ACT I
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We’ve been using the Web of Human Behavior to break human behavior down into areas, and then talking about why men and women think differently about different parts of life. When we all make
the best decisions
we can think of
in the situations
we’re in
for ourselves
and the people
and things
we care about
we make different decisions, but we all have good reasons for thinking of those decisions.
Now let’s take that another step and focus on just one part of one area of our lives. Socializing, and attracting romantic partners.
We all have to interact with other people in order to meet people to have sex and have families with. What do men and women find attractive about each other?
We’re all attracted to people who seem to have a lot of what we need to have children. We’re attracted to different things because we need different things.
ACT II
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If you’re a male, what are you physically attracted to?
Be honest…
How about a slender blonde chick with big boobs?
Okay, now that we’ve got that out there, let’s break it down.
You’re attracted to your idea of physical health. Childbirth is a big physical investment for a woman, so the healthier a woman is, the better she’ll be at giving birth to, and raising, your children.
In countries like the US, we have enough food production and distribution that widespread malnourishment isn’t a problem. Instead we’ve turned obesity into our main food-related health problem. A slender woman doesn’t have that problem.
Breasts are the part of the woman that the milk comes out of. A woman with big breasts looks like she can produce a lot of milk to feed her babies. That’s not really how lactation works, but that’s what it looks like to men.
Our hair tends to get darker as we get older. So blonde people always look younger than dark haired people of the same age.
The younger a woman looks, the more of her childbearing years she seems to still have ahead of her. And the less chance there is that she already has children.
The more years she can still have children, the more years she can have children with you.
If she already has children, she’ll devote a lot of her time and effort to raising children who carry another man’s genes.
So if she doesn’t already have children, the more time and effort she can spend raising your children.
Scene 2
Youth and physical health are two of the most valuable qualities for a woman to have, from the point of view of a man who wants to have children with her. And they’re the easiest two to recognize. So those two things are very popular.
A good mother also needs to be mentally healthy, compassionate, and intelligent, among other things. But those aren’t things you can see in an instant.
Things you can see in an instant are things you can photograph. Which tells you a lot about why the modeling industry works the way it does.
Scene 3
Imagine a slender blonde woman with big boobs stocking shelves in a grocery store.
Imagine a slender blonde woman with big boobs enrolling in medical school.
Imagine a slender blonde woman with big boobs in a bikini playing volleyball on a beach.
Imagine a slender blonde woman with big boobs firing you from your job because you do nothing but daydream about women all day.
It doesn’t matter what your idea of a physically attractive woman is doing, or where she is. It’s the woman who’s attractive to you.
You can reproduce wherever you go. The one thing you always need to be able to reproduce is a woman who’s physically prepared to have your baby.
In fact, if a physically attractive woman wanted to have sex with you right now, you could get her pregnant faster than you could get to know her well enough to figure out how mentally healthy, compassionate, or intelligent she was.
Scene 4
If a woman is physically attractive to you, she’s probably physically attractive to other men too.
That means if you want to hook up with her, you better do it before someone else does. Because whoever has sex with her first gets the first chance of getting her pregnant. So how much time can you really afford to spend getting to know her?
If some other guy just wants to have whatever kind of relationship with her that will let him have sex with her as quickly as possible and then see what happens, if he’s the one who gets her pregnant and you’re not, he’s the one who passes on his genes, whether she turns out to be a good mother or not.
So regardless of the kind of relationship you want to have with a woman, you have to get into some kind of relationship with her before another man does to get the best chance of getting her pregnant.
That means the way men are attracted so intensely to visible physical features of women is partly a way that men compete against other men.
Scene 5
A lot of physically attractive women get this on some level.
Some have terrible personalities, because they know that if you won’t give them what they want, they can always find 100 more men who will.
Some just act like they have terrible personalities, to get you to stop staring at them.
Some flirt with you to get something from you, and leave it up to you to imagine where your relationship is going, even though it isn’t really going anywhere. Then you leave your waitress a 50% tip, and you never see her again.
Some use their looks to cover up for something else.
There’s a joke that the crazy ones are the best in bed. If a physically attractive woman wants to start having great sex with you right away, when you find out a week or two later that she’s clinically insane, you’ll already have a lot of good feelings about your relationship.
How long are they going to last? How much, and how good, of sex do you have to have with her to make it worth putting up with all the insanity you have to deal with from her?
Is that her way of getting into a relationship where she can talk to someone who will listen to her?
If you think about the fact that some women can’t get the mental health services they need, so they resort to trading sex for amateur level help, or even just for the feeling that someone wants to listen to what they have to say, that joke isn’t so funny anymore.
ACT III
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What qualities do women find attractive in men?
There are underlying themes here too, but they’re more complicated. Because women have higher standards on who they’re attracted to.
Imagine a man in his 30s or 40s, wearing an expensive business suit, sitting at an expensive desk, confidently counting stacks of money.
Imagine a man in his 20s or 30s, wearing jeans and a T shirt, confidently loading tools into a pickup truck.
Imagine a man in his 30s or 40s on a stage in a jazz bar, confidently playing his trumpet for an adoring crowd.
Imagine a man in his 20s or 30s, sitting on a horse, holding a bow, confidently watching a herd of buffalo in the distance.
Any of those are attractive men. What they all have in common is that they’re healthy, intelligent, and they’re well adapted to their environments.
A good father needs many of the same things that a woman needs to be a good mother. He needs to be mentally healthy, compassionate, hard working, and patient, to name a few. So women want to see a picture that tells a big enough story that they can see those things.
Scene 2
There’s another type of man who’s attractive to women, especially when they’re in their teens and early 20s.
They’re the impulsive ones, who take big risks, as if they’re invincible. They’re tough guys, who do what they want and won’t let anyone push them around.
They have some things in common with the other men, who are confident because they’re well adapted to their environments. So it can be hard to tell the difference between the two.
The big difference is that these impulsive guys look good in a smaller picture. They’re attractive at first, but in the long run they can end up being bad life choices.
Imagine a college football player sitting in a bar, confidently holding a mug of beer while he draws the attention of everyone around him with his stories of how his team has won every game so far this season.
Imagine a singer and guitarist in his early 20s on a stage with his band, playing a sold out show in a small venue, driving the crowd wild with his lyrics and melodies.
Imagine a singer and guitarist in his mid 30s on a stage with his band, playing a sold out show in a sports arena, driving the crowd wild with his lyrics and melodies.
Imagine a muscular guy from a bad neighborhood walking down the hall in your high school. Everyone in school knows who he is, and no one wants to mess with him.
Each of these guys seems like he’s on his way up in life and he draws the attention of a lot of people. They each look healthy, confident, and successful, like the other men.
The difference is that the first group of men were carrying on with what they were successful at, whether it was counting money, loading tools in a truck, or hunting buffalo with a bow and arrows.
The second group of men seem to have a lot of potential success still ahead of them. Since they seem well adapted to their environments, women who have sex with them now get to feel like they’re getting a head start at mixing their genes with men who could be good fathers.
At the same time, since these men are doing things that make a lot of women notice them, there’s a lot of competition among women to have sex with them. Since there’s a lot of competition, there are a lot of women who are trying to get to them quickly. That means a lot of those women aren’t going to take the time to look for the bigger picture that shows they’ll be good fathers.
Scene 3
Remember, evolution is the differential survival rates of genes.
Genes are molecules that make copies of themselves. They don’t care how you feel about anything.
If you have sex with a tough, impulsive guy who takes big risks and draws a lot of attention to himself, you can have an exciting time with him for a night, or a couple of months, or a year or two.
But he knows a lot of other women feel the same way. If you get pregnant from him, in the long run, you could end up a single mother working two jobs, wondering when your next child support check is coming.
But if you had a son with him, what you got out of the deal is a boy with his father’s genes. If he grows up to be an impulsive tough guy who takes big risks and draws a lot of attention to himself, he can get more women pregnant and pass on your genes.
If you have a daughter with him, and she grows up to be an impulsive risk taker, she’ll be attracted to guys like that, she could get pregnant by one, and pass on your genes.
Scene 4
There’s another part to that too.
A man might have genes that are so good, if you go to the trouble of raising his child all by yourself, you still do well because you get a kid with great genes out of the deal. This is why male celebrities are so attractive to a lot of women.
If you’re a single woman and you love music, and you got the chance to have sex with your favorite male musician, would you do it? And if you got pregnant by him, would you keep the baby?
There’s a very good chance your baby is going to grow up to be a great musician. And so will your grandchildren. Even if you do have to work two jobs most of your life.
ACT IV
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The point is, we all have our reasons for being sexually attracted to whoever we’re attracted to. At the bottom of it all is the perception of some good opportunity to pass your genes on to children.
So just remember to think about what you’re doing enough to make sure you’re making good decisions for the life you’re trying to live.
