed, this isn't really a review; it's more like a chronological term paper, analyzing and preserving and pretty much ripping out every bit of useful content from the book. Well, not every bit; my review is far shorter (believe it or not) than the book itself, and I'm only touching on maybe 10 or 15% of the points Buss covers. I just found so much of the book fascinating and elucidating that I wanted to go over it slowly and carefully enough to get most of the facts and concepts burned into my brain, and to do that I had to take notes and type it up as I went. And since I did that, I might as well post it here, for those of you thoughtful and psychologically-curious enough to read it.
It occurred to me a few days ago, while going through this book and several others on related subjects, that I could have made a career out of this. Since I grew old enough to appreciate the difference, nothing has ever interested me more in conversation that talking to women about their views on sex, relationships, what they like and don't like in men, etc. I find male psychology so boring and rudimentary, in comparison to women, that I never much care about the inner lives of men, at least not in regards to their sexual desires and hopes and dreams. You've probably all seen the famous illustration of this. That's obviously an exagerration, but it's not grossly untrue when evaluating the way the genders deal with each other when sex is part of the equation. (And when is it not?) I used to think of that diagram as being drawn from the male POV, but upon reflection, I think it goes both ways. The obvious joke is that women are impossibly complicated, but the converse is true as well. Women wonder why men only seem to have one reaction to stimuli, and curse the fact that the male control panel is so lacking in finer calibration.
Men aren't just stupid animals about everything; I think the psychology of my gender can be quite complicated and interesting in many areas of their psychology; how men seek or flee power and authority, how men relate to authority figures and especially their own fathers, and more, but those aren't really my areas of interest in study. Also, since I'm a man I have a natural insight into and knowledge of the male mind, so many things that would interest or confuse a woman seem common sense to me.
I enjoy the subject area in general though, and as I said, I've lately read a fair number of books on male vs. female psychology and relationships, and I've also read about famous sex researchers (Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, etc.) and psychologists and doctors who studied gender and made breakthrough discoveries. It never occurred to me until recently, but that field is one I could have enjoyed a career in. I can't see going into that at this point, though. I'd enjoy the grad school and doctoral thesis aspect of it, but that would take another 5 or 6 years, cost a fortune, and then what? No one's going to pay me to research and write books about it. I might sell books on it, but I'd have to go into practice to gather the information and learn the field inside and out, and frankly, I don't want to deal with crazy people.
I enjoy studying them, like bugs in a box, but I don't want to put up with their bullshit, and I don't care about helping the sick. I just want to read about their problems and try to figure out what caused them and why, and hear the juicy stories of their madness. Making them better is hard. Well, it's getting easier, but that's because abnormal psych and sexology has become almost entirely pharmacological, and just writing prescriptions isn't any fun. Worse yet, when the lithium or prozac or other mood stabilizers work, the client isn't interesting anymore.
So, no psych career for me, but I do enjoy dabbling in the field with a layman's knowledge, and I enjoy good books on the subject. Thus continues my discussion of this one.
Chapter Three: Men Want Something Else
This chapter starts off pondering why men are willing to marry. After all, casual sex is a far better solution, genetically. Implant sperm, move on to another woman, repeat. Buss speculates that some of the evolved male willingness to marry and invest many years in just one woman was created as a reciprocal desire by women requiring that of men.
Women's requirements for consenting to sex made it costly for most men to pursue short-term mating strategy exclusively. In the economics of reproductive effort, the costs of not pursuing a permanent mate may have been prohibitively high for most men... A further cost of failing to seek marriage was impairment of the survival and reproductive success of the man's children.
Children without a father must have had much lower survival rates, and biologically speaking, it's useless to get women pregnant if they die before giving birth, or their/your offspring die before reaching reproductive age. Buss also points out that by marriage, men were able to reproduce with much higher quality women, since the higher quality women were able to demand marriage as a prerequisite to sexual activity. This works both ways, though. Lower quality women (by whatever the criteria of the age/culture was, and Buss gets to what men find attractive soon enough) can obtain sex with very high quality men by lowering their relationship requirements. Marrying such a man was much more difficult than bearing his young, since highly-eligible men have marriage standards that exclude most women.
Since men, biologically speaking, want to have numerous children, and since men were largely forced into monogamous relationships, the trick, for the men, was/is to figure which women are more reproductively capable. This is difficult, Buss says, since there are few obvious signs of reproductive capability. It can't be seen in a woman's appearance, her family history, or her social status, and she doesn't even know herself. How can men judge it, then? "Two obvious cues; youth and health."
Youth. A woman's reproductive capacity declines rapidly with age. From puberty to about 20, it increases. After 20 it steadily decreases; it's very low at 40, and by 50 it's generally zero. "Thus, women's capacity for reproduction is compressed into a fraction of their lives."
In the US, men uniformly express a desire for mates who are younger than they are. In surveys on college campuses from 1939-1988, men wanted women who were about 2.5 years younger than them. Men who are 21 prefer, on average, women who are 18.5. This preference is not limited to the US. It's found in surveys of men all over the world, and in all sorts of cultures, from the most modern to the most primitive. Nigerian men at 23.5 prefer women who are 17. Yugoslavian men at 21.5 want 19 year old wives. Most of the surveys cited by Buss are of young men, but he includes some stats about older men, and as you might expect, the older a man gets, his ideal women gets more years younger. Hugh Hefner aside, most men at 40 and 50 don't still want twenty year olds, but men in their 30s want women who are about 5 years younger, and men in their 50s prefer women 10-20 years younger. (Or perhaps that's the youngest they can get, and if not limited by economic or cultural barriers, most 60 y/o men would shack up with teenagers, sultan-style?)
This stated preference is backed up by demographic studies; American men marry women progressively younger than them in second and third marriages. Men are around 3 years older than their first wives, 5 years older than the second, and 8 years older than the third, averaged across men/women of all ages. This isn't a new or American phenomena. Records from Sweden in the 1800s show that men married women an average of 10.6 years younger than them on their second marriages. The age difference is even wider in polygamous cultures, with men choosing (buying) wives two and three decades younger than themselves.
In short, contemporary men prefer young women because they have inherited from their male ancestors a preference that focused intently upon this cue to a woman's reproductive value. This psychologically based preference translates into everyday mating decisions.
Standards of Physical Beauty. Even more than youth, men seek beauty.
Our ancestors had access to two types of observable evidence of a woman's health and youth: features of physical appearance, such as full lips, clear skin, smooth skin, clear eyes, lustrous hair, and good muscle tone -- and features of behavior, such as a bouncy, youthful gait, an animated facial expression, and a high energy level. These physical cues to youth and health, and hence to reproductive capacity, constitute the ingredients of male standards of female beauty.
I'd never thought of some of those categories, but upon reading them I realized that I did in fact desire them. Malaya did a lot of those things, and the IG has a few habits that I find so charming, and several of them are darts into these bullseyes. She sometimes gives a little skipping hop to get moving towards a desired object, and she makes the most amazingly animated, dancing-eyed, excited faces when she's intrigued by something. I've always been enchanted by those maneuvers, but had never thought why. I just thought they were cute. Now I know that they're hitting me in my evolutionary psychology, as features of behavior that indicate her good health and high reproductive value. Helpful! (Not that there's any consideration, on either of our parts, of reproducing. But that's the whole point of this book; these things attract men and women without our realizing why, and they're just as attractive whether we're looking to have children, or doing all we can to avoid that eventuality.)
As with everything else in the book, there's no moral value attached to these human preferences, and their prevalence is judged population-wide. Individuals may have very different preferences, but as Buss points out, men who prefer gray-haired, wrinkled women might be very happy in their lives with a succession of elderly women, but they're likely to be a genetic dead end. Every man alive today is a descendant of thousands of generations of men who preferred young, healthy women, since the ones who didn't, didn't leave descendants.
Other researchers have surveyed populations across the world and found features that are almost universally considered repugnant. Most of these are cues to ill health, such as a poor complexion, ringworm, facial disfigurement, and filthiness. "Cleanliness and freedom from disease are universally attractive."
It's not just men who feel this way, either. Considering younger women prettier is universal among humans, both male and female.
When men and women rate a series of photographs of women differing in age, judgments of facial attractiveness decline with the increasing age of the woman. The decline in ratings of beauty occurs regardle
