Have you ever met a woman you were strangely attracted to but couldn’t figure out why? Animal instinct, my friend. Many of the physical cues we identify as ’sexy’ have descended from millions of years of evolution as a part of Nature’s way of propagating the species. It certainly gives more breadth to the term “one night stand,” now doesn’ it?
No matter how civilized and urbane you may believe you are, there are certain primal urges that you undoubtedly share with your hairy-knuckled ancestors. (That is, if you believe in all that evolution jazz. If not, you should just stop reading now and hang out with that guy who’s all “Bueller…Bueller…Bueller.”)
Even James Bond acts on instinct while bedding buxom beauties from beyond the British border – and he wears a suit most of the time. Although he’s spent years refining his distinguished taste for shaken martinis, many factors contributing to his taste in women were simply handed down through evolution – just like yours.
Here are a few ways that our notion of sex appeal is hardwired into our systems:
Eyes
Let’s say you are a gentleman, and when asked, “What’s the first thing that attracted you to her?” you answer, tactfully: “Her eyes.” Eyes, we all know, are the windows to the soul, and this is what we are attempting to say when we lie about love at first sight. Rather than admit that you were initially stirred from across the bar by more animal lusts, it is nicer for everyone to believe that your connection was built on soulful insight. But there may be more truth to that than you realize.
Much of the important communication between humans is neither verbal nor even conscious. When chatting about jobs, hometowns and hobbies, the question we are really asking is simply “Can I trust you?” True, finding out someone makes their living by stealing identities may be a game changer, but for the most part, the answers to small-talk questions themselves don’t help us reach this conclusion nearly as much as the manner in which they are answered. Our face-to-face interactions are more about reading the subtle cues – fidgeting hands, shifty eyes, pursed lips – than parsing the meanings of words. It’s what Steven B. Johnson, author of “Mind Wide Open” calls “mind sight.” From a New York Times review of the book:
Even before we can talk, almost all of us know how to read subtle hints in the faces, voices and gestures of the people who hover around our cribs. That is, we can do by instinct what neuroscientists are just learning to do with scanners and monitors. [...] Our innate ability to read people’s faces is outside conscious thought. As with breathing or swallowing, we can’t explain how we do it.
Eyes are the main event in a one-on-one mind reading session. And we tend to like them big and open, with long lashes and steady, yet responsive, gazes. Those with beady eyes or dodgy glances come off – sometimes wrongly – as hard to read, and therefore, perhaps untrustworthy. Someone you can’t read is someone you can’t trust which is decidedly unsexy. Unless, of course, mystery is your thing. But in the grand scheme of reproduction – the whole point of this mating ritual – feeling like a person is honest and reliable will be an important feature when choosing a potential parent of your offspring.
Exoticness and Genetic Diversity
A lot of the criteria described herein hinges upon the advantage of genetic diversity. Essentially, this means that in order to survive a changing environment, a species must adapt. And the adaption of a population relies upon individuals choosing genetically dissimilar mates. For the purpose of this article, that’s all you need to know and you can skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to hear any more evolutionary gibbly goop.
The opposite of biologically diverse would be a monoculture, which is most identifiable (and problematic) in agriculture. Monocultures are susceptible to disease, because if one plant contracts it, it will quickly spread throughout the population which is comprised of identically vulnerable plants. For a human example, take the case of sickle cell anemia and malaria in West Africa. In this situation, there were three types of genetic makeups: those with two copies of genes mutated for sickle cell anemia, those with one sickle-cell gene, and those with no sickle cell genes. The first group suffered from sickle cell but was immune to malaria, and the third group succumbed to malaria but had no symptoms of sickle cell anemia. Meanwhile, the second group was immune to malaria but had low enough symptoms from sickle cell anemia that they survived. If the first group and the third group would have never mingled, then the second group wouldn’t have existed to carry on. So, it all comes back to that first rule of investing: diversify.
In spite of all these scientific studies, chances are you don’t go out on the town with genetic diversity on your mind (”Dude, get a load of that honey, she is mad genetically dissimilar to me. Mm!”). But there are ways that our sexual proclivities nudge us towards novel genes. For instance, consider accents. Every guy has his favorite sexy accent – be it the staid British intonations of Keira Knightley, the fiery Latina syllables of Shakira, or the French phonology of Audrey Tautou. The likely reason why exoticism is a turn-on? Simple – if a woman hails from a faraway land, you can bet that she comes from a drastically different gene pool than you. Plus, if a parent is a world-traveler, there’s a better chance that little versions of you will begin popping up on further corners of the globe.
Read the rest of this piece at Primer Magazine.
