Headline, April17, 2014

"' ME _ ^I- 1 -I :: 

JUST SO -SO- SO : PRETTY (1) "'

We shave, lift weights, get hair implants, scrub our skin, polish our teeth, wear loads of best perfumes,   -look and speak our best-  all in the name of attracting and impressing girls:

!WOW!  puts its  ego on the line and goes forward to investigate the latest scientific findings: 

REMEMBER  in sixth grade, when the most beautiful girl in your class ranked the boys she found attractive?

I'm somewhat proud to say I was once declared Cute Boy No 7  -by our class beauty, an Ursula Andress in saddle shoes named Jennifer.

Upon discovering my good fortune, I was overcome with such a  puppy love that I had to remind myself that I was as yet,  no puppy. My whole being throbbed with the desire to ascend farther up her hierarchy. But how?

One super afternoon, I spied and spotted Jenny swishing into the auditorium in her pleated cheerleader's skirt. Feigning  Bondian   nonchalance, I followed and to my surprise discovered we were alone.

As  fight-or-flight hormones surged, a strategy became apparent: Pretend you don't know she's there, stroll over, hope she says hi, and then wing it.

I was attempting precisely this when I tripped on an untied Keds shoelace and pitched forward, my chest catching the edge of a seat. I landed like a hooked grouper at Jenny's feet and lay there grasping for air.

Casually, she adjusted her looks and posture and, without a single downward glance, sashayed out of the auditorium. A week later I'd dropped to  "seventeenth place". Sigh!.............Cruel, unjust world.

"What does a woman want?" Sigmund Freud once famously asked. After  thirty years of research, the grand old man of  intellect  professed he was clueless. Freud's failure to get the goods is daunting, but is the question still unanswerable?

Surely, modern evolutionary biologists have begun to shed some light on what women find attractive in men?

Armed with any such insider info, might not we   average guys   better contort ourselves into the hearts of Jennifer M, and her ilk?

Goaded by vanity and curiosity, I launched into a three-stage quest for answers to the Freudian query: Step 1: Talk to scientists. Step 2: Collect updated female data on me. Step 3: Analyze the data about what women want.

So, when it come to studying male attractiveness, what better place for researchers to begin than with male Japanese male scorpion flies?

This, at least is the tack taken by  Professor Randy Thornhill,  Ph.D,,   at the University of New Mexico. When he began his investigations, Thornhill was already familiar with the extensive biological literature on bilateral symmetry.

How closely the left half of a creature resembles the right half-  and its effect on mating. The gist : Parasites, toxins, and genetic mutations can all warp a creature's development, throwing its symmetry off-kilter.

The more perfectly an adult's side match, the more likely it has overcome these damaging forces and developed normally. Symmetry thus serves as a powerful sign of genetic robustness and overall health.

But, Professor Thornhill wondered, would female scorpion flies pick up on this signal? His data proved  unequivocal: Male flies with evenly matched wings were much more adept than their lopsided peers at attracting mates.        

Amazingly, even when Thornhill hid symmetrical and asymmetrical guy flies from view, females still zeroed in on the well balanced boys.

The next step, naturally, was to see if the same pattern holds true for college students. Thornhill and colleagues took the histories of several hundred male undergraduates psych majors, then assessed the lads for:

Symmetry by measuring multiple facial and body features from ear width to ankle circumference.

"We found that symmetry was consistently predictive of a male's success." says Thornhill. Among other things, symmetrical guys were more in demand than asymmetrical guys, but also fought more with other guys, and won more of their fights.

They were also socially more dominant, and ranked higher in objective measures of facial good looks. And it doesn't stop there. Size matters, too -at least in terms of height.

In a recent study published in  Nature, Polish and British researchers found that taller men are, among other things, significantly more likely to attract mates than shorter men. One theory for this difference:

Women view height as a proxy marker for other desirable male traits, from the ability to protect and provide to the reduced likelihood tall guys will be pushed around by other men.

It seems that symmetry and height, along with typical signposts of masculinity, such as broad shoulders, body hair and powerful muscles, are the human equivalent of a  Peacock's  gaudy tail.

This delightful post continues. Don't miss the next one

With respectful  dedication to the Students of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

"' Work Responsibly "'

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless