Why Men Want Sex and Women Need Love (29 page)

Elizabeth Hill, Elaine Nocks, and Lucinda Gardner investigated the effects of both physique and clothing and jewelry on the perceived attractiveness of males and females, using eighty-one female and sixty-one male college students. Physique display was manipulated by altering clothing tightness and skin exposure; status was manipulated with clothing changes representing the dress of different socioeconomic classes. Subjects provided ratings for opposite-sex models’ physical, dating, sexual, and marital attractiveness. All attractiveness measures were enhanced when the models wore high-status clothing, primarily when physique was not also displayed. Accentuating the body produced an overall enhancement of attractiveness as a sexual partner but a decrease in attractiveness as a marital partner.

Men do not want to throw clothing away. They will wear boxer shorts years after the elastic has died and they are being held up only by the crotch in his trousers. Many women have a simple clothing test—if you haven’t worn an item in a year, throw it out. You’ve had it through all four seasons and haven’t worn it, so toss it out, especially underwear. A man should ask his partner, sister, mother, neighbor, or any other female friend to critique his wardrobe, and he should also give her full authority to dump anything that needs dumping.

Evolutionary psychologists Peggy La Cerra, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby conducted an experiment in which they showed women images of a man displaying three different attitudes: standing alone, interacting positively with a baby, and ignoring a baby in distress. The women rated the man who interacted with the baby as the most attractive and the man ignoring the baby as the least attractive. When men were shown images of women displaying the same attitudes toward babies, it made no difference in their attraction to her. When this experiment was carried out by other researchers using a puppy instead of a baby, it produced the same results in women’s attraction to the men. Similarly, the men were equally attracted to the woman in each image, but some men remarked that even though the woman was attractive, she shouldn’t be mean to the dog. To the baby, maybe, but never the dog. The bottom line for men here is clear: Paying positive attention to babies or to a woman’s pet pays big dividends.

Displaying honesty was rated by women as being in the top 10% of tactics a man can use to obtain a long-term partner. Feigning it to get a short-term sexual relationship also works. A man who wants to impress a potential long-term partner should not exaggerate his resources or status. Telling a woman he runs a food-distribution business will backfire if in fact he is a pizza delivery man, but telling her he is starting at the bottom to learn the ropes so that he will one day own the pizza business is impressive. Being honest doesn’t mean that if a woman asks, “Does my butt look big?” you say, “Yes.” It means that you tell her that you love her exactly how she is. Sure, if she lost a little weight you think she’d feel better, but it doesn’t bother you at all.

Any action that demonstrates love is seen as a sign of commitment. These actions include buying a special gift for her, showing loving behavior—especially in front of others—and regularly saying “I love you.” Women rate the power of a display of love based on the amount of effort a man puts into it. Men often think of a display of love as doing something dramatic or expensive. For example, he sends a woman a huge bunch of flowers or takes her to an expensive restaurant and leaves a big tip. These acts definitely earn points for a man, but over the longer term his effort is the key. If he makes her life easier by doing the housework, washing the dishes, or baby-sitting the kids so that she has time to have a stress-free massage or enjoy a facial, he’ll score big time. The effort he expends is more important than what he can buy. A handwritten note from him saying how special she is beats a $20 bill on any field.

A man who wants to run down the Mating Rating of a competitor can do it by implying to a woman that the competitor has little ambition, no motivation, and lousy assets and couldn’t lead a group in silent prayer. In other words, he belittles the competitor’s potential to gain power or gather resources. He can also diminish a rival’s attractiveness by stating or implying that the rival is promiscuous and can’t stay loyal to one woman—meaning that he would be spreading his resources far and wide and not channeling them into her. He might say that the competitor has a steady girlfriend and/or children, indicating that he would have fewer resources to direct toward a potential new mate. This approach works only because women are hardwired to select men who have resources or the potential to get them. He doesn’t say the other man is ugly or losing his hair because these things are low-ranking on women’s desire list. This is why men exaggerate the criteria that are important to women: They lie to women about jobs, salaries, status, and level of commitment to try to increase their Mating Rating.

Based on the surveys of what over 20,000 men said, here’s a collective summary of the most valuable actions women can take to improve their attractiveness and their Mating Rating.

We surveyed magazine stands in twenty-four countries and found that they advertise the same stories and images everywhere. In priority order, here are the main cover stories promoted in women’s magazines:

1. How to enhance your appearance
   

2. How to give/get better sex
   

3. Stories about someone’s relationship/health/appearance
   

4. Food—either cooking it or dieting
   

5. Tests and quizzes to assess relationship suitability with a man
   

Women are shown how to enhance their appearance to get more love and sex, but then magazines also have pages teaching them how to prepare food that make them lose sight of those objectives by gaining weight.

Compare these stories to men’s magazine cover stories, which show:

1. How to build muscles
   

2. How to improve virility
   

3. How to get more casual sex
   

4. Spatial-and testosterone-related stories—fishing, computers, hunting, sports, cars, and careers
   

Because men place such importance on a woman’s appearance, women strive to make themselves appear reproductively more valuable by displaying youth, health, and physical attractiveness. Women spend three times as much time as men on their physical appearance and fifteen times as much on products to maintain that appearance. Women who fail to do this lose their edge in the mating game. Even though some men now use a range of cosmetics, it is usually limited to aftershaves, skin conditioners, and hair products. A man spending too much time on his appearance can be seen by women as egotistical or perhaps gay, which reduces his attractiveness to women.

Almost all deceptive visual aids are used by women to attract men. These include wearing high heels to make the legs appear longer (higher fertility), artificial nails to make the hands look longer, breast implants to look more youthful, dark clothing or vertical stripes to appear thinner, dying their hair, cosmetic surgery, wearing wigs, and padding their clothing. In
the nineteenth century, many of these tactics were illegal and a woman could be jailed for using them to attract a man.

The reason these strategies work is that they work on the preferences hardwired into male brains. It’s not that women necessarily want to do these things; it’s that men want them to and women know it.

Cosmetic surgery and the cosmetics industry target women’s need to enhance their appearance and look healthy and youthful to men. Face powder evens out the skin and hides any evidence of potential health problems, and a face-lift removes the signs of low fertility. Lipsticks and collagen injections enlarge the lips, and shades of red mimic increased blood flow, which signals a woman may be sexually receptive. Mascara gives the illusion that a woman’s eyes are wider and receptive to males, and hair shampoos and conditioners suggest that her recent health has been excellent. Men see flushed cheeks as a sign of good health in women, so women use blushers to feign health. Because men are attracted to youthful, perky breasts, women wear push-up bras or have breast implants. Women who do these things claim it is “to feel better about themselves.” The truth is that they feel better about themselves because men are more attracted to them. Women’s magazines promote cover pictures of women displaying the health and youth cues to which women aspire, whereas men’s magazines show younger women displaying the same cues plus using body-language gestures and positions that indicate sexual availability. The only time men are shown on the cover of men’s magazines is when the story is about how a man can
enhance his appearance by building his body so he can look as if he could wrestle a large animal.

Dr. David Buss identified 130 tactics of attraction among people from twenty-two cultures. Here are the top three he reported that men wanted from women:

1. Faithfulness
   

2. Avoiding sex with other men
   

3. Showing devotion
   

These were ranked by men as at least 93% important for a woman to have as they were strong indicators of a man’s paternity. Ancestral men had no way of knowing whether a child was really theirs, but they had a harem of women, so a man’s odds of bearing his own children were good. The above three characteristics would be more important to the twenty-first-century man than to his ancestors because today’s women now insist on monogamy. This means a man is limited to one woman to carry his genes forward, so he needs better guarantees of his paternity.

As we revealed earlier, it’s only since DNA testing has become common that it has been shown that in the United Kingdom, for example, one baby in eleven born within marriage is
not
the child of the husband. This is why saying that a rival cannot stay faithful to one man has been shown to be one of the most effective tactics a woman can use. The catch here is that this tactic works only on a man who is looking at a woman from a long-term standpoint. Considering a man’s short-term list for casual sex, saying a woman is loose or sleeps around actually elevates her in his estimation.

The fact that men detest female promiscuity in long-term partners has given rise to at least 100 terms over the last 1,000 years to describe a promiscuous woman, most of which are derogatory. There are few—if any—negative terms used to
describe promiscuous male behavior, and these terms are usually used with a sense of pride or envy. Some terms used for women include tramp, slapper, slut, harlot, whore, wench, strumpet, nutcracker, meat grinder, hussy, prostitute, moll, streetwalker, loose woman, tart, ho, concubine, hooker, lady of the night, bike, call girl, trollop, scrubber, skank, nympho, groundsheet, and slag.

Now here are some terms used for men: sex god, stud, sex addict, player, cock hound, cocksman, playboy, rooster, cowboy, swordsman, sausage pilot, macho man, root rat, Casanova, bonkmaster, pussy pounder, sausage stuffer, gigolo, pussy puncher, pants man, muff magnet, stallion, womanizer, stud muffin, shag-happy, and ram. Most of these terms are directly or indirectly complimentary to men.

The three best ways for women to highlight fidelity are:

1. Don’t talk about men in your past relationships.
   

2. Don’t flirt with other men.
   

3. Don’t have sex early in a new relationship. Early means before he has demonstrated that he is prepared to invest his resources and time into you.
   

Acting shy, bashful, or coy also was found to be very effective when used by women on men who were seeking a long-term partner. Coyness works on men as it indicates that a woman could be hard to get and is seen as an indicator of fidelity. If a woman is an “easy lay,” a man assumes that she’ll also be easy for other men, which compromises his certainty of paternity. Playing hard to get is an excellent strategy as it appeals to two primitive male motivations of men: fidelity and assurance that his kids are really his.

People everywhere are deeply interested in the sexual reputation of others, and because of these motivations, talk shows such as
Jerry Springer
,
Ricki Lake
,
Maury Povich
, and
Jeremy
Kyle
center on them—who is sleeping with whom, how often, why, when, and where, and who’s the father? For men seeking a casual sex partner, however, coyness is a negative as it indicates that too much hard work or resources would be needed on his part. A woman who withholds sex raises her Mating Rating because it forces a man to look at her as a potential long-term partner.