After all, our desires, especially sexual ones, depend on many factors: hormonal, physiological, hereditary, and also age-related. Sexologist Victoria Chvileva talks about the evolution of female sexuality.

From the very beginning

It has long been proven that sexuality in the physiological understanding of this term is something unconscious, laid down in intrauterine development. After all, as you know, the baby becomes male or female already at the 12th week. After birth, the child already has a full range of sexual reactions - including erotic arousal.

IN preschool age In both boys and girls, sexual self-determination is being formed; they unconsciously choose for themselves the object of sexual desire. After this, the stage of erotic and sexual attraction to another person begins. Then young people and girls develop differently. We'll talk about the evolution of female sexuality.

13-17 years old

According to data, today, the average age at which girls become women, that is, acquire their first sexual experience, is 13-14 years. At this age, girls end puberty and begin puberty. It is at this stage that sexual desire in female representatives is especially pronounced. Psychologists call this age a crisis: the fact is that physiologically the girl develops very quickly, far ahead of her psychological, emotional and social development. She gets her period, but the menstrual cycle is still extremely unstable. She, following natural desires, strives for intimacy with a partner, for whom, most often, she does not experience true feelings. According to psychologists, at this age girls often choose boys as sexual partners who have already had sexual relations, often with their own friends.

In fact, as they say, a girl is unlikely to be able to get true pleasure from sex at such an early age.

20 years

At this age, a woman, as a rule, already has a regular menstrual cycle. Her sexual desire, depending on this cycle, either increases or decreases. So, in the middle of the cycle, during ovulation, intimate desires are noticeably stronger than on other days. And this is no coincidence: the level of hormones on the days of ovulation is set in such a way that a woman can become pregnant.

At the age of 20, a woman’s psychological and cultural development catches up with the physiological development that has “run away” ahead. A woman’s worries are usually related to professional growth - she is trying to find her place in life: studying, thinking about work and, most importantly, consistency. That is why women at the age of 20-25 begin to value qualities such as fidelity, reliability, and responsibility in a partner. They are ready to let a man with such qualities get as close to them as possible, and only with such a stable man are they able to enjoy sex. They especially pay attention to their own appearance, often evaluating it too critically and associating the lack sexual relations precisely with this “shortcoming”. Lack of intimacy with a man at this age reduces interest in sex and focuses all attention on oneself.

Girls under 25 who choose hormonal pills as contraceptives often have decreased libido. The pills can suppress the production of testosterone, the hormone responsible for sexual desire. For other women, on the contrary, such contraceptives can increase intimate desires, as they allow them not to worry about an unplanned pregnancy and relax as much as possible.

30 years

By this age, a woman usually perfectly understands her body, her sexual desires, has a permanent partner, or at least knows who she needs. The libido of 30-year-old beauties is high: they achieve orgasm more easily, know how to please a man, and are often very pleased with themselves.

Pregnancy and childbirth can reduce sexual desire. While expecting a child, a colossal hormonal change occurs in the female body, and the level of estrogen and testosterone is restored for a whole year after childbirth and the lactation period.

The number of times you have sex with your partner in the first year after the baby is born can drop to 2-3 times a month. And it’s not just about hormones: the general tired state of the new mother, lack of sleep, and new lifestyle negatively affect women’s libido.

After 35 years, the level of testosterone in the female body begins to gradually decrease, but this does not mean that sexual desire will necessarily weaken.

40 years

The decrease in the level of hormones responsible for sex life women, gradually continues. At approximately the age of 45-48 years, the period begins. In addition, women quite often develop problems with the thyroid gland - its function decreases, hormone levels drop, and sexual desires become dulled. But despite this, some women at the age of 40-45 experience a surge intimate life. They have an established career, constant material income, grown and independent children behind them - such a long-awaited comfortable state for a woman contributes to active personal relationships.

50 years

By this age, most women reach menopause. About 40% of women at the menopause stage begin to experience a significant decrease in sexual desire, as well as other sexual disorders - during this period, the production of the hormones estrogen and testosterone by the ovaries significantly decreases. However, the remaining 60% sex life during the menopause it practically does not change. The main thing is that a woman should not torment herself with a completely unjustified feeling of sexual inferiority, enjoy life and love herself. Just as nature has no bad weather, so a woman has no bad season: every age is grace, you just need to relax and enjoy life.

Illustration: thinkstockphotos.com

Last update: 12/22/2018

Here Kanazawa addressed a very important issue that often misleads people who do not know the basics of statistics. Does advertising determine women's desires to look a certain way, or were existing beauty trends formed much earlier and served as the root cause of the advertising we see today? Despite the fact that these articles were written back in 2008, their relevance today has probably only increased. Below is an adapted translation.

Why men love blonde beauties (and why women want to look like them)

It is generally accepted among sociologists and assumed by the public that the means mass media impose arbitrary images of the ideal on girls and women female beauty and force them to strive for these artificial and unreasonable standards. Nothing could be further from the truth.

According to this statement, girls and women want to look like supermodels, actresses or pop idols because they are bombarded with images of these women. As a consequence, according to this view, girls and women will stop wanting to look like them if the media stops saturating them with such images or changes arbitrary standards of female beauty.

This view was popularized, among many others, former model, turned social activist Jean Kilborn in her documentary series Killing Us Softly.

Apparently, Kilborn and other feminists believe that girls and women are mindless robots who will do and think whatever advertising agencies tell them to do. Saying that girls and women want to look like blonde beauties because of billboards, movies, TV shows, music videos, and magazine ads makes as little sense as saying that people feel hungry because they're bombarded with images of food. in mass media. If the media stopped bombarding people with images of food, people would never go hungry!

Anyone can see the absurdity of this argument. We periodically become hungry because we have physiological and psychological mechanisms, forcing us to look for and absorb food. And we have these innate mechanisms because they solve an important adaptive problem of survival.

Our ancestors (long before they were humans or even mammals) who somehow didn't go hungry didn't live long enough to leave offspring carrying their genes. Of course, we would be hungry even if all food advertising disappeared today. Advertisements are consequences of our tendency to become hungry, not causes. They speculate on our innate needs for food, but do not create them.

The same is true for the ideal of female beauty. Two pieces of evidence are enough to refute the claim that media images and “culture” in general encourage girls and women to want to look like blonde beauties.

Firstly, women dyed their hair blonde for more than half a millennium, and perhaps two millennia ago, when there was no television, movies and magazines (although there were portraits, and it is thanks to these portraits that we know today that women dyed their blonde hair in fifteenth and sixteenth century Italy). Women's desire to be blonde predates the media by centuries, if not millennia.

Secondly, a recent study shows that women in Iran, where they are largely unexposed to Western media and culture and therefore cannot recognize Jessica Simpson in Roseanne Barr, and where most women wear the traditional hijab, are free covering their entire body so that it is impossible to tell what shape it is, are essentially more concerned about the appearance of their body and want to lose more weight than their American competitors in the land of Vogue and Barbie dolls.

Traditionalists who attribute women's preferences and desires entirely to socialization through the media will find it difficult to explain how both Italian women in the fifteenth century and Iranian women today strive and achieve the same ideal image of female beauty as do women in modern Western societies. .

Why, then, do women want to look like stunning blondes? Evolutionary psychology suggests that this is because men want to mate with women who look like them.

The desire of women to look this way is a direct, expedient and common-sense response to this male need. This leads quite simply to another question: why do men want to mate with women who are similar to them?

Because women who look like them have higher reproductive value and fertility, and experience greater reproductive success on average. There is nothing accidental about the image of ideal female beauty; it has been strictly and carefully determined by millions of years of evolution through sexual selection.

Nowadays, men want to mate with women who look like blonde beauties, and as a result, women want to look like them, because our male ancestors, who did not want to mate with women who looked like them, did not leave as many descendants as those who did this.

Let's take a closer look at what I mean by "blond beauties." Note, firstly, that there has been a long line of blondes in Western media: Pamela Anderson, Jordan, Madonna, Brigitte Bardot, Jayne Mansfield, going back to the iconic Marilyn Monroe and even further back into history. Equally, there are many modern examples: Jessica Simpson, Cameron Diaz, Scarlett Johansson among many others.

Readers from non-Western societies can substitute female beauty representatives from their own cultures accordingly. I don't know who they are, but despite this, I can be sure that they share many characteristics with their Western competitors.

What are these character traits? In the next few posts, I will highlight and examine in turn the key features that define the image of ideal female beauty. These are youth, long hair, narrow waist, large breasts, blond hair, blue eyes and big eyes. Behind each of them is an evolutionary logic.

Why do men prefer to mate with younger women?

One of the main characteristics of ideal female beauty is youth. Why do men prefer to mate with younger women?

Men prefer younger women because they have greater reproductive value and fertility than older women. A woman's reproductive value is the expected number of children she will have during the remainder of her reproductive career, and therefore peaks at the very beginning of her menstruation, declines steadily throughout her life, and reaches zero at menopause.

Her fertility is the average number of children she currently has at any given age, and peaks between the ages of 20 and 30. The logic of evolutionary psychology suggests that because of this, men are attracted to teenage girls and young women, despite the laws of civilized society regarding the age of marriage.

Remember that in the ancestral environment there were no laws prohibiting sexual intercourse with persons under the age of majority; in fact, there were no laws at all. , which argues that the human brain has difficulty comprehending and taking action regarding entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment, and suggests that the human brain cannot properly comprehend written law, including laws regarding the age of marriage.

For example, teachers high school and male college professors in the United States (but not their female counterparts) have higher-than-expected divorce rates and lower-than-expected remarriage rates, likely because they are constantly exposed to girls and women in their prime reproductive value.

Any adult woman they may be married to or dating will pale in comparison to their female students in terms of reproductive performance. This may also explain why most don't last very long. Actors constantly encounter and interact closely with younger generations of rising movie stars, while their actress-model spouses may only be aging.

In this regard, here is a short autobiographical digression, which, however, explains my point of view on the importance of youth in ideal female beauty. When Alan S. Miller and I began writing Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters in 2000, we chose Pamela Anderson as the ideal of female beauty, an animated Barbie doll, and we titled the corresponding section of the book Why Men Like Pamela Anderson (and why do women want to look like her)?”

However, over the years, it no longer met the requirements. The Rescuers ended its run in 2001, and in 2007 Pamela Anderson turned 40 years old. As a result, we decided to replace her with Britney Spears, who at that time was in an ideal way an immaculate princess of marriageable age. Well, you know what's happened to her lately. Next candidate please!

As we once again searched for another ideal image of feminine beauty to replace Britney Spears, it eventually dawned on us that no matter who we decided to use, she would soon enough go out of style due to the significant penalty set on youth in favor of ideal female beauty.

If we had written our book 30 years ago, the section would have been titled “Why do people like Farrah Fawcett Majors (and why women want to be like her)?” (except that evolutionary psychology didn't exist 30 years ago and we wouldn't have anything to write about in our book!).

This would make our book seem really dated; Farrah Fawcett turned 60 in 2007. Because we wanted our book to be read over a long period of time and didn't want it to ever look dated, we ultimately decided not to use modern example stunning blonde.

Why do men prefer women with long hair?

Generally men prefer women with long hair. And most young women prefer to let their hair grow for a long time. Again, men's preference for women with long hair is the reason why women choose to grow their hair long. The question arises: why do men prefer women with long hair?

Since the human fetus grows inside female body for nine months, and then the mother breastfeeds her newborn baby for several years after, the woman's health is vital to the baby's well-being.

Sick women do not make good mothers any more than sick men do not make good fathers. In view of this, men are interested in choosing healthy women as mothers of their children. One of the reasons why men prefer younger women, other than their higher reproductive value and fertility (as discussed in my previous post), is that younger women tend to be healthier on average than older women.

How can men assess the health of their potential partners? There were no clinics in the ancestral environment; male ancestors had to judge women's health for themselves. One of the reliable indicators of health is physical attractiveness and this is the reason why men like beautiful women, as I mentioned in the previous post.

Another good indicator of health is hair. U healthy people(men and women) hair is glossy, shiny, while the hair of sick people loses its shine. During illness, the body needs to use up all available nutrients (such as iron and protein) to fight the disease. Since hair is not fundamentally important for survival (compared to, say, bone marrow), hair is the very first thing the body turns to to gather the nutrients it needs. Because of this, poor human health is primarily detected in the condition of the hair.

In addition to this, hair grows very slowly, approximately six inches per year. This means that if a woman has shoulder length hair (two feet long), it is an accurate indication of her health over the past four years, because once the hair grows, the owner cannot do anything about its appearance afterwards.

A woman may be healthy now, but if she had been ill for some time in the last four years, her long hair would indicate her past illness. And in the ancestral environment, there was nothing a woman could do to make her hair look healthy and shiny if she was not healthy. This is also the reason why older women tend to wear short haircuts because they tend to become less healthy as they age, and they don't want telltale signs of their current health status hanging over their heads.

If you want to see this process in action, try a little experiment yourself. Find a stranger in a public place (for example, in a park or at a metro station). Watch her from behind, without looking at her face, hands, clothes or anything else touching her, but look only at her hair.

Try to guess her age based solely on the condition of her hair and nothing else. Once you've come up with a ballpark figure for her age, walk past her, turn around and sneak a look at the woman's face. You will find that on very rare occasions you will be surprised by her estimated age if you look at her face and her entire body, because usually the condition of her hair is a very accurate indicator of her age. You have now established the importance of hair as an indicator of age in ancestral conditions.

Why 90-60-90 are ideal female parameters

What are the ideal female parameters? 90-60-90. Why are they considered ideal female parameters? It turns out that these numbers were not chosen arbitrarily. There is a scrupulous evolutionary logic behind them.

An evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas, Devendra Singh, conducted experiments in different societies to demonstrate that men have a low waist-to-hip ratio (waist size divided by hip size).

Familiar with drawings of female figures identical in all respects except waist-to-hip ratio (ranging from 0.7 to 1), most men in Singh's experiments preferred women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7, which is very close to the waist-to-hip ratio any with proportions 90-60-90 (0.67).

I have personally and unofficially recreated Singh's experiments in three different countries on three different continents (USA, New Zealand and UK) and obtained the same results as Singh. The results seem quite consistent in every experiment in every country; most men prefer women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7, and a majority of women prefer men with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.9.

Why do men desire women with a low waist-to-hip ratio? Singh argues that this is true because healthy women have lower waist-to-hip ratios than unhealthy women.

Many diseases - such as diabetes, hypertension, heart attack, stroke and gallbladder disorders - rearrange the distribution of fat in the body, so that affected women cannot maintain a low waist-to-hip ratio.

Women with a low waist-to-hip ratio are also more fertile; it is easier for them to conceive a child and to do so at an earlier age because they have a large number of essential reproductive hormones. And of course, women who are already pregnant with another man's child cannot maintain a low waist-to-hip ratio.

Women's waist-to-hip ratio also varies, albeit very slightly, throughout the menstrual cycle; it is lowest during ovulation, when a woman is fertile. Thus, men unconsciously search for healthier and more fertile women when they look for women with smaller waists.

Singh's preference for a low waist-to-hip ratio explains both the popularity of corsets in many Western societies throughout history as a device to make women's waists appear as narrow as possible, and modern fashion among young women to expose their bellies.

This also explains why teenage girls, rather than menopausal women, are more likely to bare their bellies as a direct signal of their fertility (ability to conceive), just as young rather than old women are more likely to let their hair grow as an open signal. their health.

The importance of the waist-to-hip ratio in determining female fertility explains the importance of the second and third numbers in the ideal female parameters of 90-60-90. But what about the first 90? Why is it important for women to have 90cm breasts? This is the topic of my next post.

Why do men prefer women with large breasts?

For evolutionary psychology for a long time It was a mystery why men prefer women with large breasts, especially since the size of a woman's breasts has no relation to her ability to produce milk; Women with small breasts can produce just as much milk for their babies as those with large breasts.

Therefore, women with large breasts do not necessarily make better mothers than women with small breasts. Why then do men prefer women with large breasts? Until recently there was no satisfactory answer to this question.

Then-Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe proposed a solution to this conundrum in the late 1990s, although in retrospect, why no one had thought of it before is another mystery.

Marlow makes the simple observation that larger, and therefore heavier, breasts sag more noticeably with age than small breasts. Thus, it is much easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her reproductive value) based on whether she has larger breasts than if she has smaller breasts that do not change in shape with age.

Let us remember that in the living conditions of our ancestors there were no driver's licenses or birth certificates that men could check and find out how old women were. There was no calendar and, thus, there was no concept of birthdays among the ancestors, so the women themselves did not know exactly how old they were.

Male ancestors needed to infer the age and reproductive value of a woman from certain physical signs and the condition of her breasts was a very good clue, but only if they were large enough to change noticeably in shape with age. Men could more accurately determine a woman's age and only attempt to mate with younger women if they had large breasts. Marlow hypothesizes that this is why men find women with large breasts more attractive.

Not long ago, there was an alternative evolutionary psychology explanation for why men prefer women with large breasts. A study of Polish women shows that women who have both large breasts and narrow waists are the most fertile, as measured by their levels of two sex hormones (17-β-estradiol and progesterone). Therefore, men may prefer women with large breasts for the same reason that they prefer women with small waists.

Further empirical evidence is needed to evaluate which of these two competing explanations from evolutionary psychology is more accurate. This is just one of many areas in evolutionary psychology where competing hypotheses exist—a sign of active, healthy science and clear evidence that critics of evolutionary psychology who claim it consists of intractable “fairy tales” are simply ignorant of the topic.

Men can accurately determine a woman's age and reproductive value if they can directly examine her breasts and other physical features(such as the content and distribution of body fat, evidenced by a small waist, as I explain in a previous post).

But what would men do if they could not directly observe women's bodies? What if a woman's body is hidden, for example, by warm clothing? Men need another way to determine a woman's age: her hair color. This is the topic of my next post.

Why are blondes stupid?

Why do blondes have more fun? Because gentlemen prefer blondes. Why do gentlemen prefer blondes? Because they have evolved psychological mechanisms that predispose them to prefer women with blonde hair. For what?

The idea that blonde hair is a feminine ideal dates back at least half a millennium, and possibly two millennia, ago. There is evidence that women during the Roman Empire and the Renaissance dyed their hair blonde long before the discovery of peroxide in 1812. Women throughout known history have strived so hard to be blonde that they achieved it without the help of peroxide.

Some people believe that men prefer blonde hair because blondes usually have lighter skin, which they prefer. But this seems wrong. While men prefer women with lighter skin color because it is an indicator of higher fertility (a woman's skin color darkens if she is pregnant or on the pill), the lightest skin color corresponds to red hair rather than blond; However, according to one study, both men and women have a strong antipathy towards partners with red hair.

It turns out that men prefer blonde hair for the same reason they prefer large breasts: both are accurate indicators of a woman's age and, therefore, reproductive value.

What sets blonde hair apart from all other hair colors is that it changes dramatically as you age. Young girls with light brown hair usually grow into women with brown hair (although there are very few women who retain their light brown hair into adulthood).

Due to this, if men choose to mate with fair-haired women, they are unconsciously trying to mate with younger (and as a result, on average healthier and more fertile) women with greater reproductive value and fertility.

It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and Northern Europe, where it is very cold in winter. In Africa, where our ancestors evolved for most of their evolutionary history, people (men and women) remained predominantly naked.

In such an environment, men could accurately determine a woman's age by the distribution of fat on her body or by the firmness of her breasts (which I discuss in a previous post). Men in cold climates did not have this opportunity because women (and men) were wrapped up warmly in such conditions.

This is probably why blonde hair evolved in cold climates as an alternative means for women to signal their youth. Under these circumstances, men responded by developing a predisposition to prefer to mate with fair-haired women; those who did develop, on average, had greater reproductive success than those who did not because, unbeknownst to them, they ended up mating with younger, healthier women with superior reproductive value and fertility.

By the way, this also suggests that the stereotype of blondes being empty-headed may have some statistical basis and be true (since in fact, all stereotypes are true, as I explain in the previous series of posts).

Why do people think blondes are stupid? Recall that the human brain, including the stereotypes it generates, is adapted to the living conditions of its ancestors (as suggested by ). What will be the average age of blondes in natural conditions ancestors (say, in Northern Europe 10,000 years ago) in the absence of hair dye? Approximately 15. What would be the average age of brunettes under the same natural conditions? Approximately 35.

A 15 year old woman will inevitably be more naive and less experienced, mature and wise (in other words, stupid) than a 35 year old woman, regardless of her hair color. It's not that blondes are dumber than brunettes, it's that younger women are "dumb" (less knowledgeable, experienced and mature) than older women, and blonde hair is a reliable indicator of exceptional youth.

The same logic must be behind the stereotype that women with large breasts are stupid. Under ancestral conditions, without plastic surgery or even bras, only very young women had large, firm breasts.

Why blue eyes are attractive

The typical description of ideal female beauty is always accompanied by "blonde hair, blue eyes." After Marlow proposed a solution to the mystery of why men prefer women with large breasts, the attractiveness of blue eyes remained the only mystery to be solved and was solved in the area of ​​characteristics associated with physical attractiveness.

We learned why men prefer women with all the features that characterize Barbie or the typical blonde beauty, and we learned the evolutionary logic behind each of them. But eye color, even more than hair color, seems to be a very arbitrary trait. Why should women with blue eyes be different from those with green or Brown eyes? And yet the preference for blue eyes seems universal and undeniable.

There is one more link in the mystery of blue eyes. Unlike all the other characteristics discussed previously in this series of posts (youth, long hair, small waist, large breasts, and blonde hair) that are only seen as attractive in women, blue eyes are considered attractive in both women and men .

For example, a typical description of an attractive man is “tall, dark and handsome,” not blond; Unlike blondes, fair-haired men are not universally considered attractive (because women generally prefer to mate with older men rather than younger ones).

And yet, as the examples of Frank Sinatra (“Mr. Blue Eyes”) and Paul Newman (who famously quipped that he didn’t want his epitaph to read, “Here lies Paul Newman, who died a loser because his eyes turned brown”) show, that men with blue eyes are considered as attractive as women with blue eyes. And so it seems that the answer to the question “Why are blue eyes attractive?” must include more than just male sexual preference.

The attractiveness of blue eyes remained an evolutionary mystery until my graduate student Lee Ann Turney suggested innovative solution in her class report, which she took from me in the spring of 2002.

As far as I know, her explanation of the attractiveness of blue eyes is the only viable one that anyone has ever offered, and at least has superficial plausibility. But, of course, it must be subjected to rigorous experimental testing before it can become an acceptable explanation.

Turney points out that the human pupil dilates when an individual interacts with what he likes. For example, the pupils of women and newborns (but not men) spontaneously dilate when they see babies. Thus, pupil dilation, usually beyond the individual's conscious volitional control, can be used as a reliable indicator of interest and attractiveness.

Most people don't even realize that the size of their pupils changes when they see something they like, so it would be difficult to fool others by consciously manipulating the size of their pupils. We can't help but show our interest and attraction to other people through the size of our pupils.

In what follows, Tierney makes two simple observations.

First, any human pupil dark brown, regardless of the color of the iris that surrounds the pupil and determines the color of the eye.

Secondly, blue is the lightest color of the human iris.

The result of these two observations is that it is easiest to determine pupil size in blue eyes. If you encounter people with different colors eyes and must determine whether any person likes you or is interested in you; all other things being equal, it is easiest to recognize the level of interest or attraction of a blue-eyed person.

Turney's argument, which I believe may be true, is that blue-eyed people are considered attractive as potential partners because whether they are interested in us or not is the easiest to determine. It's easier to "read the minds" of people with blue eyes than those with eyes of any other color, at least when it comes to interest or attraction.

One of the benefits of Turney's solution to the blue eyes puzzle is that it not only explains why blue eyes in partners are considered ideal, but it also explains why, unlike all the other features I discuss in this series of posts , blue eyes are considered attractive in both sexes.

It is just as important for women to read men’s thoughts as it is for men to read women’s; Given that the consequences of failing to attract the “wrong” person are much more significant, women should have a greater need to decide whether their potential partner seems genuinely interested in them or not. The negative consequences of being fooled by a deceitful admirer are much more important for women, so blue eyes should be a more important trait in men than in women.

In this regard, I believe that Turney's logic can also explain why people with dark brown eyes are often considered "mysterious."

They are mysterious because their thoughts—that is, whether they are interested in us or attracted to us—are much more difficult to determine. The color of a dark brown iris is very similar to the (universal) color of a dark brown pupil, and therefore it is very difficult to estimate pupil size in dark brown eyes. In one study, many people, both men and women, showed an aversion to dark brown eyes (just as they did to red hair).

Why women with big eyes are attractive

Another feature considered attractive in women is large eyes. However, unlike blue eyes (discussed in the previous post), huge eyes are considered attractive only by women, but not by men. Why is that? Why are large eyes seen as attractive in women but not in men?

There are at least two different reasons why large eyes are an element of ideal female beauty. First, as briefly mentioned in a previous post, large eyes (along with full lips, large foreheads, and smaller chins) are indicators of high estrogen levels. And women with more high level estrogen makes it easier for women with lower estrogen levels to conceive. Therefore, women with large eyes, on average, make better partners than women with smaller eyes.

The second reason is that large eyes are a characteristic of neoteny (characteristic of children and infants). Because during development human eyes do not increase in size on the same scale as the rest of the face and head, the size of the eyes relative to the face decreases as we grow.

As we all know, babies (and newborns of other mammal species) have relatively larger eyes compared to older children and adults. And, as a result, people (both men and women) with large eyes are often perceived as younger than they actually are. Because, as I explain in a previous post, men prefer younger women, they favor women with neotenic characteristics such as large eyes. This is another reason why large eyes (typical of babies and children) are a component of ideal female beauty.

You can try to dismiss this explanation for the attraction of women with big eyes to men. You may (correctly) point out that men don't try to mate with babies and small children; this would be extremely inadequate, because they are not fertile. So, you may ask: why do men prefer women who, in fact, look like children?

This is a very good time to introduce an important concept in evolutionary biology: runaway selection, sometimes known as Fisher's runaway selection, named after the British geneticist Ronald A. Fisher who first proposed the hypothesis.

As an aside, if you ever collected basic statistics in college, you may vaguely remember something called the “F-statistic” or “F-test.” The "F" in "F-statistics" stands for Fisher, who invented the test and made other significant contributions to statistics. This is why, unlike the t-statistic, z-test, or chi-square test, “F” is always capitalized.

The concept of uncontrolled selection suggests that when members of one sex prefer mates with certain genetic traits, then through the process of sexual selection, members of the other sex will possess the trait in increasingly exaggerated forms.

A good example is elk antlers. Elk cows prefer to mate with male elk with larger antlers because such males can outcompete other males with smaller antlers in competition for territory and mates, and since antler size is largely genetically determined, their offspring will also have larger antlers. attractive to potential partners.

Eventually, male elk will have larger and larger antlers until their antlers are simply too big. They become so large that they create obstacles to feeding and surviving and even fighting other males, which is the original purpose of having big antlers in the first place. However, males still display prominently large antlers because the trait is preferred by females and evolves under uncontrolled Fisher selection.

Perhaps the same process occurs with men's preference for women with neotenic traits. As men choose to mate with younger women, women achieve more and more neotenic features that allow them to appear not just of marriageable age and sexual maturity, but ultimately even pre-pubescent, like children and infants.

Men's preference for blond hair may have undergone similar uncontrolled selection. As Carlene Flora, senior editor at Psychologytoday, pointed out to me earlier, many young blonde kids stop being blonde and have dark hair long before they reach puberty (as Carlene did).

Therefore, while preferring to mate with women with light blonde hair, men are often (inappropriately) attracted to children who have not yet reached puberty. Their preference for women with large eyes may be similarly inappropriate. However, male preference for females with neotenic traits, and female possession of such traits, evolved through uncontrolled selection.

Why men are deceived by women and modern technology

So, men like women who look like blond beauties or Barbies, and women want to look like them because each of them key features(youth, long hair, small waist, large breasts, blond hair, blue eyes and large eyes) is an indicator of youth and therefore health, reproductive value and fertility.

There is a thoughtful evolutionary logic behind the image of ideal female beauty. By now, astute readers who have been following the posts in this series may have caught the irony of it all. Nothing I said in earlier posts in this series is true anymore.

Through the use of facelifts, wigs, liposuction, surgical breast augmentation, hair dye, colored contact lenses and plastic surgery, any woman – regardless of her age – can have all the fundamental features that define ideal female beauty.

A very small part of Pamela Anderson's appearance is natural. Today a 40-year-old woman can rely on modern technologies to still look like a 20-year-old. At 60, Farrah Fawcett looks better and more youthful than most “ordinary” women half her age.

And men fall in love with them. Because the Savannah Principle (“the human brain has difficulty comprehending and taking action regarding entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment”) suggests that the male brain cannot actually comprehend silicone breasts or hair bleach dye, since these things do not existed under the living conditions of their ancestors 10,000 years ago.

Men can cognitively and consciously understand that many blondes with firm, large breasts are not actually 15 years old, but they still find them attractive because their formed psychological mechanisms are deceived by modern inventions that did not exist in the natural conditions of their ancestors.

Told:

The evolution of male sexuality from 10 to 80 years: 10....

Evolution of male sexuality from 10 to 80 years:
10. I want something, I just can’t understand what
12. I want to improve
14. I want at least some girl
16. I want this particular friend, because she gives to everyone
18. I want everyone!... to try it once
20. I want this girl because she doesn’t give it to anyone
25. I only want this woman, because she is the best!
30. I want that woman over there because she’s someone else’s wife.
35. I want everyone except my wife
40. I want this 16-year-old silly girl
45. I want a lonely neighbor - she’s unlikely to refuse
50. I don’t want anyone, I’m tired of everyone, but I have to!
55. Do you want... to improve?
60. I want at least some woman, but it’s not really possible anymore
65. You have to pretend that you still want something
70. Thank God, you don’t have to pretend anymore
75. I remember how much I wanted that woman!
80. I remember I wanted something, but I don’t remember what.

EVOLUTION OF WOMEN

Report by the leading lecturer of the Society for the Protection of Men, doctor about historical
Sciences Pan Sukhodryshchenko Uryuk Uryukovich on the topic: “Classification and evolution
women from the point of view of banal erudition.”

1). A human female, or, as people say, a WOMAN (we will refer to her in the future as a non-male individual), just like a man (we will call him a MALE in the future), was formed as a person in those distant times, when the Earth was still very warm and mammoths and other equally large reptiles ran across it.
In those distant times, a woman not only gave birth to children and cooked broths from these same mammoths, but also, if necessary, could personally stand up for herself and her flock. She
She was characterized by a strong physique, a powerful bust and a courageous character -
Rum. We can classify this non-male individual as -
A COURAGEOUS WOMAN.

2).During the times ancient Rome And ancient Greece there is no need for a female individual anymore
It was necessary to defend the homeland - this task was mostly successfully handled by tough males.
And the woman now has time for personal improvement. She was well built
She was beautiful and had a meek and gentle character. This non-male individual we can
Qualify as - BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.

3). In the Middle Ages, a woman, as a non-male individual, continued to improve. She, first of all, became the rear stronghold of the family, skillfully giving birth to more
1 – 3 children, raised them independently, worked very hard around the house,
She kept large and small, horned and non-horned pets, and learned to cook food well.
The woman was distinguished by her pleasant appearance, calm character and high efficiency both in her economic and personal life.
We will call this non-male individual a HOUSEKEEPING WOMAN.

4). In our time, the non-male individual has almost reached perfection. At the same time, it is important to measure that during all periods of her development, a woman waged a fierce struggle with males for primacy, both in the family and in society as a whole. The struggle was with the variable

Success. And yet on modern stage it became clear that to directly seize power
Women won't succeed. And then a non-male individual, tempered by a thousand-year struggle with nature, with her characteristic innate resourcefulness, retreated to previously prepared positions and allegedly recognized the primacy of males...
A woman in our time is distinguished by her pretty appearance, sharp claws, a standard smile, the ability to dress fashionably and provocatively, and skillfully use makeup. She is characterized by a cunning and often very treacherous character, the ability to hide “ends in the water.”
We qualify this individual as a WOMAN “IN MY MIND”.

GENTLEMEN MALES!
Join the “Defense of Men” society - this is your only opportunity to escape from moral degeneration and finally crawl out from under the heel of a non-male individual
Thus, women, in their entirety, represent a mafia structure in which everyone, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or subconsciously, exists mainly to satisfy their personal female whims. They have gained the trust of men through deception and flattery and are quietly exercising almost unlimited power both in the family and in society as a whole!
GENTLEMEN MALES!
Join the “Defense of Men” society - this is your only opportunity to escape from moral degeneration and finally crawl out from under the heel of a non-male individual!!!

Morris Desmond published a book in 2004: The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body, published in Russian under the title: Naked Woman.

“The evolutionary process proceeded differently in men and women. The same characteristics changed at different rates among them. Men retained a little more of the characteristics of their youth in their behavior, and women - in their anatomical features.

For example, men (thirty-year-olds) are 15 times more likely to be involved in car accidents than women. The fact is that men have a higher risk-taking tendency, characteristic of children's games, than women. Although this quality often creates problems for men, in ancient times it was extremely important. important role, because without risk there would be no success in hunting. Ancient women were too valuable for their lives to be put in danger by hunting, so men had to take the risk. The death of several of them did not affect the reproduction capabilities of the small tribe, while the death of several women threatened to significantly limit them. It must be remembered that in ancient times, when there were still few people on our planet, the reproduction of members of society was of great importance.

There are many more men than women inventors. The risks the men took were not only physical, as they often experimented, abandoning the use of traditional methods and techniques. Women had to be careful. They played a central role in the life of the tribe, being responsible for almost everything except hunting, and could not afford costly mistakes. In the process of evolution, they learned better than men to do several things at once, became more talkative and sociable, their sense of smell, hearing, touch and color vision became more subtle and acute than men’s. Women became better educators than men, more attentive parents and were less susceptible to illness - after all, health was of vital importance to the mother.

Along with this, psychologically, men remained “little boys” to a greater extent than women remained “little girls.” Men have been endowed with a richer imagination and are sometimes more vicious than women. Women have become more tender and caring. These differences corresponded to the roles that the two sexes played in society. They complemented each other, and the combination of their qualities guaranteed their overall success.

Physically the situation was different. Due to the division of labor, men who hunted were expected to have a more athletic build. Average muscle mass a man's weight is 28 kilograms and a woman's is only 15. The average man is 30 percent stronger, 10 percent heavier and 7 percent taller than the average woman. A woman, who played such an important role in reproduction, should have been better protected from nutritional exhaustion, or, simply put, from hunger. As a result, the average female body contains 25 percent fat, while the male body contains only 12.5 percent.

A woman's higher body fat content is a childhood characteristic that, along with other similar characteristics, allows her to fit into her role in society. Adult males have been programmed by evolution to protect their offspring. The more physical childlike traits women exhibited, the more willing men were to care for them.

As a result, the voice of an adult woman became higher than that of a man. The frequency of the male voice is 130-145 Hertz, and the female voice is 235-255 Hertz. In other words, a woman's voice is closer to a child's voice. Women also retain more childlike features, especially when it comes to hair. Men grow mustaches, beards, and chest hair, and are distinguished by thick eyebrows, heavy chins, and large noses, while women's faces retain the childlike smoothness of their skin and fine structure.

So, as representatives of the two sexes followed the evolutionary path towards more and more neoteny, men behaved more and more childishly, changing less physically, and women developed more and more physical childlike traits, showing fewer psychological childish qualities.

Here it is necessary to say about the degree of difference between men and women. I focus on all sorts of differences between the human sexes. However, it is necessary to remember that both of them are 100 times more “child-like” than representatives of the sexes of other biological species.

The differences between men and women are very noticeable and very interesting, but in general a person is a person. I mention these differences here only because it is very important to note the following fact from the outset: the female body is in many ways more perfect, that is, more “childlike,” than the male. Understanding this will help to understand many features of the anatomy of the female body.”

Desmond Morris, Naked Woman. M., "Eksmo", 2009, p. 10-13.